Along the way he helped Cisco by convincing 14 Japanese companies to become Nihon Cisco.
Along the way, HSBC incorporated Cisco equipment in its data centers and Cisco videoconferencing systems, including its high-end TelePresence technology, in its offices.
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The problem has stemmed from the way giants in the Wi-Fi hardware business, like Cisco Systems and 3Com, build their antennas: They're like little computers, with a lot of networking and security intelligence in the box.
The solutions that are reinventing the way businesses share and collaborate are not coming from Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, or any of the other big IT software vendors.
Companies like Cisco and Booz Allen Hamilton are leading the way with telework policies that encourage people to work where they live.
Having Linksys gives Cisco a new way to come at the challenge, after its earlier failed efforts to build a home networking business.
Forbes.com contributor Osha Gray Davidson wrote on April 13 that analysts believe that the decision was a way that John Chambers, Cisco CEO, to show Wall Street that it was serious about its reorganization strategy.
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But the chips made their way into so many products--Cisco routers, Seagate disk drives, Netgear wireless modems--only because of Dai's relentless salesmanship.
Aruba Chief Executive Donald LeBeau, who ran Cisco's worldwide sales from 1992 to 1997, calls centralized Wi-Fi a way to "reshape the wiring closet" that Cisco has controlled for years.
But the chips made their way into so many products-- Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) routers, Seagate disk drives, Netgear (nasdaq: NTGR - news - people ) wireless modems--only because of Dai's relentless salesmanship.
Best of all, Cisco Cius offers IT functions a way to dramatically lower the cost-per-user of provisioning those new experiences.
Cisco's other market adjacencies can be analysed in the same way.
June, for example, saw planned lay-offs hit a 16-month high, with government and large corporations like Merck, Borders, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, and Boston Scientific leading the way. (Read Economy Moving At Snail Speed, ISM, Jobs Report Show).
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Hurd had taken HP to the biggest tech company in the world, an arguable contender against both IBM and Cisco, and a model for the rest of the industry about the right way to do mergers and carry out efficient execution.
"Cisco wants people in the entertainment and computing industry to understand that they are the way to get something from point A to point B over the Internet, " said Dataquest's Van Baker.
Cisco has to invent miracle products or a whole new way of doing business to recapture the old days.
This contrasts sharply with the typical Silicon Valley acquirer such as Cisco Systems (CSCO) that looks at acquisitions as a way to hire engineers in bulk.
The way Apple mastered the use of evangelism, how Nokia relates to its ambassador communities, how CISCO has failed to package or convey its thought leadership in crucial areas, these are the ways companies connect with us emotionally but also intellectually, for better and worse.
FORBES: Apple's Evangelists, Nokia's Diplomats, CISCO's What?
The 7000 and the 5000 (names are not Cisco's strong suit) do the tricky work of unifying servers, data storage and virtualization software (a way to get one server to do the work of several so you get more bang from each).
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