My tableau

But Cisco believes its solution, which includes new hardware, like blade servers, can be packaged together with hardware and software from partners to provide companies of all sizes a one-stop shop for all their virtualization needs.

“Cisco has done this already,” said Kerravala. “They have done this in VoIP and telepresence, and they’ve proven that they can push the market in their direction. But a lot of their success in terms of delivering true network-based services will happen in concert with other things, like the digitization of content and the build-out of new wireless networks.”

Of course the problem with doing this today is that the network is not fast enough. There isn’t enough capacity on AT&T’s 3G wireless network to handle this amount of activity. But as carriers roll out 4G wireless broadband networks, this idea of virtualization could become a reality. It’s already starting to become a reality on the wired network. Many people today already enjoy media that is streamed from services like Hulu.com to their PCs at home.

In almost every respect, Cisco sees the future as one in which every device is connected to the Internet, where even the simplest and least expensive devices can access information via an IP network. This vision of the future requires not only fast connections so that individuals can access content quickly, but also intelligent and efficient data centers where information and applications can be housed and processed.

Data center virtualization is by no means a new concept. Cisco’s competitors HP and IBM have already been selling solutions to help companies do this. And many others are also getting into the market.

While Cisco says that it will help its customers become more efficient and consumers may eventually benefit from access to new applications on cheaper devices, Cisco also benefits from the strategy. For one, Cisco will benefit from selling its data center products to companies and service providers, which offer these virtualized services. But it also benefits because putting more content in the “cloud” will also increase traffic on the network, which means that Cisco will sell more of its IP routers and switches.

On its own, this announcement is a big deal for Cisco. The company, which has spent the last 20 years building infrastructure equipment, is now competing in the computer server market against some of its current partners like Hewlett-Packard and IBM. But as the company’s executives pointed out during a press and analyst event to unveil the new strategy, Cisco never announces just a product.

“It’s like offering to sell someone a kit to build acar or actually selling them a car,” David Lawler, Cisco’s VP of platform product marketing, said in a phone interview after the event. “Anyone could build a car from a kit. But we sell the car right off the lot.”

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the company’s new data center server strategy announced Monday is fueled by a grand vision to not only help its corporate customers improve efficiency and reduce costs, but also transform how average consumers can access loads of cool new applications on cheap devices.

Cisco has long been at the forefront of building faster and higher capacity networks. As the world’s largest maker of gear that shuttles traffic throughout the Internet, the company essentially built the information superhighway.

Cisco's virtualization push could benefit consumers

NEW YORK–At first glance Cisco Systems’ latest announcement that it’s entering the server market seems like another boring corporate IT announcement, but take a closer look. The company’s long-term vision of a “virtualized” data center could eventually revolutionize how consumers will one day access new services via the Net.

The company has taken a similar approach in other markets. For example, in the voice over IP market, Cisco built its own telephone products that turned voice communication into an IP service. Now, Cisco is the No. 1 maker of corporate VoIP equipment. And when companies add voice to their network, they generally need to upgrade their corporate IP network, which generates even more business for the company.

“Almost every customer we talk to is looking to save money and increase business agility,” said Rob Lloyd, senior vice president of Cisco Worldwide Operations. “And almost all of them have been looking at virtualization. There has already been a lot of progress, but we think we’ve solved some of the big questions.”

Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala said that Cisco’s vision of the data center could eventually shape a new era in consumer electronics products.

Virtualized data center

But a highway isn’t worth much without something to transport. So Cisco is now looking at helping content producers house and provide access to content and applications via an IP network. At the heart of Cisco’s vision is the virtualized data center where a super-efficient collection of technologies will not only store content, like movies, music, and pictures, but will also process complex applications, like social-networking interactions, allowing simple devices easy access to both the content and the applications.

“You’ll be able to use a less complex device to access more complex information and services,” he said. “So it’s the difference between buying a $300 Netbook and a $3,000 laptop. You won’t need all the memory and processing power in a regular laptop. And at that price I can buy one for each of my kids. Ultimately, it means more content on more devices for more people.”

First, let’s look at what Cisco actually announced. On Monday, the company unveiled a new data center architecture it’s calling Unified Computing. This new architecture includes new hardware from Cisco, namely blade servers, an interconnection “fabric,” a chassis for the blade servers, Fabric extenders and network adapters. It also includes coordinated support and software integration from several partners, including chipmaker Intel, software maker Microsoft, storage gear maker EMC, and virtualization partner VMware among several others.

The same is also true of the telepresence products and services. Cisco put together the telepresence solution to help its customers improve collaboration, but putting video on an IP network also generates more video traffic on the network, which ultimately translates into more business for the company’s core products.

Cisco believes that it can greatly reduce the cost of delivering these kinds of services to consumers. In fact, the company says it can reduce current data center costs by about 20 percent and reduce complexity in the data center by about 30 percent.

“We don’t announce point products,” CEO John Chambers said during a telepresence session to announce the new strategy. “What we are talking about today is the next market evolution and an architecture that will allow us to go after a new market.”

Even though many vendors expect a lot of money to be spent on modernizing the grid, smart-grid technology is for the most part still in the testing phase at utility-sponsored trials.

The company, whose networking gear is installed in all corners of the Internet, on Monday will announce its intention to make communications equipment for the electricity grid–everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers. CEO John Chambers is scheduled to discuss Cisco’s smart-grid push Monday morning at a JP Morgan conference in Boston.

