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Global online traffic will quadruple by 2015 as the number of gadgets linked to the Internet climbs to 15 billion, according to a forecast by networking colossus Cisco.
Cisco’s fifth annual Visual Networking Index Forecast, released Wednesday, predicted that nearly 3 billion people, more than 40 percent of the expected world population, will be using the Internet by the year 2015.
via Internet traffic to quadruple by 2015 on mobile growth: Cisco – The China Post.
Cisco has made an offer to acquire Skype before they complete their IPO process, says one of our more reliable sources. We have not been able to confirm this rumor one way or another via other sources, which isn’t surprising. A company in lock down during the IPO process is usually even more tight lipped than normal.
Last week, Cisco Systems announced its Cius tablet. Weighing 1.15 lbs. with a 7-in. SVGA screen and powered by an Intel Atom processor and Google’s Android OS version 2.2, the Cius is designed as part of a range of products for the enterprise that offer integrated solutions for every part of the network, including switches, cloud storage and collaboration tools.
The Cius is expected to ship early next year, and although no pricing is available, Cisco plans to keep the price below $1,000.
The Cius has a lot going for it, particularly in the enterprise space. With millions of iPad sales within a few months, Apple is generally considered a consumer company, and many CIOs are hesitant to use Apple products because the company offers no enterprise road map, whereas other vendors do (though it does offer enterprise services). Therefore, a competing tablet with similar capabilities from a trusted vendor is going to be attractive to CIOs.
via Will the Cius challenge the iPad’s potenial in health care or beyond? – Computerworld.
Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) is testing its TelePresence videoconferencing system and expects to begin selling a device to consumers late this year for around $500, a senior executive said on Thursday.
Robert Lloyd, Cisco’s executive vice president overseeing worldwide operations, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco that he is currently testing a TelePresence device at home.
The device would incorporate a high-definition camera and network technology to make video conversations smoother, he said.
via Cisco testing consumer TelePresence, launch soon | Reuters.
Google unveiled a souped-up version of Google Docs to some 400 CIOs at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters this week.
The snappier version of its cloud-based software was revealed at a day-long event Monday, titled ”Google Atmosphere 2010.” Several Google executives touted how Google Docs performs faster and offers, at least for the moment, more collaborative bells and whistles than its competitors. That includes the capacity for up to 50 people to work on the same document at the same time, and a complete revamping of the underlying code.
Microsoft and IBM quickly stepped forward to downplay the search giant’s attempts to get a leg up in what promises to be a hot-and-heavy competition in coming months: the race to get corporate IT buyers to embrace “cloud computing.”
Using the Internet to access nifty software programs residing on distant computer servers is nothing new. But Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Google want corporations to use the hosted programs they supply to do more collaborative work projects in the Internet cloud. A recent Forrester survey shows 87% of corporate employees use email, while 79% use word processing and 71% use spreadsheets. But only 24% use web conferencing tools and just 20% use document-sharing web sites available to them.
“The problem is people work on teams whose members aren’t in the same location, so the opportunity is to build better Web-based tools to do that distributed work,” says Ted Schadler, a Forrester tech industry analyst. “This is about giving corporate employees and their business partners a way to go find the thing you’re working on without having to tunnel through firewalls.”
via Google unveils souped-up Google Docs for corporate use – USATODAY.com.
