On Monday, the company is officially taking the wraps off its plans. Nicira — which I’m told is pronounced like “nice era” — aims to be the vendor of a new networking technology that’s built specifically for the age of cloud computing.

One of the most important enabling technologies of the age of the cloud is something called “virtualization”: As computers have gotten more powerful, thanks mainly to the progress of Moore’s law and ever-better chips — a single computer can, with the aid of software like that created by VMware, act like it’s 10 or 20 or 40 different computers, all at once. Each “virtual machine” has, to its user, all the properties of a physical computer, and ensures that a single machine is used in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible. Customers who use cloud services can quickly “spin up” new virtual machines as needed to meet new demands, usually within minutes.

But generally speaking, networking hasn’t kept up. The pipes through which bits pour in and out of data centers have gotten faster, but they haven’t gotten much smarter. Where cloud servers are flexible, precise and easy to manage, networks are, by comparison, blunt instruments. Meeting new demand means adding new capacity, and that usually means adding new hardware to the mix, and that usually takes weeks, if not longer.

If you’ve ever wondered if it were possible to “spin up” a virtual network as readily as you do a virtual machine, wonder no more, for that is precisely what Nicira wants to offer you, without the addition of a single new piece of hardware, but rather only some software that runs on your existing server. You don’t even need to have especially advanced networking hardware.

Its the kind of thing that could give big enterprises some new flexibility in managing their network infrastructure, particularly as need and demand peaks and drops, whether by the day or because of a seasonal change that happens just once a year.

The company already has customers: AT&T, eBay, Fidelity Investments, Rackspace and the Japanese telecom giant NTT are all using Nicira, the company says.

Nicira calls its product an NVP, or network virtualization platform, and it is being described as the sort of advance that comes along perhaps once every quarter-century. That’s a bold claim, but the argument on which the company is making it holds water. On a day-to-day basis, where you deploy an application in a data center is as much a function of how much networking capacity you have available as it is one of computing capacity.

Virtualization on servers allows you to spread a single app over as many physical machines as needed, but the network connecting those machines is what it is, and if it isn’t up to snuff, you can either enhance it by adding new routers and switches, or live with it. The result is that you can’t be as flexible with deploying apps as you’d like, and that certain machines end up being underutilized by as much as one-third, which is costly over time. You end up having to buy more servers, then pay to run them and cool them.

The Nicira NVP, as CEO Stephen Mullaney told me, “decouples” a virtual network from the physical network hardware. “All of the intelligence, all of the control, all of the services now get done in the virtual space.” The result, what was once a dumb networking pipe carrying bits into two different virtual machines running on the same one, can now be programmed to act in vastly different manners, according to rules in the virtual realm. In much the same way a single computer gets turned into a dozen, a single network can be subdivided and act like a dozen individual networks. Or the reverse: Several networks can be cobbled together to act like one. And a virtual network can be created on the fly in minutes, just like a virtual machine.

A network you can deploy in minutes saves a lot of money, because it allows you to move quickly as your networking needs change. Most big companies who demand the heaviest network loads have agreements with their service providers — usually big telecom companies — that a request for new capacity requires a week or more, because it requires the physical presence of technicians who have to install and provision new gear. But what if you can reconfigure your network in 30 seconds to meet the needs of some new application? That’s exactly what eBay’s Cloud Architect JC Martin found he could do after installing Nicira’s software on the company’s servers. EBay is a Nicira reference customer.

Other reference customers had other interesting experiences and uses to report. Japan’s NTT uses cloud data centers to run some 10,000 virtual desktops — think PCs that are all virtual machines — and found that it was easier to quickly switch between data centers during the rolling blackouts that have become the norm since that country’s earthquake last year.

There is, of course, a great deal more technical detail, but the point you have to get is that this company is out to disrupt the networking industry in a way that it hasn’t been disrupted in a long time. The traditional solution to networking problems is more, better, faster hardware, and companies like Cisco, Juniper, and Hewlett-Packard, among others, are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to sell more of that hardware.

But what if you could look a sales rep from one of those companies in the eye, and tell them that their latest million-dollar router or switch isn’t needed? Once upon a time, before the days of virtualization, if you needed a new server, you had to buy one and have it installed somewhere. Now you can, in most cases, rent space on one within minutes, or literally provision another with a few clicks of a mouse. It changed the expectation and much of the calculus of the IT industry. Many companies never buy their own servers at all, and rent space from cloud providers like Amazon, Rackspace and Joyent.

Exactly what a similar disruption might mean for networking vendors is a little hard to imagine, but if the folks at Nicira are right about the potential this technology of theirs has, it looks like that disruption is coming, one way or another.

This time the target is Cotendo, a company that uses a network of 30 data centers distributed around the world to put video content physically closer to consumers, and thus speed up delivery, especially to mobile devices. The acquirer is Internet concern Akamai, which says it will pay $268 million, plus the assumption of unvested options.

Cotendo had been reported to be the subject of a bidding war between Akamai and rival Juniper Networks. Breathless reports at the time, sourced to enthusiastic Israeli newspapers, valued Cotendo as high as $350 million. The deal will close during the first half of 2012.

Even at the lower price, the deal marks a nice exit for several U.S.-based venture capital funds. Cotendo raised $7 million from Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital in 2009, and then another $12 million in a round joined by Tenaya Capital last year. In June, it took a $17 million strategic investment from Juniper and Citrix Systems.

Cotendo had grown into an Akamai competitor, with a reputation for being faster at some things than Akamai, and also cheaper to boot. That made it an obvious Akamai target, given its history of acquiring rivals — usually after suing them. In 2005, it took out Speedera Networks for $130 million, after a contentious patent lawsuit between them. Akamai had sued Cotendo last November. So the next time Akamai sues someone, set your stopwatch, because the defendant may be the next one to be acquired.

Akamai’s statement on the deal is below:

Akamai to Acquire Cotendo

Combined technology and teams expected to help accelerate pace of innovation in cloud and mobile optimization

CAMBRIDGE, MA and SUNNYVALE, CA – December 22, 2011 – Akamai Technologies, Inc. and Cotendo announced today that the two companies have signed a definitive agreement for Akamai to acquire Cotendo.

Helping to mitigate the challenges of operating in a hyperconnected world, Akamai provides a secure platform over which businesses can engage users across the Web, mobile, cloud, or a mix of public and private network environments. Cotendo offers an integrated suite of Web and mobile acceleration services. The combination of the two companies’ technologies and teams is expected to increase the pace of innovation in the areas of cloud and mobile optimization.

