According to a Cnet report published on Sunday, Cisco Systems (CSCO) is proposing a design for OpenStack, called Network as a Service [NaaS].

The OpenStack cloud operating system is an open-source platform that provides computers and storage. It was co-developed by Rackspace (RAX) and NASA, and is now supported by a broad number of big names, including Dell (DELL), Intel (INTC), AMD, Microsoft (MSFT) and Citrix (CTXS).

Recently, Equinix (EQIX), Dell and Rackspace announced that they joined forces to offer an OpenStack demonstration and test environment to customers who will enjoy the ability to move cloud assets between data centers in different regions - the first service of this kind.

Cisco's move may represent an important sign that the market move toward “the cloud” is being embraced by networking vendors as well. As Dave Rosenberg noted at Cnet:

Cisco's proposal is not the first for NaaS, but I believe it

EANTC (European Advanced Networking Test Center) and Light Reading have just published (pdf) a white paper about carrier Ethernet global interconnection that will be officially presented at the Ethernet Europe conference this week, April 12-13th, at the Marriott Grosvenor Square in London.

There are a few players running Ethernet Exchanges at the moment, the most important being Equinix (EQIX), CENX, TelX Group, and Neutral Tandem (TNDM) – all of them with a slightly different approach to the service.

The last two operators, data center provider TelX and Neutral Tandem, actually joined forces to provide a better and easier-to-manage service to their customers, and now their offerings are built using the same unified exchange fabric, resulting in a seamless customer experience, regardless of the location used.

On April 4, Tinet, a Neutral Tandem subsidiary, announced the launch of its global wholesale offering, "EtherCloud." This Layer 2 service builds on the integration

To a casual investor, if a company states that it has repurchased 3 billion of its own shares, based on the news headlines, it would imply that the number of shares outstanding has fallen by 3 billion. However, that is never the case as companies normally provide share based compensation

I have been bullish on Cisco Systems (CSCO) for some time now. This optimism has become increasingly guarded in the face of underwhelming earnings reports, a measly dividend announcement and a sense of disconnect between management and investors at the networking giant. Smaller companies like Riverbed (RVBD), Juniper (JNPR) and Aruba (ARUN) have been building their names by fiercely pursuing certain parts of the network that Cisco neglected. To sum it all up, Cisco has looked and acted the part of bumbling giant while competitors have picked their pockets.

A couple days ago, Chambers sent an internal memo to the employees of Cisco that change was coming. In this article, I will take a look at that memo and derive what I can from Mr. Chambers wording and subject focus. Hopefully, this can give investors insight into the future of Cisco.

The meat of the memo begins as John describes

The announcement of new apps by Cisco’s (CSCO) Flip camera business is a handy addition to Flip camera users, but not that handy to the company’s value. Here we take a look at the impact of this development from a stock value perspective. Cisco competes with Juniper (JNPR) and Alcatel-Lucent in the network equipment business.

Our price estimate for Cisco stands at $24.20, a premium of about 40% to market price.

A Brief Look at the New Feature

Cisco’s Flip camera business has announced enhanced social and video sharing features (called FlipShare Groups) in the latest version of its FlipShare software. This software provides a tool for users to share videos and photos capture via their flip cameras. The company will also offer FlipShare mobile apps for iOS and Android-based mobile smartphones and tablets.

As evident in the company’s recent statement, the initiative is intended to capitalize on the surging

I'm always on the trail of companies that are likely to be on the "radar screen" of bigger companies.

Buying shares of a company that would be a good acquisition for another company, with tons of cash in its coffers, is a lucrative way to invest. To be able to find that company before the acquisition occurs is not easy, but well worth the effort.

It's a win-win situation to find likely takeover targets. Even if they aren't acquired, you're likely to find a stock with very positive fundamentals and great upside potential. As the late comedian Henny Youngman might say, "Take Brocade Communications Systems (Nasdaq:BRCD) --please!" If there was ever a company that some "takers" might find attractive, it is this company.

What business is BRCD involved in? The company supplies end-to-end Internet protocol based Ethernet and storage area networking solutions for enterprises and service providers.

Its Data Storage

Even after a historic stock market rally from the March 2009 lows, blue chip technology companies continue to trade at reasonable prices. In a previous article, we highlighted Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and IBM (IBM) as three high priced, but inexpensive stocks. These high flying companies have even captured the attention of the typically technology-weary, value-oriented investors such as David Einhorn at Greenlight Capital. While we agree that many blue chip technology companies trade at reasonable valuations, there are hidden risks. Mainly, most of these companies are not content with their value stock profiles and as such, are willing to make expensive acquisitions to chase growth.

