OK - I’ve had enough.

I’ve been reading about “why did Cisco buy Tribe”, Cisco’s wrong bet on Social Networks and WTF is Cisco Doing?.

Its kind of disappointing that Om “Broadband Bandits” Mailk doesn’t grok this, but I can expect little from Nick “yellow journalism” Denton.  Mike Arrington and everyone else is continuing the Marc Andressen love fest, but lets face it - Marc knows how to coin a whitty quote - but that doesn’t make his startup successful or his statement correct.  Glad to see Rafat Ali doing some  cold hearted analysis and great reporting ( as he usually does.)

So lets spell his out.

1. Cisco is an infrastructure player. Their switches and hardware have driven the Internet and we’ve seen them go into new areas - buying 1-2-3 vendors in the same category - simply to cover all bases, from the business, technical and marketing sides.  So Five Across was purchased for the management and business model ($30m sure seems high for that) - while Tribe’s technology was purchased (firesale price of $3M)  so they had some decent technology to sell (as opposed to Five Across’ abomination.)

2. It apears that Cisco is going afer BOTH corporate enterprise AND consumer facing, living room oriented experiences.  That’s not a surprise.  For a company the size of Cisco they need to thrive on growth and going for only ONE of those markets might not be big enough for them to justify their size and valuation.

3.  But this notion that Cisco will be in the ‘white label’ social networking game is a bit comical and disappointing that so many people have missed this point.  Cisco is redefining the stack.  It used to be an ISO set of layers, then we saw LAMP and web services fill out the stack and now we’re seeing the need for a ‘convergence play’ which puts all the pieces of the puzzle together and offers a turn-key, one-stop solution to developers.

4.  The holey grail here folks - is convergance.  That’s something Om Mailk should have tatooed on his forhead as he was writing Broadband Bandits.  The pie in the sky we’re talking about here is multi-trillions of dollars in revenues.   Convergance has been so bantered around, misused and abused that we forget that we’re barely getting there - even now.

5.  And convergence doesn’t just mean the living, room car or mobile.  Convergence is going to effect the corporate world as much as the consumer world.  So I actually really like Cisco’s strategy - and I’d buy their stock (if I believed in Wall St. and the stock market - which I don’t.)   The challange Cisco is going to have is execution.  On one side bringing their assets and size to bear and shoving it down our throats, while on the other hand - keeping up with innovation with small companies - like mine!

So why DID Cisco buy Tribe as well as Five Across?

So that their technology and service stack can offer a comprehensive turn-key set of solutions to solve convergence for both corporate and consumer facing convergence. 

Social networking and blogging is a commodiy.  That commodity is joined with other commodities, like Wifi (Linksys), set top boxes (Scientific-Atlanta), security (Ironport), secure email (Reactivity), etc.  and the rest of Cisco’s product line. Get the point?

They then will offer these turn-key matched soltuions to DEVELOPERS who then build out the final apps, servcies and customer facing soluons.  Hasn’t anyone ever heard of Accenture, EDS or Organic?

Do you think Om Mailk builds his own web site?  Or Michael Arrington?  No - they hire others to do it?  So why would you expect Cisco to build social networks for media companies?  That’s just a stupid assumption to make!

NO - Cisco will redefine the infrastructure game - adding software to the stack, with such commodity like functionality as social networking, blogging and (I bet) PIM stuff too (maybe they’ll purchase Zimbra next?  Or one of those other Office 2.0 plays?)

They then offer this stack to developers who then take it and build out the future social web we’ve all been waiting for.  Remember from yesterday?  All software will be social! 

Meanwhile other companies recognize the future and are laying the groundwork - as well.

KickApps is building a platform for developers and will offer a SMDK (Social Media Developers Kit)  that will provide everything anyone would need to build out a next generation, media sharingenabled app or service.  All ad driven.

My comapny - Broadband Mechanics is offering a platform for developers - as well.

This is the modern day infrasructure business folks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.