“As we look to accelerate growth across the dynamic landscapes of cloud and mobile optimization, we are excited to be joining forces with Cotendo,” said Paul Sagan, president and CEO of Akamai. “Cotendo’s technology, partnerships and people are a strong complement to Akamai. Together, we believe there is tremendous opportunity for our combined technologies as enterprises embrace the move to the cloud and seek solutions for an increasingly mobile world.”

“The Cotendo team is very proud of our accomplishments in delivering proven and effective solutions for accelerating Web and mobile assets. By combining our innovative technology and employees with Akamai, we expect our customers and partners will gain access to a comprehensive, global platform and wider portfolio of leading-edge services supported by some of the most experienced providers in the industry,” said Ronni Zehavi, CEO and co-founder of Cotendo. “We look forward to working with Akamai in an effort to create the strongest offering in the industry.”

Founded in 2008, Cotendo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA, with a technology center in Israel. Cotendo currently has approximately 100 employees, with over 50 based in Israel.

Under terms of the agreement, Akamai will acquire all of the outstanding equity of Cotendo in exchange for a net cash payment of approximately $268 million, after expected purchase price adjustments, plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Cotendo common stock. The closing of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, is expected to occur in the first half of 2012.

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has hired Heidrick & Struggles for its CEO search.

It will be a dicey job, since the effort is on a separate track than the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s wide-ranging strategic review, which is looking at a range of options including the sale of the company.

That’s why many see the move as window-dressing for Yahoo’s board, rather than any real interest in hiring a new leader.

Sources said that will make the search a difficult one for Yahoo, since any CEO candidate would be coming into a very volatile situation. In addition, Yahoo has been struggling — Struggles, struggling, get it? — to recharge its advertising and search business and also its product innovation cycle.

That’s the reason — among several others — that the board of Yahoo suddenly fired its former CEO Carol Bartz last month.

Heidrick has worked for Yahoo previously, in the now ill-conceived placement of Bartz by partner John Thompson. A different partner will be handling this assignment, sources said.

The pool of possible CEOs to lead Yahoo is not a large one, but could includes execs such as Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson, Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, Skype CEO Tony Bates, John Pleasants of Disney’s Playdom, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and any number of top Google execs, as well as Yahoo board member and Akamai President David Kenny.

(I am, of course, waiting by the phone for the call.)

A Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment.

Alan Cohen, Cisco’s vice president for Enterprise and Public Sector, has agreed to join Nicira as its vice president of marketing. Cohen has more than 20 years’ experience in tech marketing and product management. He’s been on Cisco’s team since 2005, when it acquired Airespace, a maker of wireless networking switches, where he was VP of marketing. His resume includes stops at IBM, the old Baby Bell phone company US West, Tahoe Networks, Coopers & Lybrand and the U.S. Department of Energy. He’s a grad of the New York University Stern School of Business and American University.

By my count, Cohen will be the seventh person connected to Cisco in some way to join Nicira’s senior ranks. Nicira, which is backed by a $9 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz and another investment from VMware founder Diane Greene, is working on technology aimed at “virtualizing the network.” Its CEO is Steve Mullaney, a veteran networking executive who has worked at Palo Alto Networks, Shoretel and Cisco Systems. Its CTO and co-founder, Martin Casado, did his Ph.D. on the technology the company plans to bring to market. Its other founders, Nick McKeown and Scott Shenker, are electrical engineering profs at Stanford and Berkeley, respectively.

Cohen’s LinkedIn profile also says he spent nine years as a director of the real estate concern General Growth Properties. He briefly sat on the board of flash memory start-up Violin Memory until Cisco’s archrival Juniper Networks invested in that company earlier this year.

As a Cisco VP, Cohen may have been barred from being a director of a company that Juniper invested in, but now he’ll be working with some Juniper alums. In January, we reported that Nicira had hired Rob Enns, Juniper’s former VP of engineering.

That was around that time of the initial public offering of Fusion-io, the Utah-based start-up that speeds up servers and storage networks. Having opened trading at $25.30 a share on June 9, its first day of trading, its share price has held steady since, and it closed Tuesday at $28.35. It will report quarterly earnings for the first time as a public company on Thursday.

The summer is proving equally interesting for Violin Memory, another company with flash memory based technology that is intended to replace the traditional hard drive based storage arrays that allow enterprise applications like those made by Oracle to run fast. Having raised a $40 million Series C funding round from Toshiba and Juniper Networks at an implied valuation of $440 million in June, the company has been bulking up its staff.

Today Violin will announce that it has named Jonathan Goldick — the former CTO of OnStor, now a unit of chipmaker LSI — as its CTO of Software. Goldick has been knocking around the computing industry for about two decades as an expert on file systems and storage, and his resume includes stints at IBM and Microsoft.

So what does it mean to be CTO of Software at a chip company? Goldick’s job will focus on solving problems related to data management that go beyond the speeding-up that Violin’s technology offers. Once hard drives (which, for all the progress they’ve made in five decades, are still essentially platters of glass; even when spinning at the speed of sound, they are subject to errors and inefficiencies that make them still too slow for the fastest computers) are out of the picture, new problems arise.

“The early adopters, they care about speed because they’re in application hell. But once you get past that, the problem becomes one of data management,” Goldick told me. “Once you make anything 100 times faster or cheaper, you have to revisit how you manage data.”

It’s a big enough problem that Goldick was being heavily recruited by other companies working on bringing flash technology to their own hardware. Goldick wouldn’t name the companies directly, but the hints he dropped suggest he turned down offers from both EMC and Oracle.

Goldick is Violin’s second recent hire. Last month it quietly hired Garry Veale, a former vice president at Hewlett-Packard’s StorageWorks division, as its new managing director for the EMEA region.

There’s a reason that Violin is bulking up its team: The opportunity is potentially huge. Remember, if you will, the December day that Oracle CEO declared that its SPARC T3-4 Supercluster had achieved something of a land speed record of more than 30 million transactions per minute. This was the same speech in which Ellison, in one of his numerous bits of trash-talking, likened HP’s competing product to a turtle. It’s often called “the turtle speech.”

That speech got Violin CEO Don Basile all excited. One of the things that made that Oracle machine so fast was that it was packed with a couple hundred terabytes worth of flash memory. As Basile told me last week: “We loved that speech because they proved us right. It was a big validation for what we want to do.” It also means there’s no end in sight to the flash madness.

