I am happy to announce that Tooley Consulting Group, LLC has become affiliated with Cisco as a Cisco Select Certified Partner. We are very excited about this relationship. From day one, we decided we where not going to be a firm that randomly seeks out channel partners. We only choose partners we feel help serve our customers needs and which we have the skills and mastery to back up our relationships in the partner channels.
Cisco has announced the end-of-sale for the Cisco Pix Security Appliances. I have seen this coming for some time—though they will still support the products until July 27, 2013. You can see the full article here. I will definitely miss this device—but the new Cisco ASA Appliances offer the same features as the Pix along with a lot of other new features. Well—I guess its time to start studying for ASA Appliance exams!
On January 28, 2008, Cisco announced the end-of-sale and end-of life dates for Cisco PIX Security Appliances, software, accessories, and licenses. The last day for purchasing Cisco PIX Security Appliance platforms/bundles will be July 28, 2008 and the last day to purchase accessories and licenses will be January 27, 2009. It is important to note that Cisco will continue to support Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers through July 27, 2013.
Cisco PIX Security Appliance customers are encouraged to migrate to Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. In addition to providing the same robust firewall and IPsec VPN capabilities as Cisco PIX Security Appliances, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series offers significantly better performance and scalability, SSL VPN support, advanced Unified Communications (voice/video) security, and a modular design that allows you to add features such as intrusion prevention (IPS), antivirus, antispam, antiphishing, and URL filtering. Migration to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series is straightforward, because consistent management and monitoring interfaces allow you to take advantage of your knowledge and investment in Cisco PIX Security Appliances.
Received a very interesting email today regarding my WebEx account—Cisco is going to acquire them. It will be very interesting to see how Cisco leverages WebEx technologies. See email below:
Dear WebEx Customer:
Ten years ago, we founded WebEx with a vision of creating a new workplace paradigm. In our first decade we've achieved some important milestones. Our registered user base has expanded to more than 2.2 million and we now serve more than 28,000 customers in 85 countries worldwide.
Today I'm pleased to share with you a new milestone in WebEx's history.
This morning we announced that we have entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Cisco. This is an exciting development for our company and for you, our customers, who can look forward to Cisco's continued commitment to your success.
After closing, WebEx will join Cisco's rich portfolio of collaboration solutions. By connecting the highly complementary WebEx and Cisco collaboration product lines, we can help companies of any size accelerate business processes through effective collaboration with partners, colleagues and customers.
As a customer of Cisco, you will benefit from the vast customer service and support resources available through one of the world's largest and most successful technology companies. Your existing relationships with WebEx sales, support, and partner personnel will be enriched by Cisco's global account relationships, world-class customer support, and other value-added services.
We encourage you to learn more about this announcement by viewing the press release at, http://newsroom.cisco.com. The acquisition, which we anticipate will close in mid 2007, will require government regulatory approval and is subject to other customary closing conditions.
For now it is "business as usual" at WebEx. As we continue to conduct normal business operations, we will work very hard and coordinate closely across our two organizations to ensure an outstanding experience for all WebEx customers.
We hope you share in our excitement as we enter this exciting phase. Thank you for your support and we look forward to continuing our important relationship with you as WebEx becomes part of the Cisco organization.
Sincerely,
Subrah S. Iyar
Chairman and CEO
WebEx Communications
Looks like Apple is running into a little trouble with the iPhone already (see the Cisco New Release below)! Also, Mark Chandler,Cisco General Counsel, has posted an interesting Blog entry.
SAN JOSE, Calif., January 10, 2007 - Cisco® today announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple, Inc., seeking to prevent Apple from infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco's registered iPhone trademark.
Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 after completing the acquisition of Infogear, which previously owned the mark and sold iPhone products for several years. Infogear's original filing for the trademark dates to March 20, 1996. Linksys, a division of Cisco, has been shipping a new family of iPhone products since early last year. On Dec. 18, Linksys expanded the iPhone® family with additional products.
"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.
"Today's iPhone is not tomorrow's iPhone. The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand," Chandler concluded.
With its lawsuit, Cisco is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying Cisco's iPhone trademark. For more information on the Cisco iPhone product line, please visit www.linksys.com/iphone.
I visit many customer sites daily and the one thing I notice more often than not is that the Primary AD controller (usually the network time server) is not syncing with an external time source. This means that the server will get its time from the hardware BIOS clock which will usually be off. This can cause issues—especially when you have Microsoft Exchange Server installed in your environment. Microsoft Article ID 26280 list many publicly available second level time servers. See the excerpt below for an explanation of second level servers.
