Juniper Networks, Cisco Networks

Juniper Networks

I fear for Juniper that they may have opened pandora's box.

This recent lawsuit came to me an email yesterday from a colleague as well as from as well as in my personal email email. Apparently, Juniper Networks is attempting to sue anonymous users.

"The Sunnyvale, Calif., company filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Clara on December 14 claiming that it had been defamed and libeled by up to 10 persons unknown.

Read the full story from Light Reading. I admire how Light Reading is responded to this, although they are not the target, it attacks their credibility. (and the rest of the internet) They sent out a poll and posted results, which I participated in. This has been heavily discussed at Slashdot, there are over 250 comments.

I don’t have the time to scour light readings bulletin boards to find out exactly how harmful this was, (nor does it matter) but companies need to be realistic about attempting to censor opinions, it just doesn’t work, and could create a backlash.

Recommendations to Juniper
Without knowing more, I would suggest to Juniper to listen to this buzz from detractors, acknowledge their opinion, ask them to public ally state their opinion and stance, then address it like a responsible company should.

Every company will have detractors and defamers, this is the biting realism that today's open communcations provides. Most importantly, how a company responds to a bad situation is what is measured.

Juniper is not alone, read how other companies have been responding to bad press. (there are and will be many more)

It did cross my mind that this could be just a message from Juniper to detractors to please sit down, and it could even be a clever 'back-buzz' technique to generate buzz, doubtful, but possible.

In my opinion only, the internet/blogs/message boards are incredible resources for companies to listen to consumers, collaborate and then build better products. No matter how bad you're defamed on the web, you can control the situation, perhaps create a corporate blog where you can defend on your own ground.

by the way, blogs are a lot cheaper than lawyers.

These persons, referred to as "Does 1-10" in the court complaint (as in "John Doe," or anonymous), are being accused by Juniper of posting harmful statements about the company and its executives on Light Reading's message boards."

Juniper Networks Showcases High-Performance Network Infrastructure at Interop Las Vegas

Product Demonstrations, Speaking Engagements and Partner Activities Highlight Why Customers Leverage Juniper Networks to Fuel their High-Performance Businesses

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – May 16, 2007 – Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR) today announced the company's high-performance network infrastructure will be showcased at Interop Las Vegas, May 20-25, 2007. At booth #539 and throughout the show floor, attendees will learn how the Juniper Networks enterprise routing, security and application performance solutions create a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications from a single network.

Juniper experts in the areas of application performance, controlling access and threat management will participate in the following speaking sessions at Interop Las Vegas:

• Sunday, May 20 at 11:30 a.m. PT (Breakers F): Michael Banic, senior director of product management, will give a presentation at the Interop Data Summit titled, "Data Center Initiatives for the Real-Time Enterprise."
  
• Tuesday, May 22 at 11:30 a.m. PT (Breakers F): Michael Banic, senior director of product management, will participate on a panel titled, "Optimizing the Network for Branch Efficiency."
  
• Wednesday, May 23 at 3:30 p.m. PT (Lagoon F): Karthik Krishnan, senior product line manager, will participate on a panel titled, "The Truth about NAC."
  
• Wednesday, May 23 at 12:15 p.m. PT: Karthik Krishnan, senior product line manager, will give a presentation titled, "Beyond Layered Services."
  
• Thursday, May 24 at 8:00 a.m. PT (Breakers F): Michael Peachey, product line manager, will participate on a panel titled, "Connecting Islands of Enterprise VoIP."

Juniper Booth #539 – Solutions for High-Performance Businesses

Innovative businesses view the network as critical to their success. Unfortunately, they struggle to keep up with escalating demands and risks that compromises their effectiveness. Unlike the competition, Juniper Networks' open infrastructure delivers greater choice and control in quickly meeting high-performance business requirements while reducing costs. Juniper Networks' enterprise security solutions help customers more effectively mitigate threats in the increasingly extended enterprise, safeguard and improve the performance of mission-critical applications and enable a comprehensive access control infrastructure. Juniper Networks' solutions that will be on display at Interop Las Vegas include:

• Enterprise Routing: J-series Service routers
  
• Security: Integrated Security Gateway with Intrusion Detection and Prevention (ISG with IDP) firewall/VPN and intrusion prevention platforms, Security Services Gateway (SSG) as unified threat management (UTM) devices, Secure Access SSL VPN appliances, and Unified Access Control (UAC)
  
• Application Performance: DX application acceleration and load balancing platform and WX appliances for managed WAN acceleration solutions

Cisco Acquires Social Networking Company

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), whose core business is selling the routers and switches that direct data traffic over computer networks, said it has acquired a small social networking company that allows businesses to create MySpace-like communities on their Web sites.


Cisco said Friday that it was paying an undisclosed amount to acquire privately held Five Across Inc., an 11-person San Francisco company whose software allows companies to add user-interaction functions and multimedia-sharing capabilities to their Web sites.


Five Across' publishing platform allows users to create personal Web pages and post photos, videos and audio clips, much like the proprietary system used by News Corp. (NWS)'s MySpace.
Cisco said the acquisition, its 116th since 1993, is the company's first in the social networking space but likely not the last. The deal is expected to close within the current fiscal quarter.
Analysts said the acquisition helps further Cisco's expansion beyond its role as purely a network equipment provider and into helping distribute the media that drives bandwidth consumption and even more network upgrades.