The comments from the Sunnyvale, Calif., company raised concern about second-half spending on networking products and weighed on the sector’s stocks Wednesday. Industry giant Cisco Systems Inc., which has talked about the economy’s “mixed signals” and air pockets for almost a year, fell 3.7 percent.

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In the new gig, Muglia will be in charge of Juniper’s software strategy and will report directly to Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson. Juniper sees its software business as a key differentiator from its larger but troubled rival, Cisco Systems.

“We are excited to have a leader of Bob’s caliber coming on board to lead Juniper’s software
initiatives, and I’m confident that his vision, management savvy and technical expertise will
bring tremendous value to our organization,” Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said in a statement.
“As we continue to execute on our growth strategy centered on systems and software, we look forward to Bob playing a central role in extending our leadership position in network-powered software solutions.” Muglia’s first day at Juniper will be in October.

Muglia left Microsoft in January; he was the first of a series of senior Microsoft executives to depart during the first few months of the year. Microsoft later named Satya Nadella, who had previously run Microsoft’s Bing search engine business, to take over as head of the sever and tools business.

This also counts as the second time in recent memory that Juniper has hired a senior executive from Microsoft. The last was Brad Brooks, a former vice president at the Windows unit. Of course, Johnson, the CEO, is also a former Microsoft exec, having been president of Microsoft’s Platforms and Services Division until 2008 before taking over at Juniper. Muglia worked for him for a time.

With Muglia at the new software unit’s helm, Juniper aims to tighten its focus on systems and software as the two key areas of growth for the company.

I talked briefly with Muglia about his plans for his new job. He said that the new software solutions division will bring together software that sits on top of Juniper’s Junos operating system that runs on its networking gear to make that gear easier for companies and service providers to manage.

You don’t usually think of software as being a big part of networking equipment, but as it becomes an ever more important piece of cloud computing infrastructure, that’s changing, he said. “The reality is that the network has always had a lot of software, it’s just that it tends to be embedded in the devices so you don’t see it all that often. But applications need to have more direct control over the enterprise environment. It’s getting more important to have a strong software connection between business applications and the underlying infrastructure.”

Muglia is a 23-year Microsoft veteran — his last day there will be in early September — who joined from Rolm in 1988 and was the first product manager for SQL Server. Muglia had only been elevated to running the Server and Tools Business in 2008. It’s a $14.9 billion (fiscal 2010) business, and Microsoft’s third largest division behind the Windows/Windows Live Division and the Microsoft Business Division. On Muglia’s watch, STB sales grew more than 12 percent, and operating margins went from 31 percent to 37 percent. It was never, however, anywhere near as profitable as the other two divisions: Business Division reported operating margins of 63 percent in 2010 while Windows saw 70 percent, a fact that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer pointed on in his memo announcing Muglia’s departure.

The market has certainly picked a direction it likes, at least for today: Down. Cisco shares are falling again this morning, down more than 5 percent and trading at $16.85 a share after closing yesterday at $17.78.

Analysts meanwhile are interpreting Cisco’s quarterly earnings and fourth quarter guidance in every direction imaginable: Up, down and every other direction on the compass. Investors may be forgiven for feeling a little like Porky Pig: Confused.

Here’s a rundown:

BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long lowered his target price on Cisco from $22 to $17 a share after “weaker than expected guidance.” It doesn’t expect shares to improve until it shows that it’s growing again and that its gross margins have stabilized.

WJB Capital analyst Ted Moreau says Juniper Networks is gaining market share in the business of selling routers to service providers at Cisco’s expense.

Oppenheimer lowered its target price on Cisco to $22 from $24 on the weak guidance it gave for its fiscal fourth quarter. It’s hoping that the analyst’s meeting in September will give the stock a needed kick.

Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowsky says she thinks Cisco’s share’s have bottomed out, and likes what CEO John Chambers had to say about gross margins in the switching business. She rates the stock “neutral.”

Canaccord Genuity analyst Paul Mansky cut his rating to “Hold” from “Buy” on the weak Q4 outlook, the tricky comparisons to recent quarters and declines in the core switching business. It lowered its target price to $20 from $24.

Eric Suppiger at Signal Hill says given Cisco’s current low valuation, it’s a good buy, but the troubles highlighted in yesterday’s results and guidance will continue. “While we are encouraged Cisco is taking steps to improve its focus and execution, we did not feel the earnings call gave significant comfort about growth and margin issues at Cisco,” he wrote in a note to clients. He maintained a “Buy” rating, but only as a long term play.

Shaw Wu at Sterne Agee called the results a “solid quarter,” and rates Cisco a “Buy” with a target of $29. In a note to clients he wrote that Cisco’s Q4 guidance was “more conservative than expected,” and that “while this is a set-back, we believe Cisco did the prudent thing in setting more reasonable expectations amid its restructuring and product transitions. Based on channel feedback, we believe its guidance could turn out conservative.” Cisco’s story, he says, is “getting better and we’d rather be a buyer at these depressed levels than wait for obvious evidence of improvement.”

Brian Marshall of Gleacher and Co. compared Cisco to “a tanker ship that will require multiple quarters to fix its long-term financial model.” He maintained his “neutral” rating and lowered his price target to $17 from $18. He calls Cisco’s current low price “intriguing” but worries about the numerous structural problems including its loss of market share, the saturation of its market, erosion of gross margins, and its moves away from its core business.

Brent Bracelin of Pacific Crest Securities goes in multiple directions at once: While arguing that Cisco’s shares are “compelling for value investors, given their low price,” he lowered his price target from $25 to $22. Like I said: That-a-way.

Meanwhile CEO John Chambers appeared on CNBC Asia overnight (video below) re-iterating the story he told analysts on a conference call yesterday. He acknowledges the weaknesses in Cisco’s switching and public sector business, and said the restructuring to get Cisco back on track is underway. It has been, and will continue to divest itself of under-performing units like the Flip Video division it unceremoniously killed last month and telegraphed that more cuts are on the way.

The company also confirmed that layoffs are coming. Some employees will get the option to take early retirement; the expense related to that could be as high as $1 billion. Others will lose their jobs, though as yet there are no indications of the number of jobs that will be affected nor any hints regarding what business units will be affected. We do know that Cisco is moving fast–Chambers repeated that several times on the call and in his CNBC appearance–and so it seems we’ll know more before July, when Cisco’s fiscal year 2012 gets underway. Bet on more Wackyland-like confusion until then.

According to an internal memo from Juniper Networks, which you can see below, one of its top tech execs, David Yen (pictured here), is departing immediately.