Also, another good source for Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers is POOL.NTP.ORG.
Once you decide what public NTP server you are going to use, Microsoft Article ID 816042 explains how to configure an authoritative time server in Microsoft Windows Server 2003. There is also Microsoft Article ID 216734 that explains how to configure an authoritative time server in Microsoft Windows Server 2000.
There are two levels, or tiers, of Network Time Protocol (NTP) time servers that are available on the Internet. The NTP is defined in Request for Comments (RFC) 1305.
The first-level time servers are primarily intended to act as source time servers for second-level time servers. The first-level time servers may also be capable of providing mission-critical time services. Some first-level time servers may have a restricted access policy.
Second-level time servers are intended for general SNTP time service needs. Second-level time servers usually enable public access. It is recommended that you use second-level time servers for normal SNTP time server configuration because they are usually located on a closer network that can produce faster updates
A list of the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) time servers that are available on the Internet.
Cisco acquired IronPort recently. This is a very interesting move on Cisco’s part—seems like Cisco is going to get into the email security market. There are a lot of possibilities that could come out of this purchase… See Press Release below…
SAN JOSE, Calif., January 4, 2007 - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) - Cisco today announced a definitive agreement to acquire the privately held company, IronPort Systems, Inc. of San Bruno, Calif. IronPort is a leading provider of messaging security appliances, focusing on enterprise spam and spyware protection.
Securing email, messaging and other sorts of content is of primary concern to enterprises and other organizations. As email and messaging are leading applications for use over the Internet, the acquisition of IronPort's industry-leading messaging and Web security solutions is a natural extension to Cisco's security portfolio. The security products and technology from IronPort add a rich and complementary suite of messaging solutions to Cisco's industry-leading threat mitigation, confidential communications, policy control, and management solutions.
"We feel there is enormous potential for enhanced email and message protection solutions to be integrated into the existing Cisco Self-Defending Network framework," said Richard Palmer, senior vice president of Cisco's Security Technology Group. "Using the network as a flexible platform to integrate IronPort's technologies, Cisco will be able to build new security applications as customers' demands evolve."
"Internet messaging threats continue to get more sophisticated, and IronPort has repeatedly delivered industry leading solutions," said Scott Weiss, CEO of IronPort Systems. "Integrating IronPort's messaging security technology with Cisco's Self-Defending Network will enable a new level of defense for our customers.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $830 million in cash and stock. The acquisition is subject to various standard closing conditions and is expected to close in the third quarter of Cisco's fiscal year 2007. Cisco anticipates this transaction will be neutral to its fiscal year 2007 non-GAAP earnings.
IronPort was founded in 2000 and has 408 employees based primarily in San Bruno, Calif.
News @ Cisco: Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire IronPort.
Really basic online WEP Key Generator…
Found an article on WindowsITPro... Cisco recently acquired SyPixx Networks--makers of video surveillance software and hardware. Article excerpt:
With its latest acquisition, Cisco aims to bring its customers IP-enabled physical security. The company announced an agreement to acquire privately-held SyPixx Networks, a company founded in 2002 to deliver video surveillance systems. Cisco said it will pay approximately $51 million in cash and options for SyPixx. Cisco expects the deal to close by April 28, 2006.This is an interesting move by Cisco. It is going to be interesting to see if the product will be merged somehow into Cisco Unified Communications System. Could be pretty good...Sypixx Networks' video surveillance software and hardware enable existing analog video surveillance systems to operate as part of an open IP network. The company offers analog-to-digital (AtoD) video camera encoders and digital-to-analog (DtoA) video monitor decoders, analog video transmission equipment, video recording and management software and servers. The AtoD and DtoA technology effectively allows data to be transmitted over IP-based networks.
Cisco Pix Security Appliance Software Version 7.0 is available for download if you have a Cisco SmartNet Subscription. The new version is also shipping with new units. If you are considering upgrading, be careful of the memory limitations. Also, you may want to glance over the Cisco PIX Security Appliance Hardware Installation Guide, Version 7.0.
Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager Version 5.0 is available for download for users with valid SmartNet Subscriptions. This is the replacement for the Cisco PDM Software; it includes a JAVA Version and stand alone executable. Those of you used to the Cisco PDM will be impressed by the Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager Version 5.0.