GOOGLE SPENDS $900 MILLION
Google recently bid $900 million for a portfolio of 6,000 Nortel Networks (NT) patents. Google thinks that this purchase could shield the company from patent infringement lawsuits as it continues to expand its reach in mobile internet devices. This could

Extreme Networks (EXTR) offers investors tremendous upside potential for two primary reasons: Valuation and takeover potential. First, I will comment on the upcoming expiration of the anti-takeover rights agreement on April 27, 2011 and some of the forces at play. Second, since I rarely make investments based solely on takeover potential, I will highlight some key valuation metrics that make EXTR both an extraordinary value and growth stock, a very rare combination indeed. Beyond these two primary drivers behind my thesis, readers can view a multitude of other compelling factors highlighted in my prior article on the company entitled "Extreme Networks: Extreme Upside Potential" (February 27, 2011).

Takeover Potential

A significant amount of EXTR shares are closely held by funds that are pushing for the sale of the company, some of the same funds anxiously awaiting April 27, 2011. Those that follow the company closely know that Ramius,

Fundamentals – Many articles describing various aspects of the fundamental value of Cisco (CSCO) shares have been written recently. One point many of these article raise is the low P/E for the stock. Per Yahoo Finance, the trailing P/E is 12.9 and the forward P/E is 9.7. Taking that one step further, Yahoo Finance also indicates that Cisco has over $7 in cash/share on its balance sheet, and the average analyst earnings estimate for this fiscal year is $1.59/share. With the stock trading a little over $17, that means that the earnings stream costs less than $10 to buy, and the P/E after adjusting for cash could be viewed as less than 7. In the long term, this type of value should rationally

Equinix (EQIX) reported 2010 annual revenues of $1,220.3 million, a 38% increase over the previous year, including $153.0 million in revenues recorded from the Switch and Data acquisition. Organically, the company grew about 21% compared with 2009.

Here is a quick look at the total 2010 revenue increase, highlighting its main contributors:

Excluding Switch and Data numbers from our analysis, the US comes out as the main contributor to growth, in absolute terms, with Europe coming in second place:

However, if we look at how each region grew in 2010, we'll find out that Asia Pacific achieved the best result, with a strong 37% increase compared with 2009 (although the number comes down to 27% on a constant currency basis, as the basket of Asia Pacific currencies performed very well against the US$ during the year just past).

Europe achieved second place with a 24% revenue increase over the previous

Data center related stocks closed the first quarter of 2011 with great performances, as most of the listed companies achieved double-digit returns:



(click to enlarge pictures)

Network neutral players saw one flat performance, as Interxion (INXN) closed the quarter quoting exactly at its IPO price, and two positive results, with TeleCity (TLEIY.PK) achieving an 8% return, while Equinix (EQIX) scoring a +12% since the beginning of the year. Part of Equinix's gain, however, was due to the recently issued press release, in partnership with Dell (DELL) and Rackspace (RAX), where these vendors announced that they joined forces to offer an OpenStack demonstration and test environment to customers to move cloud assets between data centers in different regions.

Cloud computing hype also contributed to some of the best results in the sector, as Rackspace and

On Wednesday, Dell (DELL), Equinix (EQIX), and Rackspace (RAX) announced that they joined forces to offer an OpenStack demonstration and test environment to customers who will then enjoy the ability to move cloud assets between data centers in different regions. This represents the first implementation of geographically dispersed data centers running OpenStack.

The OpenStack cloud operating system is an open-source platform that provides computers and storage. It was born thanks to a co-development by Rackspace and NASA, and is now supported by a broad number of big names, including Intel (INTC), AMD, Microsoft (MSFT) and Citrix (CTXS).

There are many advantages to having a standardized platform, among them zero licensing cost and the capacity to build API-compatible clouds, which means portability, as the code you write for one OpenStack can be easily deployed into another.

There’s little doubt about the positive momentum enjoyed by every stock linked to cloud computing.

Videoconferencing and telepresence becomes utmost necessity for large enterprises to reduce costs when the economy has started to recover from recession. Business enterprises are restricting their travel budgets as cost control measures. This makes high-definition telepresence solutions a cost-induced alternative in an increasingly interactive world. This market stands to gain in the near future since enterprises, governments and educational institutions are increasingly recognizing the productivity-enhancing benefits of video conferencing.