Sources said Yen is headed to Cisco to run its servers business, but the networking giant has not returned a request for comment.

Yen had most recently been EVP and GM of Juniper’s fabric and switching technologies unit. He joined Juniper in 2008 as EVP of emerging technologies.

But Yen was better known for his previous 20-year stint at Sun Microsystems. His last job there was running its chip division.

The impetus for Yen’s departure might have been the formation of the Platform Systems Group, run by Stefan Dyckerhoff, which is prominently mentioned in the memo from Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson. Dyckerhoff was elevated to the job in late January.

Sources said Yen did not get that job and was unhappy with the move.

But read into it yourself:

Team Juniper:

In February, we announced the evolution of our business groups to better position us to focus on two core business models: Systems and Software.

A key element of that strategy was the formation of the Platform Systems Group (PSG) under the leadership of Stefan Dyckerhoff. The mission of PSG is to optimize systems and silicon development across the full range of Junos-based platforms to accelerate our growth.

As part of the next phase of PSG’s growth, R.K. Anand, who leads QFabric development and our Data Center Business Unit (DCBU) and Alex Gray, who leads our Campus and Branch Business Unit (CBBU), will join PSG and report directly to Stefan. This move positions us to drive a fully integrated approach to our end-to-end systems strategy, as we continue to leverage the synergies across our breakthrough innovations in the core, the edge, the data center, and the campus and branch environment. Under Stefan’s leadership, PSG is now positioned to drive the go-to-market focus we have around domain-focused solutions that incorporate systems products from across PSG.

As part of this transition, David Yen is leaving Juniper effective immediately. David has a desire to return to his roots in servers that he gained during his nearly 20-year career at Sun Microsystems. We appreciate David’s contributions.

We are successfully accelerating momentum and adoption of our systems offerings. The response to both our QFabric data center architecture and to the Converged Supercore–two disruptive innovations unveiled in the quarter–has been overwhelmingly positive. These two offerings represent the best of Juniper innovation in systems, software and silicon.

As demonstrated by our strong performance over the past year, we continue to execute on our multi-year growth agenda, driven by our innovation roadmap. The new network is here, and we are delivering on our vision to capture the opportunity before us. Together with our partners, we will transform the economics and experience of networking for our customers.

Thank you for your hard work and dedication. I look forward sharing in Juniper’s continued success with you.

Regards,

Kevin Johnson

One of the results of Yahoo’s weak earnings report earlier this week has been the renewal of chatter about possible changes in its leadership and even ownership.

And continued investor discomfort with its troubled stock price–Yahoo shares are down 7.25 percent year over year and an astonishing 49 percent on a five-year basis–and the level of renewed grumbling by major institutional shareholders is causing some key players to go back to their PowerPoints to reevaluate various options.

(By way of contrast, Google is down about 4.5 percent year over year–largely due to last week’s earnings release with higher than expected expenses–but still up more than 20 percent for the five years.)

As many might recall, last year Yahoo was under scrutiny by a number of interested parties–from big media companies to other digital players to private equity firms–considering a number of takeover scenarios.

Most of them were just talk and no action resulted, but that did not mean that interest went away.

The truth is, they are still out there and ruminating–this time with what sources describe as a much more amenable Yahoo board, with several of its key members willing to entertain any legitimate offers or ideas to improve the Silicon Valley search giant’s prospects.

In the last go-round, by contrast, Yahoo’s top execs–including CEO Carol Bartz–denied any interest in the swirl of rumors related to a variety of ideas.

That’s definitely changed–at least at the board level–so here are three very credible scenarios of what could happen:

Peetie, Peetie, Yahoo-Sweetie

Late last year, BoomTown wrote a post about the interest that former News Corp. COO and President Peter Chernin–who now owns his own entertainment production company–had in the situation at Yahoo.

As I wrote in November:

But multiple sources from a variety of sides said that Chernin, a well-liked and deeply experienced media and entertainment exec, has been contacted by a number of private equity firms and other investors about his interest in becoming involved should any of the various and sundry scenarios around the Internet giant pan out.

And Chernin, many sources said, has expressed a definite interest in the situation, perhaps because he was deeply involved in a previous deal when running News Corp.

At the time, it involved combining the media giant’s Myspace social networking site with Yahoo and also Microsoft’s portal MSN and creating a new company, code-named “TrafficCo.”

Indeed, that interest remains for Chernin, who has also been an increasingly active investor, including in the digital sector. He is an angel funder of the hot social media app start-up Flipboard, and also just joined the board of the popular Pandora music service.

The most likely possible scenarios have him joining with deep-pocketed partners, including Providence Equity Partners and, yes, Microsoft, as well as investment banks or advisory firms, such as Morgan Stanley and Code Advisors.

The approach being considered–which would only be done in a friendly way, with the cooperation of Yahoo’s board–would center on making a large enough investment in its shares, allowing the group to take control of the management and the board, putting Chernin in as chairman and maybe CEO (or with a new CEO–see next section).

If Microsoft were involved–and Chernin has strong ties there–such a scenario might include folding all its online properties into Yahoo and renegotiating its rocky search partnership, too.

This is an idea that intrigues a lot of people–including current Yahoo board chairman Roy Bostock, co-founder Jerry Yang and other board members–who have indicated recently to several investors and dealmakers a willingness to listen to credible player such as Chernin.

But, in this scenario, it would be up to Chernin and his partners to make a prosposal, said sources, and he might decide that the complexity of getting the power to make big changes at Yahoo is too big to tackle.

In addition, Chernin remains a successful Hollywood player, with several major television and movie projects in the works, as well as big investment possibilities in Asia.

“Does he want the headache of Yahoo at this point in his career?” asked one person, among many Chernin has talked to recently about becoming involved in the company. “Would you?”

Maybe so, if it would provide a big financial windfall. Many think an exec with a reputation like Chernin’s could easily begin to move Yahoo’s moribund stock upward quickly.

ABC (Anybody But Carol)

Here’s one truth: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz does not get proper credit for a number of moves she has made since coming to the company two years ago, including cleaning up the messy corporate structure, de-complexifying garbled systems, cutting costs and bringing its far-flung operations into line.

Yahoo’s stock is certainly doing better than when she arrived in early January of 2009, when it was in the $12 range compared to its current $16 price point.

But here’s another: That stock price now includes more than $10 in solid assets–cash and Yahoo’s much more valuable stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan–leaving very little true share appreciation.

