Continue reading »]]> So Motorola Mobility (MMI) (the mobile phone business that was finally spun out of the Motorola parent organisation in January 2011, leaving Motorola Solutions (MSI)) to be acquired by Google (GOOG). In the rest of the article we look to see what the impact is on the Android platform, its partners and if Google could gain by taking on a hardware platform.

Google’s reasons for this are primarily to aquire more patent libraries, although the thought of being able to design the Android hardware platform and deliver it to end users is probably not lost on the other Android platform makers, such as Samsung (005930.KS) (which had been the cosy partner of choice for Google, with the Nexus S), and HTC (2498.TW).

Motorola Mobility makes a good early fit, with the Droid family of phones and the Xoom tablet offering, but it’s hard to see how Google could change the overall organisation to improve the loss that they posted last quarter since they split from Motorola Solutions.

Developing a slew of commodity hardware platforms, and keeping them upto date with the market place (as well as persuading the carriers that the manufacturers phones form part of the carriers phone packages) is a challenge (and not a cheap one), especially since the mobile market is moving faster than ever before.

Perhaps the saving grace is in Motorola Mobility’s other key platform, set-top boxes, to help in the effort to find a real hardware platform on which to launch Google TV?

Continue reading »]]> So another acquisition by a computer systems supplier of a networking infrastructure company. This trend started when Compaq acquired Thomas Conrad back in 1995, and is continuing today with the announcement that Dell (DELL) and are intending to acquire Force10 (FCTN) , according to information on both their websites.

Dell’s announcement

Force10′s announcement

This will give Dell better control of the key grid and cloud infrastructure element that it is now missing, and access to the technology of Force10′s distributed core switch architecture (like that used by Juniper, see  “Juniper QFabric Switches use Autonomic Ideas“).

Continue reading »]]> Riverbed (RVBD) has been shopping again.
This time, it’s looking to purchase Zeus Technology and Aptimize. Both of these are privately owned companies, with Zeus being based in Cambridge in the UK.

This appears to be looking to take on board the ADC and optimization technology of both organisations, forming an “asymmetric optimization technology” business unit. The asymmetric bit appears to be looking to cover the Internet and single-ended optimization capabilities in the Riverbed portfolio, which in part started to be addresses with the Whitewater cloud storage accelerators.

Under terms of the acquisition, Riverbed will pay approximately $110 million in cash for the securities of Zeus and up to an additional $30 million in cash based on the achievement of certain bookings targets in a defined twelve month period following the closing. The acquisition is expected to be approximately breakeven to Riverbed earnings in the second half of 2011 and accretive beginning in 2012. – Riverbed press release

Continue reading »]]> In another sign of the current state of the industry market place, we’ve just seen the announcement of the aquistion of network switch supplier Foundry by SAN switch supplier Brocade. Whilst some of the blogs around seem to want to portray this is an opportinity for heartburn, I’m not sure that this will be the case, but rather a smart move on the hope that iSCSI will be the way of the future.

Whilst the synergies of switching fabrics might seem to be a good thing, Cisco still maintains a difference between it’s core network (6500 / Nexus ) and SAN (MDS) lines. No-one else of any particular note appears to be in both marketplaces at the same time..

Whilst the commonality of components at the physical and layer 2 (signaling and data formats) is improving, there is still a substantial difference between packet and block based data and the requirements needed to support this.

iSCSI, FCIP and other protocols are designed to bring the block and packet layers closer together, but as usual IP has a substantial overhead, so we’re also starting to see FCoE standards emerge as well, but the net effect is to build the block layer on top of the packet layers.

Foundry has a good history with it’s BigIron switches, which have traditionally been one of the highest density and scalable switch platforms. Brocade is the market leader in SANs, with over 80% and having had a major headstart (it was founded in 1995), but it’s managed to maintain this with some good product extenstions and applications (data migration tools, etc).

With the stabilisation of standards (and having more than one), it looks like Brocade could be onto a winner, not only having the core SAN intelligence, but also having the Ethernet connection method to deploy even larger and cheaper disk storage.

In the meantime, the charts show what the stock markets and analysts make of this move, for both Brocade Communications Systems BRCD (BRCD) and Foundry Networks FDRY

I think with the credit crunch, such aquisitions will become more common over the next year.. things that fit quite well together, but maybe not the expected alliances and marriages..

Continue reading »]]> So Packeteer and BlueCoat (BCSI) have done the deed, and Packeteer is now “A BlueCoat Company”.

Quick take-aways so far indicate the planned killing off of a significant portion of the Packeteer product line, and the maintenance of the current Packetshaper product line (Packetshaper, Intelligence Centre and PolicyCentre).

Blue Coat ProxySG is and will remain our strategic product offering for WAN Optimization. We will continue selling PacketShaper, IntelligenceCenter and PolicyCenter and invest heavily in development to revitalize the PacketShaper technologies and feature sets and integrate those into the Blue Coat ProxySG product line.

• Blue Coat PacketShaper
• Blue Coat IntelligenceCenter
• Blue Coat PolicyCenter

Packeteer’s iShared, iShaper, SkyX and Mobiliti products will remain available for sale to existing customers. However, we are not recommending or proposing that new customers purchase these products. We are currently assessing plans for these products and will soon announce decisions as to their future status. – Source

So if you’ve deployed any of the recent (or not so recent) Packeteer acquisitions, then you’re likely to be able to purchase current stock, and then you’re on your own.

In addition it looks like Packetshaper will be maintained (for some indeterminate timeframe), but then you still have the issue that Packeteer had with the iShared/Packetshaper combination.. two boxes to solve a set of problems, when everyone else has a single box solution.

Continue reading »]]> So there’s loads of stuff on the net about the upcoming merger between BlueCoat and Packeteer. I’m going to add my own 2p to the thoughts, as I think that this is a potentially large issue for users of Packetshaper, iShared and SkyX devices.

Some of the other comment on this merger is available at the pages are shown below:

• Blue Coat pockets Packeteer for $268m | The Register
• Blue Coat vows to fund the heck out of PacketShaper | The Register
• Packeteer > News > Press Releases
• Blue Coat Announces Private Placement of $80 Million in Convertible Notes to Partially Fund the Acquisition of Packeteer | Blue Coat Systems, Inc.

So apart from the credit crunch meaning that BlueCoat has to go to Packeteers shareholders to fund the aquisition based on future value of the BlueCoat stock, there’s some other other things that should make current Packeteer users worry.

A previous BlueCoat aquisition was the NetCache arm of NetApp, which was being sold off in June 2006. At the time NetCache was lagging in features behind the BlueCoat ProxySG devices, and the aquisition was basically for the customer base. Shortly after the NetCache line was declared end-of-life, and the migration of the NetCache user base to ProxySG was started. This is still continuing, with many NetCache customers still not moving over, but contining to run on the old platform as they are comfortable with it, and then re-evaluating when the devices are out of maintenance.