“Soon after expiration of the extended offer period on 18 November 2009 at 5:30 pm CET (1630 GMT), Cisco will announce whether the 90 percent condition for the offer has been met,” the company said in a filing this morning. “If not, Cisco will evaluate whether or not to withdraw the offer.”

But frankly, Cisco’s probably doing that already. After all, the company currently holds rights to acquire just 9.37 percent of Tandberg. And last Friday, minority shareholders Panta Capital and Scott Associates AG issued a public letter dismissing Cisco’s bid as too low, echoing comments made by a group of investors that controls 24 percent of Tandberg’s shares back in October.

So Cisco has a little more than a tenth of the investor support it needs to go through with the takeover. Unless it raises its bid to overcome the resistance of shareholders who believe it is too low, it seems it’s offer may come to naught though Tandberg’s board has unanimously accepted it.

Excluding one-time items, Cisco (CSCO) said it earned 36 cents a share, down from 42 cents a share in the same period last year. Still, that was better than the consensus estimate. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the company to deliver a profit of 31 cents a share on sales of $8.745 billion.

“Building off what we saw as a clear tipping point in Q4, our Q1 results continued to reflect strong sequential growth trends that meet or exceed expectations during normal economic times,” CEO John Chambers said in a statement.

“We view the improving economic outlook, combined with solid execution on our growth strategy, as creating unparalleled opportunity to drive more value into the core of the network,” Chambers continued. “Simply said, we believe that key market transitions across collaboration, virtualization and video will drive productivity and growth in network loads for the next decade, and are evolving even faster than expected.”

At $24.20, shares in the company are trading up nearly four percent on the news.

Remarking today on speculation that Cisco (CSCO) would do just that, Ned Hooper, the company’s chief strategy officer, stressed that Cisco “will always act with fiscal prudence” as it pursues Tandberg. “We strongly believe our offer is a very good price for Tandberg shareholders,” Hooper wrote, adding that the time is right for the two companies to come together.

“However, no acquisition should be pursued or completed if it runs counter to the broader principles of prudence and financial fairness,” Hooper cautioned. “Given all the speculative ‘noise’ last week,” he added, “I wanted to take the time to reiterate these points because it is important to me, and to Cisco, that all of our stakeholders understand our position as we near the end of the offer period.”

Now Hooper didn’t come right out and say it, but his message here is pretty clear: Cisco believes the 38.3 percent premium it has offered to pay for Tandberg is a fair one and is not particularly interested in raising it just to please some ornery shareholders.

And time is running out. Note that Hooper concludes his missive by explicitly pointing out that the end of the offer period is approaching.

Sources tell Bloomberg that Cisco (CSCO) has little intention of meeting the demands of a group of investors who would like it to reach a bit deeper into its wallet before they hand over their 24 percent stake in Tandberg, the world’s second largest manufacturer of videoconferencing kit. Cisco would rather walk away than sweeten a bid that represents a 38.3 percent premium on Tandberg’s closing share price on the day before news of a possible acquisition broke.

Or that’s what Cisco wants them to think, anyway. Because scrapping what is a pretty strategic deal for the company would be silly at this point given Cisco’s huge cash reserves. Rumors that it would “strongly consider walking away” from Tandberg are likely more gamesmanship than anything else.

“I think it’s quite unlikely that they’ll drop their offer, everything points to them buying Tandberg,” Arctic Securities analyst Martin Hoff told Bloomberg. “It’s probably smart of them to send some signals to scare the shareholders into accepting the offer.”

This morning, Cisco (CSCO) announced plans to purchase the software-as-a-service security vendor for roughly $183 million in a bid to expand its Web security portfolio both on-premises and in the cloud. Among ScanSafe’s clients: Google (GOOG), AT&T (T) and Sprint (S).

“With the acquisition of ScanSafe, Cisco is executing on our vision to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services for advanced security enforcement,” said Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Security Technology Business Unit, in a statement. “Cisco will provide customers the flexibility to choose the deployment model that best suits their organization and deliver anytime, anywhere protection against Web-based threats.”

Expected to close in the second quarter of 2010, the deal–Cisco’s sixth acquisition of the year–comes on the heels of the Barracuda Networks acquisition of security SAAS vendor Purewire.