And here are more truths: Bartz’s inability to get revenues growing, innovations flowing, promising start-ups acquired and–most importantly–to stop the continual exodus of talent out the door of Yahoo has made her tenure shakier than ever.

Add to that making its relationships with Asian partners more tense, almost no traction in key mobile, video and social arenas, a record of loud public declarations that have fallen flat and serious troubles in Yahoo’s search and online partnership with Microsoft–a deal Bartz struck and is charged with managing–recently highlighted in Yahoo’s earnings earlier this week.

As shareholder activist Eric Jackson, who has long agitated for change at Yahoo, wrote this week in a post:

“The truth is that investors are fed up with Bartz. Their enmity towards Bartz is palpable when you talk to them. Bartz talked a big game coming into the job and she hasn’t delivered. It’s that simple.”

Well, not that simple and maybe not fair, but it’s also clear that no one thinks Bartz will be re-upped when her contract is up in 18 months.

Thus, it’s no surprise that ideas of other possible leaders of Yahoo are being contemplated now.

Here’s the short list I have made of my choices: Akamai President and Yahoo board member David Kenny; former Microsoft exec and current Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson; former AOL CEO and current News Corp. digital head Jon Miller; and Nikesh Arora, current Chief Business Officer and sales head at Google.

There are plenty more to pick from, of course, and any could be installed in conjunction with an effort such as Chernin’s.

AOL Under the Hoop

No good Yahoo scenario plotting can be contemplated without including AOL and its flashy CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong has made no secret of wanting to get ahold of Yahoo properties to apply the strategy he has been trying at AOL to get it moving again.

Which is: To become the premiere digital media company.

Which is actually Yahoo’s new motto–although arguably, in word and deed, Armstrong has been much more active in pushing the concept and narrative.

That includes his incessant acquisitions of all kinds of online media properties, including the big fish–the $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post and the coronation of its even-flashier co-founder Arianna Huffington as content chief.

Armstrong has certainly not been averse to the idea of a Yahoo-AOL hookup with him at the top, and has been actively talking to anyone interested in such a deal.

And things could get a lot more interesting if AOL linked with a bigger strategic partner, such as News Corp. or Disney or even Google, Armstrong’s former stomping grounds.

Still, wishing does not make it so, especially with a much smaller and weaker set of assets than Yahoo and a still poor record on goosing its advertising sales.

AOL’s stock is down 30 percent year over year, as investors still worry about Armstrong’s ability to turn the company around, which kind of puts him in the same situation as Bartz.

“AOL is waiting under the hoop for whatever happens, which is a good place to be,” said one person close to the situation. “Why not?”

Why not, indeed–so, let the games begin.

Today Cisco announced some moves on that front. It unveiled a new version of its TelePresence Content Server 5.0 that allows videos to be recorded and shared easily within a company. They’re also searchable, thanks to a network appliance called the Cisco MXE 3500 that can quickly tag the speakers and words in a video clip, so you can quickly forward to the important stuff–when the boss is talking–or search out key words that apply to your department and ignore the other stuff.

Cisco also announced some new video hardware, including a 47-inch TelePresence endpoint, aimed at offices or small conference rooms, as well as a line of IP phones that have cameras built in. Finally it brought out a “digital signage” product that serves as sort of a telepresence kiosk. Say you’re at a bank and see an ad on a display screen for a product or service that you want to know more about. Touching the screen triggers a video chat with a sales rep who will try to close the deal via live video chat.

The shares seem not to be responding in early trading. That may have something to do with word that Cisco is having trouble in its core networking business competing with Hewlett-Packard. HP is offering discounts to Cisco switching customers who–sorry–switch to HP, and Cisco is losing share. Meanwhile, Juniper Networks is out with a new line of networking gear today as well. As HP Networking head VP Marius Haas put it in a chat I had with him late last year, maybe people truly are “tired of paying for Cisco.” Will they be willing to pay for video?

Enns had spent 11 years at Juniper and oversaw the unit in charge of its Junos network operating system. Before that, he spent 10 years at Berkeley Networks, FORE Systems and IBM.

The news comes only a day after Juniper announced that it had hired Brad Brooks, a vice president of Microsoft’s Windows business unit, as its new vice president of enterprise marketing. Juniper has also been acquisitive in recent months, and bought three companies late last year.

Nicira is working on creating software that it says “virtualizes the network.” The company was founded by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Its CTO and co-founder, Martin Casado, did his Ph.D. work on the technology that Nicira hopes to bring to market. Its other two founders are Nick McKeown and Scott Shenker, professors of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford and Berkeley, respectively. Its CEO is Steve Mullaney a veteran networking executive who’s worked at Palo Alto Networks, Shoretel and Cisco Systems, among others. AH co-founder Ben Horowitz sits on Nicira’s board of directors.

A Microsoft representative said the company had no immediate comment on who would fill Brooks’ shoes. A source says they are still figuring that one out. Brooks’ departure is the latest in a string of departures, including last week’s announcement that Server and Tools unit President Bob Muglia would leave the company this summer.

Here’s a copy of Brooks’s memo to the Windows team:

“Well done is better than well said” – Ben Franklin

This quote says so much about the Windows team and my last 9 incredible years here at Microsoft.

We did so much together.

We touched billions of customers with our messages. We launched amazing products. We have changed the world, and most importantly, we have delivered results.

Whether it was by creating vision and curiosity in the marketplace with Media Center; or turning a declining $900M Windows SA business into a $3B pillar of the enterprise value proposition; or dreaming about what a Microsoft retail experience could be and seeing the company make it a reality; or reinventing how we talk and touch consumers with our marketing and advertising; or how to just plain launching a darn good product into the world – Microsoft style – with Windows 7. We let our actions speak for us, not our words.

We did so much together.

My message here to you is really about “we” and not “me.” There are no self-made people in this world. My incredible journey has been because of you — the team, the Windows team, the Microsoft team. We have overcome some of the toughest challenges in the business, and certainly we continue to be engaged in some of the fiercest competitive battles Windows has ever faced; but we have also never been better positioned with current product, future road map, leadership and people talent to win these battles in the 9 years I have been here.

Microsoft is a family in its own right, and it has also grown to become a part of my family in so many ways. I can fly into any city in the world and say that I have a Microsoft friend close by that I can call on. That is truly special and amazing.

But, after a lot of difficult thought, I’ve decided to make a change. These are your battles now, I’ve got new battles to go fight with Juniper Networks (and as you know I have the most fun when the competitive fight is on) and my new adventure will give me plenty of opportunity to have “fun.”

