Cisco back to pre-slump growth in Q3

Cisco Systems emerged from the effects of global economic slowdown in its third fiscal quarter ended May 1 it announced President and CEO, John Chambers, said he probably was the company’s best quarter ever.

Revenue rose 27 percent from a year earlier to U.S. $ 10,400,000,000 while net income increased 61 percent to $ 2,200,000,000, or $ 0.37 per share, based on generally accepted accounting principles. Excluding certain charges, Cisco earned $ 0.42 per share, well above the consensus of analysts expected $ 0.39 per share, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters. Analysts had forecast revenue of $ 10,240,000,000.

In a statement, Chambers said Cisco had registered a record revenue and earnings per share and returned to a balanced growth trend throughout the world had not seen since before the recession. He also said that Cisco is gaining market share and commanding a greater share of customer spending.

“The financial results were outstanding,” Chambers said on a conference call with analysts after the report.

The strong growth spread almost all over the world, “said Chambers. Of the 15 largest country markets for Cisco, all but one showed an increase in orders and 12 were registered order growth of more than 20 percent, he said. All lines of the main company product also advanced, with revenues of switching up to 40 percent, 23 percent of routing and advanced technologies – such as storage networking, wireless, and security – a 18 percent the previous year.

Orders for consumer goods increased more rapidly, more than 50 percent worldwide, but the other categories also increased, including service providers by 30 percent and companies at 26 percent, the company said .

Cisco is convinced that this trend will continue, forecasting year on year revenue growth between 25 percent and 28 percent in the current quarter. “Technology spending is clearly in the fire,” said Chambers at a time during the call.

The company also plans to continue hiring more employees, mostly in sales and in groups to fight the last markets in which Cisco is competing, he said. During the third quarter, the company hired 1,000 people as part of an increase of between 2,000 and 3,000 planned for the coming quarters. The company also received nearly 1,700 employees through the acquisition of Tandberg, a company video Norwegian company completed the acquisition last month.

The economy bottomed out early last year, during the third quarter of Cisco’s fiscal 2009 and turned the next quarter, Chambers said. “Our initial optimism about the economic crisis … proved to be very accurate,” he said.

Even his concern about the debt crisis in Europe that have emerged in recent weeks have not dampened the growth prospects there, Chambers said. But he cautioned that economic conditions and markets could “jump” over the next year or so.

Cisco IP Phone 7985G

The Cisco IP Phone 7985G is a personal desktop videophone using Cisco IP Communications infrastructure through Cisco Call Manager. This IP Phone has the dynamic power to grow with system capabilities.

In a highly corporate environment this IP Phone helps executives and managers to make instant, face-to-face communication possible from their offices. One single unit of this phone is provided with state-of-the-art technology Video Call Camera, LCD Screen, Speaker, Keypad and a Handset.

Features

The Cisco IP Phone 7985G has advanced call features such as Call Forward, Call Transfer, Conference and Hold along with Video Camera. This phone has a flash memory that can be updated through software. The phone can be moved to any new location on the network.

Voicemail can be directly accessed through this phone. The phone has the unique capability of identifying incoming messages and categorizing them on the screen, thus allowing users to call back quickly using direct dial-back capability. Also this phone has corporate directory integrated with the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol Version 3 (LDAP3) standard directory.

Cisco IP Phone 7985G provides setting features like adjustment of display contrast, selection of background images and choosing ringer sounds from a large variety of User Preference Menu.

Thus the phone with its high quality speakerphone technology and using Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides quick diversified information on Weather, Stock Marketing and other Web-Based information.

So with Cisco IP Phone 7985G, a video call is as easy as a phone call.

Cisco 805 Series Serial Router

The Cisco 805 Series Serial Router embedded with the power of Cisco IOS Software technology offers enhanced network security and reliability especially designed for small offices.

Small businesses can easily make safe investments in 805 series Serial Router as they provide enhanced security and reliability. Combined with low cost of ownership this particular series of serial router enables customers to benefit from increased productivity, simplified communication and reduced costs.

The Cisco 805 Serial Router also provides customers with different value-added services such as Managed Network Services, Virtual Private Networks, Point-of-Sale applications and last but not the least secure Internet access.

Benefits – Taking advantage of its expertise and leadership in Internet solutions, Cisco 805 Series Serial Router offers excellent small-office routing solutions that provide secure and reliable access to the Internet or corporate networks. Multiple users can get Internet access through this series of router.

Security Features- The Cisco 805 Serial Router has enhanced security features such as an integrated firewall and IP Security encryption needed for enabling the Virtual Private Area Networks. Small offices can easily carry out their businesses over the Internet without the fear of losing any valuable resource.

Cisco 805 Serial Router Hardware Features at a glance:
1 x 10BASE-T (RJ-45) LAN Port
1 x Serial WAN port compatible with EIA/TIA-232, EIA/TIA-449, EIA/TIA-530, EIA/TIA-530A, X.21 and V.35 standards
1 x RJ-45 Console Port
4MB Flash Memory
8MB DRAM

Cisco ASA Connections and Translations

The Cisco ASA 5500 Firewall Appliance is a stateful firewall device, meaning that for every connection passing through the device, the stateful mechanism keeps a record of all connection states and parameters. It does this in order to check return inbound packets if they belong to an already established connection and let them in.

A connection is a state entry of source IP/source port and destination IP/destination port. For example a connection in the firewall is an entry with source IP 10.1.1.1 and source port 1025 and destination IP 100.100.100.1 with destination port 80. This connections belongs to an internal PC accessing a public web server.

A translation is an entry of a source IP and its mapped translated IP. A translation entry results from a NAT rule configured in the firewall.

We can see connection entries using “show conn”. We can see translation entries using “show xlate”.

You can find an excellent description about connections and translations on the Unofficial Cisco ASA Blog