Danielle Levitas, a senior analyst at market researcher IDC, said the Five Across acquisition could help Cisco win greater access to a wide range of companies, particularly those in media and entertainment, looking to upgrade their Web sites to connect with customers.
"I actually see this as benefiting their core business - if they can promote users using their broadband more, that's huge for them," Levitas said.


Cisco has profited mightily in recent quarters from surging sales of its routers and switches as service providers and other companies scramble to upgrade their networks to prepare for the next generation of video and other bandwidth-intensive downloads.
Cisco, which was sitting on nearly $21 billion in cash at the end of the second quarter, has been rapidly expanding by acquiring companies that capitalize on the products and services that utilize the network itself.


The company's largest recent acquisition was its $6.9 billion purchase last year of Scientific-Atlanta Inc., the world's second-largest cable television box seller.
Last month, Cisco also announced it was paying $830 million in cash and stock to acquire IronPort Systems Inc., a maker of anti-spam and antivirus security products. That deal is also expected to close in the current quarter.


Investors have cheered the San Jose-based company's robust earnings growth, sending its shares up 45 percent from a year ago and creating more than $51 billion in additional shareholder wealth.


Cisco's stock closed up 5 cents to $28.14 on Thursday before the acquisition was announced.


Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO, SEHK: 4333) is a global company headquartered in San Jose, California, USA, that designs and sells networking and communications technology and services under three brands: Cisco, Linksys, and Scientific Atlanta. Initially, Cisco manufactured only enterprise multi-protocol routers, but today Cisco's products can be found everywhere from the living room to the enterprise to service provider networks. Cisco's vision is "Changing the Way We Live, Work, Play and Learn." Cisco's current tagline is "Welcome to the human network.".

A partial list of products


Hardware
Application Network Services
Broadband Cable products: uBR7100 series, uBR7200 series, uBR10012 CMTSes. A line of Cable Modems, the uBR900 series and CVA122 series, were also made in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but have since been discontinued.
Clean Access Server
Content Networking
DSL & Long Reach Ethernet
Interoperability Systems
Cisco LocalDirector load-balancing appliance
Optical Networking series: 15xxx Series: 15302, 15305, 15310, 15327, 15454, 15600, 1580x, 15900(wavelength router, but end for sale)
Routers: SB107, 700, 800, 1000, 1600, 1700, 1800, 2500, 2600, 2800, 3600, 3700, 3800, 4500, 4700, 7000, 7100, 7200, 7300, 7400, 7500, 7600, 10000, 12000, and CRS-1
Security & VPN products: Anomaly Detection and Mitigation Appliances, Cisco AVS 3110 Application Velocity System, Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliances, Cisco VPN 3000 Series Concentrators, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series WebVPN Services Module, IPSec VPN Services Module (VPNSM) for Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switches and Cisco 7600 Series Routers
Server Networking & Virtualization
SPA Phone Adapters
Storage networking
Switches
Catalyst series: 500 Express, 1200, 1600, 1700, 1900, 2000, 2100, 2800, 29xx, 3000, 35xx, 37xx, 40xx, 45xx, 5xxx, 6xxx, etc..
Metro Ethernet ME 3400 Series Access Switches
MGX 8800 Series Multiservice Switches: MGX 8830, MGX 8850
MDS 9000 Series Multilayer SAN Switches
Universal Gateways & Access Servers
Video
Voice & IP Communications: 7900 Series IP Phones: 7936, 7906G, 7912G, 7911G, 7920, 7921G, 7911G, 7921G, 7931G, 7940G, 7941G, 7941G-GE, 7960G, 7961G, 7961G-GE, 7970G, 7971G-GE and 7985G
Wireless: Wireless Integrated Switches and Routers,Wireless IP Telephony, Wireless LAN Access, Aironet Wireless Bridges and Workgroup Bridges, Cisco Wireless LAN Client Adapters, Wireless LAN Controllers, Wireless Network Management, Wireless LAN Management, Wireless Security Servers, Wireless IP Phone 7920
Software
Cisco CallManager
Cisco Emergency Responder
Cisco IP Transfer Point (ITP)
Cisco Multimedia Conference Manager (MCM)
Cisco Fabric Manager
CiscoView
CiscoWorks Network Management software
IP SLAs
Cisco Intelligent Contact Management
Cisco Secure Access Control Server (ACS)
Cisco Access Registrar (AR)
Cisco Security MARS (Monitoring, Analysis and Response System)
Cisco Clean Access Agent, Cisco Clean Access Manager, Cisco NAC Appliance
Content Loadbalancers (acquired from Arrowpoint)
Content Engine
Wireless LAN Solution Engine
VPN Concentrator
Packet Tracer
Cisco IP/TV
Cisco IP/VC
Cisco CallManager Express (CCME)
Cisco Unified Contact Center
Cisco MeetingPlace
Cisco Unity
Cisco Unity Express
Cisco Secure Desktop
Cisco Security Manager
Cisco Transport Manager
Cisco Router and Security Device Manager
Cisco Enhanced Device Interface
Wireless Control System