I will be around through February 4th working on transition and providing my best and last advice and counsel on the Windows business. My door will be open if you want to come by and talk about anything.

We did so much together, the journey has been incredible and for that I can only say – Thank you!

Good-bye for now,
-Brad

If wishes were horses, as the old proverb goes, all beggars would ride.

Or, in the case of the incessant corporate drama around Yahoo: If wishes were deals, all bankers would get big fat fees.

Even BoomTown has been harboring a big wish that there were some new scenario–instead of the same retreads that have been bandied about for more than a month–that was at least possible.

But because making up scenarios about the fate of Yahoo is all fun and games, it goes on and on and on.

Today’s latest intrigue is from Reuters, which reports that the Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma is considering entreaties by moneybags private equity folks to give him the many billions of dollars needed to buy back Yahoo’s 40 percent stake in the Chinese Internet giant and perhaps even participate in a takeover of Yahoo itself.

As has been reported here and in many places many times already, private equity and other investor interest has centered for a while on working with Ma to unlock critical financial value for anyone interested in doing any kind of buyout of Yahoo.

And, as it turns out, Ma has long been explicit about wanting to rid himself of Yahoo and to take back control of Alibaba completely.

There’s no doubt the government of China would also look kindly on that result too, many sources say, given the huge size of the vexing foreign ownership of one of the country’s brightest Internet stars.

But, as most also know, wishing–and even offering a giant pile of money–doesn’t make it so, unless Ma can convince Yahoo to sell to him.

And, of course, he also does not have to do anything either, since Yahoo management has little say over his actions at Alibaba, in spite of the large stake Yahoo holds.

As you can see, you can spin these ideas all day long, which is what bankers apparently get paid so much for.

Luckily, I will do it for free.

You could, for example, add Microsoft into the Yahoo mix once again. Would it engage, in order to get the search business in China from Alibaba? Or to finally unload its pricey MSN unit?

And what of News Corp., with its extensive ties in Asia and interest in trading its weak digital properties, such as Myspace, for something better? Wasn’t CEO Rupert Murdoch sniffing around before?

There is also a renewed scenario for Demand Media to become involved.

Of course, let’s not leave out the old faithful plots about how tiny AOL, with its high-Q-quotient CEO Tim Armstrong, could still be a contender.

Just for fun, I will add another interesting idea I recently heard: Comcast. Could the cable and now media giant swoop in at some point and pick up a lot of digital assets it might need going forward?

Don’t forget Disney either–the Hollywood entertainment giant, which has a key interest in moving into the digital space even more boldly.

On consolation: Google is probably out, having been burned before, because of all the antitrust issue inherent in any hookup with Yahoo.

Of course, it will not be a party until Twitter gets here, with its date Zynga.

Finally: Where, oh, where is the holy union of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Steve Jobs when you need them to knock this corporate drama into the stratosphere?

Until it is all sorted out for real, here is a reprint of some of the many similar scenarios I cooked up way back in late September–most of which were investor fantasies, but now are being taken more seriously–in a post titled “Could AOL Merge With Yahoo? Could News Corp. Make a Play? Takeover 2.0 With a Little Help From China’s Alibaba?”

Enjoy–although, as you will see, it’s the same scenarios floated then as now:

Today, as news of the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other top execs got around Wall Street, investors and dealmakers were actually thinking of things other than executive turmoil.

As in: Does the uncertainty, along with a naggingly lackluster stock price and weak growth, create pressure on its CEO Carol Bartz and its board to do something dramatic?

In addition, does the messy public situation even provide an opportunity to put Yahoo into play, despite its market cap of $19 billion?

These and many more are the scenarios being debated in boardrooms of big media and Internet companies today, as well as at private equity firms, investment banks and even in Asia.

That’s because many are focusing on Yahoo’s Asian investments. Yahoo itself owns almost 35 percent of Yahoo Japan and a 40 percent stake in China’s Alibaba Group, assets that now make up–along with cash on hand–most of the company’s valuation.

Alibaba and Yahoo have recently gotten into an ugly public tussle over the Chinese firm’s desire to buy back the shares now, with Bartz holding out for more appreciation.

Now, she might have to do a deal with Alibaba, according to one theory, because a sale of its stake would give Yahoo’s stock a significant boost.

One problem: Alibaba CEO Jack Ma has made it known to anyone who will listen that he loathes Bartz personally, after a series of awkward encounters. That said, he has a close relationship with former Yahoo CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang, who is on both companies’ boards.

That puts Ma in an interesting position, according to another theory, because other U.S. companies with an interest in Yahoo might try to make a deal with him to do some kind of deal with Yahoo.

Most frequently mentioned by big investors in Yahoo: AOL and its CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong, said sources, has not shied away from the idea of Yahoo acquiring AOL and installing him as CEO with Bartz as chairman. AOL’s valuation is just $2.65 billion.

Although AOL has also been trying to turn itself around and is in a much less powerful position than Yahoo, Wall Street likes Armstrong’s story for AOL as a modern-day media and media distribution company.

“At least he has a narrative that is believable,” said one big investor in both companies. “Bartz has no vision.”

Another plus for Armstrong: His friendly and Don Draper-smooth demeanor, in contrast to Bartz’s tough-talking and now too-often curse-laden patter.

And while, Armstrong has assembled an experienced staff. And he himself has deep online advertising sales experience, given his last job as head of U.S. sales at Google.

Also likely to be interested: News Corp. The reason is that its own digital efforts, especially at the MySpace social networking site, have gone sideways.

And there’s history: News Corp. tried to facilitate a merger of MySpace, MSN and Yahoo into a company codenamed “TrafficCo” at the time Microsoft was attempting a takeover of Yahoo.

It was supposed to be headed by former Microsoft exec and now Juniper Networks CEO Kevin Johnson, another possible Yahoo CEO candidate.

That plot did not pan out and News Corp. has been trying mightily to revive MySpace ever since. It certainly would trade it into Yahoo for some stake.

Another hook: Its digital head Jon Miller, who used to be CEO of AOL, almost was CEO of Yahoo, during that same takeover fight. But a noncompete agreement with Time Warner was enforced by CEO Jeff Bewkes at the time.

Both AOL and News Corp. could certainly make approaches to Ma or Yahoo Japan’s Masayoshi Son to agree to help them get back their Yahoo stakes.

Son was the one who made the move recently to switch out Yahoo search for Google in Japan.