Earlier this year, Cisco (CSCO) acquired Pure Digital, developer of the Flip video camera, for $590 million. Two weeks ago, the company spent $3 billion on videoconferencing system maker Tandberg. And now it’s purchasing wireless infrastructure outfit Starent Networks (STAR) for $2.9 billion, or $35 a share. That’s a 21 percent premium over Starent’s closing price on Monday of $29.03, but it’s likely money well spent for Cisco.

Starent makes hardware and software to support wireless multimedia services, an obvious sweet spot in the data services market right now. Indeed, Cisco expects global mobile data traffic to more than double every year through 2013. Which makes Starent a pretty good growth bet, from on acquisition standpoint.

An appalling drop. But one that investors welcomed, because as lousy as its performance might seem, Cisco’s earnings still managed to beat the Street. Analysts who follow the company had expected it to report earnings of 29 cents a share on revenue of $8.52 billion.

Is this what they mean by “green shoots”? Sigh.

“Cisco delivered very solid quarterly and annual results in a challenging economic environment, as we continued our focus on disciplined execution and our customers’ success,” Cisco CEO John Chambers said in a statement. “We are confident in our strategic position in both existing and thirty adjacent markets. We saw a number of positive signs this quarter in the economy and in our business, especially comparing our sequential quarter-over-quarter order trends. If we continue to see these positive order trends for the next one to two quarters, we believe there is a good chance we will look back and see that the tipping point occurred in our business in Q4.”

Cisco (CSCO) shares are up two percent at $22.60 on the news.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

In a statement, Cisco said, “This limited restructuring is part of our ongoing, targeted realignment of resources and was previously discussed on our fiscal second and third quarter 2009 earnings calls. While Cisco constantly manages its business priorities, resources and overall employee alignment as part of our overall business management process, we are sensitive to the impact these decisions have on employees during this challenging economic environment. We are doing everything possible to minimize the impact on employees affected by the limited restructuring.”

For Hooper, who was already waist-deep in corporate strategy at Cisco as senior vice president corporate development and head of its consumer division, this is quite a promotion, one that clearly suggests he’s being groomed for the CEO spot. And with former CEO candidates Charlie Giancarlo and Mike Volpi out of the picture, what’s to stop him from ascending to it? As Barclays Capital noted this morning, “The appointment cements our view that Mr. Hooper is well-regarded within Cisco and may continue to progress in the upper echelons of Cisco’s management team.”

While you might think of the Flip as a consumer device it is just as useful in our business line. The number of applications enabled by this network web 2.0 device in the business world is exploding.

Again using myself as an example I carry the same two devices in my business life and my personal life. A PDA and my Flip. Another key take away is to understand in my opinion the argument about consumer devices and business devices as well as the two architectures completely blurring is over. The real question is how do the CIO’s in the enterprise business facilitate this change and that is from a number [of] recent meetings with some of the top CIO’s in the world. They get it. They understand the change and it is how they facilitate it rather than slow it down.

An interesting point. That said, I imagine it will take a while for enterprise to overcome its security concerns over such uses. And for their employees to feel comfortable conducting personal business on company-issued handsets governed by those annoying corporate communications policies….

For its third quarter, the company posted a profit Wednesday that fell 24 percent from a year earlier but still beat expectations. Sales slipped 17 percent. The specifics: Revenue topped out at $8.16 billion, down from $9.79 billion for the same period last year but better than the $8.07 billion analysts had expected. Sales were $8.2 billion, topping analysts’ forecasts of $8.1 billion. Excluding one-time charges for acquisition costs, Cisco (CSCO) earned 30 cents per share, a nickel more than the Street had been looking for.

So, overall, a good report that exceeded expectations with numbers that, by any standard, are pretty damn ugly. “Cisco delivered solid financial performance despite a challenging global economy and period of evolving market dynamics,” said CEO John Chambers. “These results demonstrate our ability to drive operational excellence and manage profitability across varying economic cycles.”

One way of putting it, I suppose. Certainly investors are eating it up. Cisco shares rose on the news.

I compete with HP, I compete with IBM, and I compete with Sun. And I am perfectly able, willing and ready to compete with Cisco in the server space.

