Cisco Acquires CliQr For $260 Million

The could management provider, Cliqr, is acquired by Cisco for $260 million.

Cisco Systems is planning to acquire Cliqr for $260 million in efforts to get into the growing market of cloud management and computing. The CEO of the networking giant company, Chuck Robbins, believes that this acquisition will aid companies in adapting the hybrid cloud service easily.

Cliqr Technologies is startup in California, San Jose, providing technology to various companies required for the management of software apps to maintain their datacenters. The strategy that Cisco Systems is trying here is not to compete with major cloud computing businesses but instead become an intermediary of such businesses and their customers, which it can achieve through acquiring Cliqr.

The Information Technology organization is now paying Cliqr with $260 million. It has 100 employees according to the CEO, Chuck Robbins. By doing so, the company will be able to recast its products in an enhanced manner which is compatible with the market of networking today. Cisco is expanding its business from not only developing hardware and software but is now making new additions to its portfolio, which will help its users manage and meet their computing needs in a friendlier and easier way.

This recent acquisition by Cisco will help the company strategy of helping their customers in a better and more flexible way through the provision of more resources of cloud computing in a unique manner. The company made an announcement just a month ago of its plans to acquire another business in the same market and category, Jasper Technologies Inc. costing its almost $1.4 billion. It is planning to do so with hope to offer more products to its customer in the market for the Internet of Things tech, so that users can easily manage their appliances via the internet.

Cisco Systems is no longer staying in a box and is expanding the services it offer through acquiring companies in the networking business with their employees and its own working together as one singular team to come up with most innovative tech there to date. The company it is acquiring now, Cliqr, raised $38 million in 2015, April, it was founded five years ago by VMware Inc. and has major popular investors including Google’s arm, Polaris Partners and many others.

The CEO of Cisco is aware of the fact that most of the technology in the future is going to be cloud based and he known what the business needs to stay ahead of the competition and let the future be as successful for the company as possible.

Cisco Reports Hints At Mobile Data Boom in India

Internet protocol (IP)-based networking products maker’s top female engineer set to exit.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), in its 10th annual visual networking index report, forecasted that India’s Internet protocol traffic is all set to skyrocket at four times the pace for the period covering from 2014 to 2019, at an astounding rate of more than 30% per year. Factors driving this growth range from increased mobile data internet usage to increased broadband speed and more ordinary Indians expected to possess low cost yet high quality featured smartphones.

The networking solutions company has bullish assessments about the world’s second largest populated country, pointing to the IP traffic expected to reach around 4 exabytes by 2019, an increase from the current traffic speed of 967 petabytes per month in 2014. In comparison, global IP traffic growth is expected to reach 2 zettabytes, largely driven by an increased number of users and enhanced broadband speeds.

Another reason for strong growth is the mobile data traffic. Cisco Systems Inc. expects the mobile data traffic in the South Asian nation to grow by more than 14%, with an annual compounded growth rate at 67%. Currently 9% of the IP traffic is credited in the mobile data, and that is expected to rise to less than 30% five years later.

On top of this, each household in India, once getting a hold of a smartphone, will generate 41 gigabytes of monthly internet traffic in the same year by 2019 and an astounding 75 billion minutes of video content is expected to be downloaded through the Internet every month.

Meanwhile, Cisco has announced that its CTO and Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior, is set to leave the company by the end of July, on top of two other executives, who have also called to quit – COO Gary Moore and President Rob Lloyd – both who were considered as strong front runners to run for the post of CEO once Chambers resigned.

Ms. Warrior’s success in the company has been mixed. On one hand, she is considered smart and had a good relationship with the customers, and has been an adviser to many startups. On the downside though, she has not garnered a lot of respect when she was first selected as an engineering leader.

Her rumor of quitting came early this year, only for the company to deny it, but the management is silent about her impending exit, which they will not mind since they are in the process of reshuffling the leadership positions anyway, bringing in fresh new faces.

Cisco stock price ended the day at $29.18, a loss of 0.45%.

Cisco Systems Stock Is The One To Watch Out For Right Now

Better than expected results, high gross margins, and a complete focus on customer solutions to help propel the stock forward.