And, by the way, Son was one of Yahoo’s earliest investors.

Confused? Well, it is certainly shaping up to be a lively Silicon Valley goat rodeo, as there are also all kinds of private equity companies with spreadsheets already figured if Yahoo shares decline enough.

And there are other ideas spinning on spins into Yahoo, such as Demand Media, which is prepping an IPO, and its perpetually enthusiastic CEO Richard Rosenblatt.

One unlikely player is Microsoft. The once hostile suitor is now a partner to Yahoo in search and online advertising.

Of course, the last and biggest question is what happens between Bartz and the board. While they seem to have backed her this far, she has not performed as she has promised and now seems to have gotten publicly grumpy about all the pressure to do so.

Will the directors, who proved themselves pretty ineffectual in the past, continue to support her? Or will they find some self-protecting way to ease her out?

Some directors are definitely unhappy, sources said, but no one seems to be in charge or particularly influential.

Which could mean even more confusion as Yahoo moves unsteadily forward.

Make no mistake–there are no definitive offers on the table to do a variety of takeover deals of Yahoo by either private equity moneybags or from big media giants such as News Corp. or smaller Web firms such as AOL.

But that does not mean that major players are not circling Yahoo (YHOO) and assessing the situation aggressively, a fact reflected in the rise in the Internet giant’s stock price today based on the many rumors swirling around it.

Despite being news to some, BoomTown had previously written about all these various scenarios, including interest from News Corp. and AOL, after the recent departure of a trio of top Yahoo media and sales execs brought into sharp relief the pressure that CEO Carol Bartz is under to turn around the company.

Yahoo shares were up almost six percent to close at $15.25, a high of late. It is up to $16.20 in after-hours trading.

According to sources close to the situation, that’s because big PE firms such as Silver Lake Partners, as well as News Corp. (NWS), AOL (AOL) and others, all have their PowerPoints and speadsheets opened up to try to figure out if there is a deal to be made to buy all or a piece of Yahoo in the wake of corporate turmoil, slow revenue growth and weak stock under the leadership of CEO Carol Bartz.

Sources said the key players in the growing soap opera are the execs who run Yahoo-affiliated companies in Japan and China. That would be Masayoshi Son of Yahoo Japan and Jack Ma of the Alibaba Group.

Yahoo owns big and lucrative stakes in both companies, assets which make up a big part of the company’s current valuation.

The sale of those stakes is what has some investors interested, since–if thorny tax issues can be solved–it would make the purchase of part or all of the well-known Silicon Valley company very inexpensive in relative terms.

Sources added that any approach would have to be nonhostile, since Yahoo still has some stringent antitakeover provisions in place from a hostile attempt a few years ago by Microsoft (MSFT).

But alternate CEOs to Bartz are part of the ruminations:

As I wrote two weeks ago, which was again reported today:

Most frequently mentioned by big investors in Yahoo: AOL (AOL) and its CEO Tim Armstrong.

Armstrong, said sources, has not shied away from the idea of Yahoo acquiring AOL and installing him as CEO with Bartz as chairman. AOL’s valuation is just $2.65 billion.

Although AOL has also been trying to turn itself around and is in a much less powerful position than Yahoo, Wall Street likes Armstrong’s story for AOL as a modern-day media and media distribution company.

“At least he has a narrative that is believable,” said one big investor in both companies. “Bartz has no vision.”

Among the other credible candidates most mentioned: News Corp. digital head Jon Miller, if the media giant were part of any deal, and Juniper Networks (JNPR) CEO Kevin Johnson, who was the architect of the failed acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft.

What’s interesting here is what the board–and, most specifically, co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang–is doing now.

For certain, it is receiving an incoming flood of negative communications from big shareholders, most of whom are unhappy with Bartz’s management. One big investor recently told board members that their continued inaction in the face of all the trouble was unsettling.

One big event coming up is the third-quarter earnings report by Yahoo on Tuesday, after the market closes.

If Yahoo’s sales remain as flat as they were in the second quarter, even with improved earnings, there will be even more scrutiny of Bartz to find growth.

And if Yahoo misses? Watch out.

One way might be via a big acquisition. Yahoo has recently been contemplating the local space, especially social discounting phenom Groupon. But the price would have to be high, sources said–well above $2 billion in cash and stock.

Would such a bold move be enough to keep the predators of Yahoo at bay? We’ll see, as the purple world turns.

A Yahoo PR person declined to comment on the stock rise.

Of course, rising on speculation, a higher stock is a problem for acquirers, as it makes Yahoo more expensive. Still, sources said a Yahoo deal of about $20 a share is entirely “doable.”

Just as the chickens always come home to roost, BoomTown always has a video ferreted away of someone who makes it to the bigs.

In this case, here is a video interview I did in April of 2009 with new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured here), just a year after he had taken over as president of Microsoft’s Business Division.

I caught Elop just after he had given a speech where he talked about how the software giant had gotten the “open” religion and was becoming “the most interoperable company in the world.”

I am still not sure about Microsoft, but one thing’s for sure: Elop has turned out to be one of the most interoperable of tech execs.

Along with his stint at Microsoft (MSFT) running that powerful franchise, he has been COO of Juniper Networks (JNPR) and CEO of Macromedia, which was acquired under his tenure by Adobe (ADBE).

His new job at Finland’s telecom giant is going to be a big one, given how far Nokia’s star has fallen in the mobile market, with the fast growth of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the Google (GOOG) Android mobile operating system.

Elop also has five kids–including triplet 11-year-olds–so how do you say “babysitter” in Finnish?

Here’s my interview with him, as well as another video Elop ordered up while at Microsoft as part of an “Envisioning” series.

These “world of the future” videos were done by Microsoft Office Labs as part of a “Productivity Future Vision” series that sketched out a world of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of innovative interacting.

It will be interesting to see if Elop can bring such a big vision to Nokia (NOK), where it is sorely needed.

Until then, enjoy Elop unplugged–as you will see, he is a very compelling dude.

(You can also watch the unembeddable–get on it, since sharing is big on phones now, Steve!–video press conference about his new job today at Nokia here.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100910/meet-nokias-new-ceo-elops-boomtown-video/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100806/hp-checks-its-heir-supply/ http://allthingsd.com/20100806/hp-checks-its-heir-supply/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:21:12 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=46400 Now that Mark Hurd has resigned as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, to whom will the company look to replace him? If HP’s directors are smart, they’ll give Apple’s (AAPL) Tim Cook a call, but realistically who are they likely to consider? Three names spring immediately to mind:

• Ann Livermore, vice president of HP’s (HPQ) $54 billion Enterprise Business, who has been twice passed over for the CEO spot.
• Todd Bradley, executive VP of HP’s Personal Systems Group, a $42 billion business.
• Kevin Johnson, who before becoming CEO of Juniper Network (JNPR) headed up Microsoft’s (MSFT) Platforms & Services Division.