– Rick Becker, Dell’s vice president of software and solutions, says he’s not worried by Cisco’s new push into the server market

Long a partner to the big server makers, the networking equipment giant today became a competitor, announcing an aggressive push into the server market. No longer content to peddle switches and routers alone, Cisco (CSCO) is now selling what it calls a unified computing system–a full-blown data center solution that encompasses everything from servers and storage to connectivity and virtualization services. The move is a brazen challenge to IBM (IBM), HP (HPQ) and other vendor partners with whom Cisco had once cooperated. “We’re going to compete with HP,” Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior told The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t want to sugarcoat that. There is bound to be change in the landscape of who you compete with and who you partner with.”

Of course, but “change” is rather a tame word for a potentially market-disrupting expansion of Cisco’s business. This is a power grab, plain and simple. A game-changer. Cisco is offering an integrated approach to what’s long been a multivendor arrangement. Whereas before, CIOs would purchase servers from one company, virtualization software from another and networking from yet another, the networking giant is proposing they now purchase them together from a single vendor: Cisco. And that puts it on a collision course with IBM and HP.

“H-P, IBM and Cisco are the new four horsemen of IT infrastructure and they are all fighting to increase their share of the enterprise IT wallet,” Forrester Research analyst James Staten told Marketwatch. “They have all benefited from growth of the market and by taking share from weaker players, but are now needing to go after each other’s strongholds to keep growing. They are definitely leveraging technology evolutions that drive unification, so customers win through this competition, but it’s going to be a bloody fight.”

Looks like that 27 percent year-over-year drop in net income Cisco reported earlier this month had dire consequences for its workforce. The company sacked several hundred employees this week as part of what it describes variously as a “limited restructuring” and “targeted realignment of resources.” Cisco (CSCO) defines layoffs as a minimum 10 percent reduction in workforce; hence, the silly euphemisms here.

It’s not yet known how many positions were “restructured/realigned,” but the company is said to have eliminated 250 at its San Jose, Calif., headquarters alone. More “realignments” are likely to follow until the company reaches the 1,500- and 2,000-employee figure cited by Cisco CEO John Chambers in a Feb. 4 call with Wall Street analysts.

“With the speed we are now moving on some of these fronts we will continue this normal process which in the near-term could result in a reduction of 1,500 to 2,000 jobs,” Chambers said at that time. “This is something we will continue to do in good and challenging times. I thought it was important to provide this level of detail especially to our employee family during these uncertain times. Many of you have asked us if we need to do a broad company lay off in order to manage our expenses. My own view is if you are going to do a lay off and we try everything possible to avoid them, it needs to be a critical mass to justify the loss of business momentum, impact on employees and disruption in key projects. Being very transparent, our definition of a company-wide lay off if we had to do one would most likely be at least 10% of our workforce.”

Cisco currently employs about 64,000 people. So even if it sacks 2,000 of them, it still doesn’t count as a layoff under its definition. That said, a layoff by any other name is still a layoff, no?

[Image credit: Someecards]

Looks like that 27 percent year-over-year drop in net income Cisco reported earlier this month had dire consequences for its workforce. The company sacked several hundred employees this week as part of what it describes variously as a “limited restructuring” and “targeted realignment of resources.” Cisco (CSCO) defines layoffs as a minimum 10 percent reduction in workforce; hence, the silly euphemisms here.

It’s not yet known how many positions were “restructured/realigned,” but the company is said to have eliminated 250 at its San Jose, Calif., headquarters alone. More “realignments” are likely to follow until the company reaches the 1,500- and 2,000-employee figure cited by Cisco CEO John Chambers in a Feb. 4 call with Wall Street analysts.

“With the speed we are now moving on some of these fronts we will continue this normal process which in the near-term could result in a reduction of 1,500 to 2,000 jobs,” Chambers said at that time. “This is something we will continue to do in good and challenging times. I thought it was important to provide this level of detail especially to our employee family during these uncertain times. Many of you have asked us if we need to do a broad company lay off in order to manage our expenses. My own view is if you are going to do a lay off and we try everything possible to avoid them, it needs to be a critical mass to justify the loss of business momentum, impact on employees and disruption in key projects. Being very transparent, our definition of a company-wide lay off if we had to do one would most likely be at least 10% of our workforce.”

Cisco currently employs about 64,000 people. So even if it sacks 2,000 of them, it still doesn’t count as a layoff under its definition. That said, a layoff by any other name is still a layoff, no?

[Image credit: Someecards]