Last week, Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) has reported its third quarter results, which were better than expectations. Revenue rose from $12.07 billion to over $12.15 billion, which is much lower than Cisco’s guidance of between $12.50-12.75 billion, even higher than analysts’ estimates.

The earnings from Cisco comes at a particularly critical time, as the company is about to see the handover of the position of chairman on board. John Chambers will hand over the ‘baton’ to Chuck Robbins In July. It is hoped that Mr. Robbins will continue the momentum of fiscal consolidation and the company’s future projects, consisting of home automation solutions and the Internet of Things (IoT). Tech analysts have welcomed the ‘changeover’, saying that Mr. Chambers was becoming a bit too headstrong and was at the helm for a long time.

Even though Cisco has a strong presence in the market in terms of its data networks, assuming that it is an aggressive innovator, the company needs to continue to keep it evolving because the tech industry is evolving at an even faster rate. Hence, it can be difficult to catch up with it.

This leads to the question: Is Cisco’s stock worth buying? No doubt that the company has a strong market share in switches, routing, data center network, but not so much at IP telephony and Wireless LAN. The challenges exist for the company in the market, as some rivals are competitive enough to steal the limelight.

Juniper Networks Inc., while not a threat without trouble, has managed to steal away Cisco’s dominance. Cisco’s market share for switches declined from over 65% to around 57%, whereas Jupiter’s switches market share rose from less than 2% to 3%. Even more significant is that Cisco’s market share for data center hardware has fallen from less than 59% to over 47%, whereas Juniper’s grew from 2.1 to 3%.

Cisco Systems also has to deal with Huawei in the Asian market, whose market share has grown from 7% to less than 13%. Here is the positive aspect though. Juniper and Huawei represent a sort of a fly that only needs some swatting from stealing market share here and there, though Huawei will be a bit of a tough proposition, though the Asian company looks solely to focus on the Asian markets for now, with little plans to expand in the US market.

The only near term challenge is that the company has to decide as to whether it wants to make a big shift to the software territory and face the risk of their hardware market becoming cannibalized. The SDN market is expected to grow to over $35 billion by 2018, so Cisco has to thread a fine line here from now then, so a decision must be made within this year.

Cisco stock price ended the day at $29.76, a gain of 0.71% the previous day.

Cisco Systems 3QFY15 Earnings Preview By MKM Partners

Analysts at MKM Partners maintained their Neutral rating on Cisco, as they expect the IT Company to deliver better than expected results.

Cisco Systems is all set to announce its third quarter financial results for fiscal year 2015 on Wednesday May 13 after market closes. Analysts at MKM Partners expects the IT company to post robust results, and reiterated its Neutral rating with $30 stock price target ahead of its 3QFY15 earnings call.

Cisco’s top line growth was led by double digit growth in its main business such as Data center & wireless, Collaboration and Switching.

The analysts believe that the company will report an outstanding performance in the third quarter, reporting somewhat improved revenues against its revenue estimate of $12.09 million. Furthermore, the research firm has backed Cisco to surpass its 53 cents earnings per share by 1 to 3 cents, mainly due to robust operating expenditures controls and effective share buyback.

Moreover, the analysts believe that the information technology firm will maintain its strong run in the next quarter as well. Cisco Systems is most likely to post 12.49 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015, together with 1% to 3% surge in their orders of product. Furthermore, earnings per share are most likely to be meet consensus expectation of 56 cents. The company stock has rose by almost 5% this year.

As per analysts at MKM Partners, there will be an increase in reacceleration in company year over year growth in product order for the next quarter, mainly due to the ease in order combined sales. Furthermore, the sell side company believes that the latest announcement related to retirement of John Chambers is a good sign for the company, since it proposes that Cisco feels excellent about its current condition and Mr. Chambers is completing his tenure on a higher note.

Almost 47 analysts were polled by Bloomberg, out of which 27 rated Cisco stock as a Buy, 14 gave Hold rating while the remaining 6 assigned Sell rating to the stock of the company. The twelve month consensus price target stood at $30.17.

Cisco Systems stock was down 0.07% to 29.21 at market close on Monday May 11 and decreased further by 0.72% to $29 during pre-market session on Tuesday as of :49 AM EDT.