(Credit:Department of Energy)

Cisco started devising a strategy to enter the smart-grid arena last fall. Some utilities are already testing how well its routers and switches can help more efficiently manage the flow of electricity and prevent outages in grid distribution equipment. Cisco also released EnergyWise software earlier this year for managing energy use in office buildings

Cisco: Smart grid will eclipse size of Internet

Cisco knows a bit about building networks and it sees a $100 billion market opportunity in the smart grid.

“Our expectation is that this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet. If you think about it, some homes have Internet access, but some don’t. Everyone has electricity access–all of those homes could potentially be connected,” she said.

The U.S. will be the first to recover, he added. And even though he expressed concern for the troubled times the company faces, he emphasized that Cisco is well positioned to come out of an economic downturn even stronger. He noted past economic dips where the company emerged an even more competitive player. And he vowed to aggressively invest in new markets to ensure the same is true when the economy becomes healthy once again.

In an effort to stay focused on its goals, Cisco has vowed to cut $1 billion spending for fiscal 2009, which ends in July. And Chambers said the company is on track to meet that goal.

Cisco, which sells Internet equipment to service providers and large companies, reported net income of $1.5 billion on sales of $9.1 billion for is second fiscal quarter, which ended in January. Despite the fact that sales dipped 7.5 percent from the same quarter a year ago, they were slightly better than what analysts had expected. Analysts had expected revenue to dip about 12 percent year-over-year to about $9 billion.

Cisco Systems’ optimistic leader John Chambers noted during the company’s conference call Wednesday that the economy has gone from bad to worse as sales are expected to slip as much as 20 percent in the next quarter. But he said that Cisco is well-positioned to emerge even stronger after the economic malaise.

Chambers noted that revenues for the company’s third fiscal quarter, which ends in April, will be down 15 percent to 20 percent from the previous year. In dollars, this means revenue are expected to be around $7.83 billion to $8.32 billion. Analysts had expected a forecast of about $8.71 billion, according to Thomson Financial.

Chambers said most of his customers don’t expect the economy to get better until 2010. But always the optimist, he believes things will turn around more quickly than many people believe. Although he was careful not to cite a specific time frame for recovery, he said the Obama stimulus package in the U.S. and efforts by other governments throughout the world should help kick-start the economy around the globe stimulate a recovery.

Cisco: Making lemonade from economic lemons

And despite this whole “advertising recession” thing, we’ve seen big tech companies increasingly investing in ad-supported content. Perhaps as blog networks find themselves strapped for cash and print media companies find themselves smacking into financial icebergs, the tech companies see a potential gap in the market.

So I’ll just cut to the chase: in a move that seems to be way, way, way out in left field, Microsoft’s MSN division has partnered with media company BermanBraun to launch an entertainment news site called Wonderwall.

Celebrity gossip, Microsoft? Really?

I don’t think I can come close to beating Kara Swisher’s headline at All Things Digital, “Is Wonderwall Gonna Be the One That Saves MSN?”

The launch of Wonderwall comes right before Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremony. It also happens to be timed perfectly to fit two high-profile celebrity scandals, the Michael Phelps up-in-smoke fiasco and the Christian Bale audio freakout.

AOL rolled up all its content properties into a conglomeration called MediaGlow recently. We can only wonder if MSN’s Wonderwall is the start of something similar in Redmond.

Geared toward a slightly more highbrow breed of entertainment fan than the Perez Hilton set, Wonderwall primarily aggregates content from other entertainment sites but has an editorial team spearheaded by pop-culture veteran Alex Blagg. (He’s on Twitter, natch.)

So–why? Well, big tech players seem to want to have an in-house celebrity news hub, for one reason or another. Time Warner’s AOL has the hugely successful TMZ, Yahoo has OMG (and indeed, the interface looks a bit like OMG), and Google has…um…the “entertainment” section of Google News.

Something else to consider: General Motors is an investor in the cellulosic-ethanol company Mascoma.

That study found that cellulosic ethanol could help reduce air pollution in more ways than previously thought. The research group found that cellulosic ethanol not only emits less greenhouse gas than gasoline than was previously known, but also emits fewer fine particles into the air. The researchers also came up with a formula quantifying the long-term health and environmental costs from the fuel production and use of three types of fuel.

The inference here is that the biofuel may not be competitive if gasoline prices fall while the cost of making the biofuel does not.

The U.S. can replace one-third of its annual gasoline use with ethanol by 2030, concludes a joint study released Wednesday by Sandia National Laboratories and General Motors.

Proponents of cellulosic ethanol argue that because the fuel is produced from agricultural byproducts, it has no impact on the food supply or land use.

In a software-driven world, it’s easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it’s cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.

Cellulosic ethanol could be competitive in price without the need for incentives when oil is at $90 per barrel, according to the study. That cost analysis includes factors such as land and water use, transportation of feedstocks, construction of plants, and the energy used to produce cellulosic ethanol.

Using cellulosic ethanol–or ethanol produced from forestry or agricultural waste–is considered a way to prevent the displacement of crops that feed humans.

The joint study sees cellulosic ethanol as a viable alternative for reducing oil dependence while protecting food crops.

(Credit:Sandia / Randy Wong)

Cellulosic ethanol could compete with gas, study says

Celebrate 2009 Record Store Day this Saturday

Bsquare bringing Flash to Android phones

(Via Peter Rojas)

Flash is a software foundation that’s popular for games, video streaming, and other more sophisticated Web site features, but it’s mostly a fixture on PCs rather than mobile devices. Apple’siPhone, the technological leader among smartphones by many accounts, doesn’t support Flash.

Bryce ;Harper - Halos Heaven

Brian Fuentes: the consistently inconsitent ;closer - Halos Heaven