Of course at this point there are a lot of names starting to be tossed around, some greater longshots than others. Among them: Vyomesh Joshi, who runs HP’s printing business; HP board member Marc Andreessen, who is on the CEO search committee; perhaps one of the IBM execs now angling to eventually replace CEO Sam Palmisano; maybe an exec from Cisco or Microsoft; or maybe even someone from outside of tech, like Ford CEO Alan Mulally. In any case, it’s game on for one of Silicon Valley’s favorite speculative pastimes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100806/hp-checks-its-heir-supply/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100727/juniper-networks-to-acquire-smobile-systems-for-70-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20100727/juniper-networks-to-acquire-smobile-systems-for-70-million/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:49:43 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=27628 SMobile, which provides security and enterprise products for iPhones, iPads, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android devices, will be a no-nonsense addition to Juniper’s portfolio of networking products. Juniper plans to integrate SMobile’s products into its Junos Pulse software, which offers connectivity, security, and acceleration for portable devices. Besides which, industry analysts Infonetics Research predict the mobile device security market will be worth more than $1 billion in 2014.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100727/juniper-networks-to-acquire-smobile-systems-for-70-million/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100410/weekend-update-04-10-10-the-afterglow-edition/ http://allthingsd.com/20100410/weekend-update-04-10-10-the-afterglow-edition/#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:22:56 +0000 Drake Martinet http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=38484 The tech media were catching up on sleep this week after all that iPad build up–years of speculation, rumor mills and photoshopped images. This week, at long last, we all got our hands on one of these little guys, and now we can stop talking about it. Right.

Kara started off the week by dispatching yours truly to join Robert Scoble in the overnight line outside the Palo Alto Apple (AAPL) store. There were a couple dozen padinistas who braved the cold to get theirs first, and we put together some videos of all the fanboy nerdery. Kara then jetted off for a couple of her signature high-profile interviews and reported back to all of us at AllThingsD. She confirmed suspicion that Yahoo (YHOO) CTO Ari Balogh will be leaving for family reasons and dropped names of possible successors. She rounded out her road trip with a Flip video of Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks (JNPR). They talked about the iPad, as Johnson is a pretty good guy to comment on how it may affect things like, say, networks.

John took the week off, but Digital Daily was alive and kicking, at least during the Apple OS 4 event. We liveblogged all the action from Jobs, Forstall and Schiller, right from 1 Infinite Loop.

MediaMemo was abuzz with an exclusive from the West Coast early in the week. We ran into Chatroulette creator Andrey Ternovskiy in line while waiting for our iPad, and he gave MediaMemo a sneek peek of coming attractions for the Internet meem du jour. Peter then moved on to some good news about advertising, for a change. It seems that Internet ads are coming back, if not as fast as media types might hope. In the same vein, Peter posted a breakdown of Apple’s new iAd platform and what it may mean for the media industry, how it might make developers money and how it wont suck.

Walt devoted his column this week to an all-iPad followup. He answered some burning questions about the iPad and made clear some points that had even confused Weekend Update. Mossberg’s Mailbox was full of questions about steaming video, computers for school and running Windows on a Mac. Walt always gives the straight talk, and the questions answered this week were no exception. Katie also did the iPad shuffle this week, writing a review of some of the best apps currently offered for the new device. She broke them down well in writing and even threw in a little video for good measure. She never disappoints.

That’s all for now from Weekend Update. We’re going to go curl up with our iPad and Wi-Fi and not come out till June. Or at least until Kara makes us come back next week for another installment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100410/weekend-update-04-10-10-the-afterglow-edition/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100409/junipers-kevin-johnson-talks-about-network-overload-the-ipad-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100409/junipers-kevin-johnson-talks-about-network-overload-the-ipad-and-more/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:00:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26332

When he was president of Microsoft’s Platforms and Services division, Kevin Johnson thought of all kinds of ways to load the Internet up to the gills.

Now, as CEO of networking giant Juniper Networks (JNPR), Johnson spends his time trying to figure out how to stop the Web’s runaway growth–especially with the surge of video and mobile broadband use–from grinding it to a halt.

At a series of recent industry conferences, such as the Mobile World Congress in Spain, Johnson has been trying to noise. One report was even titled, “The Internet Breaking Point: Why Economics Threatens Everything.”

Of course, Johnson also knows this is an opportunity for Juniper.

In any case, with the debut last week of the Apple (AAPL) iPad, a device that–win or lose–is heralding in an era of even heavier media consumption by consumers and businesses, BoomTown thought Johnson would be a good person to reflect on this key trend.

Because if the plumbing gets clogged, the magical abilities of all these kinds of product innovations becomes moot.

It’s an industry concern. Recently, Juniper rival Cisco (CSCO) unveiled a next-generation routing system to speed up Web video.

At Microsoft (MSFT), you might recall, Johnson was key point man in its bid to acquire Yahoo (YHOO), and he moved to Juniper after that effort failed.

Here’s the video of my interview with Kevin Johnson at his offices in Silicon Valley:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100409/junipers-kevin-johnson-talks-about-network-overload-the-ipad-and-more/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20100125/polycom-and-juniper-team-up-against-cisco/ http://allthingsd.com/20100125/polycom-and-juniper-team-up-against-cisco/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 13:00:25 +0000 Ben Worthen http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=20439 As a small handful of giants consolidate the tech industry, midsize companies are increasingly looking for partners in order to strengthen their positions relative to their larger rivals.

The latest companies to do so are Polycom, which makes video-conferencing systems, and Juniper Networks (JNPR), which makes networking gear. The two companies have a common enemy: Cisco Systems (CSCO), which has long been the market leader in telecommunications gear, and which recently expanded its budding video-conferencing business by buying Polycom’s (PLCM) arch rival, Tandberg.

In a partnership that both companies plan to announce Monday, Polycom and Juniper will make their technologies work together and jointly sell their products. That way, telecommunications providers that normally manage video-conferencing systems for companies will be more likely to buy Juniper gear and recommend Polycom systems, says Bob Hagerty, Polycom’s CEO.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

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