In a recent study, Infonetics estimated that the worldwide videoconferencing market size will reach $5 billion by 2015. According to Infonetics, the global videoconferencing market size was $2.2 billion in 2010, up 18% year over year. Earlier, Gartner predicted an even rosier picture that videoconferencing market size will reach $8.6 billion by 2015.

We believe, in the long-run, the videoconferencing solutions market will see healthy demand as a result of several positive industry trends, including globalization and the proliferation of branch

On Friday, March 25, 2011, a trading desk rumor on Level 3 (LVLT) is that JP Morgan (JPM) may soon be upgrading the stock to a buy rating. The rumor could be attributed to what was said by Neel Dev, senior vice president of finance for Level 3. He presented at the 2011 Barclays Capital High Yield and Syndicated Loan Conference on Thursday, March 24 (click here to listen). I especially liked this part of the presentation (from time line 22:54min to 23:25min mark), when Neel Dev said:

We typically see a dip in First Quarter due to Vyvx seasonality,but for First Quarter 2011 we expect underlying growth to overcome seasonality,and we expect to see positive change in Core Network Services revenues. This is the first time in about four years we expect to see that, underlining the positive drivers that we see in the business.

On March 11, 2010,

ServiceSource International LLC (SREV) closed up 21.8% at $12.18 on day one of its IPO debut, after opening at $13.65. The pioneer and market leader in service revenue management, ServiceSource priced its 11.94M share IPO @ $10.00, above the range of $7.50-9.00. ServiceSource offered 8 million shares, while selling shareholders offered 3.94M (including 2.5M from executive officers and directors). At the $12.18 IPO price, ServiceSource's market capitalization is approximately $798M. The offering was led by Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.

Founded in 1999, ServiceSource pioneered service revenue management, and provides a platform to enable technology companies to drive increased renewals of maintenance, support and subscription agreements. The company provides this through a combined platform of Managed Services, Cloud-based applications, and a Service Revenue Intelligence Platform, which is all wrapped in a pay-for-performance model. The company has over 100 engagements with over 55 blue-chip customers, including such names as VMware (VMW),

By David Sterman

T.S. Eliot once wrote that "April is the cruelest month." Yet a half-dozen companies that sell optical networking equipment would beg to differ: March has been quite cruel and they're hoping April will be far kinder.

The entire group rallied higher in the first week on word that Juniper Networks (JNPR) would be ordering more optical networking gear to be used in its switches and routers. But my Monday, March 7, a raft of bad news would overtake the sector. That morning, Ciena (CIEN) predicted sales in the upcoming quarter would take a hit, because customer orders had begun to slow and inventories of unsold optical networking components were piling up. Ciena, JDS Uniphase (JDSU), Finisar (FNSR), Oclaro (OCLR) and Oplink (OPLK) all fell at last 7% that day.

The bleeding wasn't finished. Finisar weighed-in the next day, predicting sales in the quarter ended in April would

Two weeks before the end of the first quarter, I recommend laying low - this is the beginning of earnings warning season. There hasn't really been too much of that since the end of the crisis, because for the extended exit from recession, expectations were low, so that each quarter we were pleasantly surprised.

But this time we entered the quarter with relatively high expectations, seen in the high levels of indexes. However, during the quarter the Middle East began to burn, and right at the end of the quarter - the last three weeks, which are the most important for technology firms in terms of meeting expectations - Japan's important market braked suddenly, because of the catastrophe.

When share prices are high, earnings warnings can be quite painful. Last week, I pointed out several stocks that began to fall hard because of investor fears that they were very highly

Q2 2011 Earnings Call

March 22, 2011 4:30 pm ET

Executives

Beth Walters - Vice President of Communications and Investor Relations

Timothy Main - Chief Executive Officer, President and Director

Forbes Alexander - Chief Financial Officer and Principal Accounting Officer

Analysts

Louis Miscioscia - Collins Stewart LLC

Wamsi Mohan - BofA Merrill Lynch

Jim Suva - Citigroup Inc

Amit Daryanani - RBC Capital Markets, LLC

Amitabh Passi - UBS Investment Bank

Sherri Scribner - Deutsche Bank AG

Nabil Hanano - Raymond James

Steven Fox - Credit Agricole Securities (USA) Inc.

Craig Hettenbach - Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Patrick, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Second Quarter and Fiscal Year 2010 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Ms. Walters, you may begin the conference.

Beth Walters

Thank