Cisco's latest foray: white goods

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 26 September 2007 11:44

IT Industry - Deals

There is no doubt that networking functionality will be added to most domestic appliances in coming years. Cisco has made it quite clear that it wants to be a major player in the consumer market and that it sees the present distinctions between consumer, small business, enterprise and service provider markets and technologies blurring.

Addressing a media roundtable in Europe in July, Cisco CEO, John Chambers,  said: "We said in 1999 that the future would be the network of networks and that people would not view their home network different than their service provider's network, different than their enterprise network or than their interface to commercial networks. So we have to live in all those markets. All the consumer or the business leader will care about is 'give me access wherever I am on the device I am most comfortable with' and what the device is capable of doing and 'let the network be smart enough to figure out its capabilities and what I am authorised to access.' That looks like it is going to occur."

Haier with 240 subsidiary companies and 30 design centres, plants and trade companies and more than 50,000 employees throughout the world and global revenues of $US14.2 seems to have an appetite and ability to expand that matches Cisco's. This could be a very interesting relationship.