Having worked for Cisco and participated in my share of acquisitions, I have faith that Ciso will have no problem integrating Linksys into the Cisco way of things. The most interesting item in the press release, IHMO is...
Upon closing of the acquisition, Linksys' business will be operated as a division of Cisco, and its products will continue to be sold under the Linksys brand through its existing retail, distributor and e-commerce channels. In addition, Linksys will have access to Cisco's sales infrastructure to address international markets and the service provider channel.
so it seems to me that Cisco wants to leverage Cisco's MASSIVE infrastructure and buying power to increase the margins, while continuing the Linksys name to disassociate them from Cisco at the consumer level.
What worries me is that in my time at Cisco, they never seemed to 'get' the SOHO market. As I recall, Cisco has been in the SOHO area before. I'm not sure what happened, but I suspect the Cisco business model didn't play well and they backed out when it was clear they weren't going to make the margins they do on the bread and butter items.
Cisco has learned from the burst of the bubble. While the end result has cost some people thier jobs as they cut or trimmed product lines, it has also make Cisco much more aware of how and where it makes money. Add that in with the big slowdown in acquisitions and I would speculate that Cisco has done it's homework on this acquisition, and that they have a good game plan on how to proceed.
Based on my experience with Cisco and evidenced by a number of product line closures, I can say that Cisco may not have always put in this much though into an acquisition.
My guess is that this will be a good thing for Cisco and Linksys, and hopefully for the consumers as well.
Having a "corporate" flavor of linux would be pretty cool. You could do things like trim out all the binaries that you want to have shared via NFS, compile a few key bin's staticly, set up some key files in the distro, and then cut server and desktop versions that can be installed with a minimum of fuss. If there is a feature that the community wants in the distro, but that RH or SUSE has decided isn't ready for prime time, that can be included too. In a nutshell, you can set things up before you ship the cd.
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If they change them any faster, You'll be able to make your own and pass them off as the latest, newest , most non counterfitiest $20.
So, I'm sitting in the airport for a 3 hour layover between flights. How do I view a VOD on my laptop again?
Hmmmf.
Good thing I kept all of my 'dead end technology' DVD's for just such an occation.
Having worked for Cisco and participated in my share of acquisitions, I have faith that Ciso will have no problem integrating Linksys into the Cisco way of things. The most interesting item in the press release, IHMO is...
Upon closing of the acquisition, Linksys' business will be operated as a division of Cisco, and its products will continue to be sold under the Linksys brand through its existing retail, distributor and e-commerce channels. In addition, Linksys will have access to Cisco's sales infrastructure to address international markets and the service provider channel.
so it seems to me that Cisco wants to leverage Cisco's MASSIVE infrastructure and buying power to increase the margins, while continuing the Linksys name to disassociate them from Cisco at the consumer level.
What worries me is that in my time at Cisco, they never seemed to 'get' the SOHO market. As I recall, Cisco has been in the SOHO area before. I'm not sure what happened, but I suspect the Cisco business model didn't play well and they backed out when it was clear they weren't going to make the margins they do on the bread and butter items.
Cisco has learned from the burst of the bubble. While the end result has cost some people thier jobs as they cut or trimmed product lines, it has also make Cisco much more aware of how and where it makes money. Add that in with the big slowdown in acquisitions and I would speculate that Cisco has done it's homework on this acquisition, and that they have a good game plan on how to proceed.
Based on my experience with Cisco and evidenced by a number of product line closures, I can say that Cisco may not have always put in this much though into an acquisition.
My guess is that this will be a good thing for Cisco and Linksys, and hopefully for the consumers as well.
Agreed! I have a Denon AVR 5700 and the full Klipsch surround system based on the KLF20's. It absolutely rocks!
Having a "corporate" flavor of linux would be pretty cool. You could do things like trim out all the binaries that you want to have shared via NFS, compile a few key bin's staticly, set up some key files in the distro, and then cut server and desktop versions that can be installed with a minimum of fuss. If there is a feature that the community wants in the distro, but that RH or SUSE has decided isn't ready for prime time, that can be included too. In a nutshell, you can set things up before you ship the cd.