Cisco Cius sees us no more

Cisco Cius: the businessman's iPad Cius tablet Cisco is pulling back from its Cius tablet computer and all but abandoning it. OJ Winge, the SVP of TelePresence Technology at Cisco, has blogged that the Android-powered Cius is heading towards the exit because employees of its business customers are bringing their own, …

[M Gale]

Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

"Coo, isn't mine shiny?"

"Yeah, but mine's shinier."

"Naw, mine is!"

Any idea that these are genuinely useful tools compared to even a simple netbook is just bullshit peddled by people who want more shiny on the company budget.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

Obviously, but that isn't anything new. If IT tools were only about functionality and cost efficiency, every company in the world would run Ubuntu client OSs with something like Lotus for e-mail, collab, spreadsheet, word processing, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lotus, functionality and 'cost efficiency' in the same sentence?

...without a negative to be seen. You must work for IBM.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

Actually, I visit between 6-10 customers a day, I can write inspection reports, sign up new contracts which the customer can sign on the screen, keep health and safety documents, deliver reports electronically, quote, email, message, Skype, invoice, produce receipts, take payments, make payments..... And the battery lasts all day.

I concede typing can be a bit of a bind but the tablet is much more versatile for me on the road.

Additionally while waiting for customers who are late I can blog, read a book, listen to music, watch a video, take a video, take a photo, edit and....... Play the odd game.

And still the battery lasts. Oh and I can print via a portable printer but rarely have to.

And yes, mine IS shinier than yours, the new iPad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

Disclaimer: I do not own a tablet because I have yet to see one which does the job for me. However my requirements are not "Joe Average Businessman requirements". I actually still write code, build it, test it and run demos on my laptop. At present no tablet can do that.

Coming back to "Joe Average businessman" requirements - a tablet is usually more than enough and it is in fact more useful that a netbook because its battery lasts about 4 times longer and it is half the netbook's weight. The fault with this is idiotic netbook design copied from a mid-2000-es laptop. It is not just stupid it is idiotic to the hilt.

It will take something like the Tegra 5-core backed up by a "mostly battery" keyboard side of the netbook shell for a netbook to be as useful for the average business user as a tablet already is today.

An example will be 11in MacBook Air with all electronics moved to the back of the screen (at the expense of using less powerful chippery) and the whole space under the keyboard occupied by one big fat battery.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

Err

You have come across ASUS's Transformer Prime ?

[M Gale]

Re: Proves the real reason for tablet computers:

"Err

You have come across ASUS's Transformer Prime ?"

Got one. Stroking it right here actually. The proper keyboard helps, and using RDP over a decent connection is pretty good. It's £500 though, and a netbook is £300 or less and has a bigger HDD.

Pounds spent per unit of productivity? Still better with a cheap laptop or netbook for most cases.

[Henry Wertz 1]

ipad? Nope.

Ipad had nothing to do with it. The way I see it, there's several scenarios, but none result in anyone buying a Cius.

For just some end user buying a Cius, they aren't in physical stores or the usual online stores, so the customer is not going to even see it. At over $900, if they did see it of course they'd have sticker shock and not buy it. Result, no Cius sales.

Business expects employees to bring their own device? See above, result -- no Cius sales.

Finally, in the case of the business supplying the device.. businesses will suck it up and pay Cisco's prices for switches and such, because they really don't want their ethernet to crash and it's kind of a one-time investment. Tablets? Not really, the Cisco is too much for what it is compared to the numerous cheap tablets on the market. Result, again no Cius sale.

[Mikel]

Cisco: Get your CE Cert

Cisco doesn't understand Consumer Electronics. They need to certify up on that skill before they launch a product. They wouldn't send out techs to support stuff they don't understand, why should they expect to succeed in a field they don't understand without good guidance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cisco, the switch king

Cisco keeps trying to reinvent itself with all of these consumer style devices so they are thought of as the "human network" instead of "the plumbing guys"... but they are the plumbing guys. I assume that they assume the switch empire is not going to last forever with all of these new switch-router competitors offering the same basic products at half of their prices.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Cisco marketing is not present. At all.

Cisco launched servers. Almost nobody knows about them

Hmm. So I never seem them pushed on the home page of Cisco's web site. I've never seem them mentioned here or any other web site ? I've never heard a Cisco bod ram them down my throat ?

Cisco shelters the specifications behind partner certified portals

You mean pages like these pages ?

I'm supposed to try to find some customers who are a good fit for Cisco's servers

Anyone wanting to run virtualisation software. (Because of they're large memory capacity)

Fujitsu has the same problem. Did you know Fujitsu makes servers?

Yes. Did you know that Fujitsu make CPUs too ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cisco marketing is not present. At all.

You're right that Cisco has sold a good number of servers, certainly much more successful than Oracle's foray into the hardware world. Anyone who is familiar with Cisco's cult like following amongst network admins didn't doubt that they would be able to seed a bunch of boxes into the data center and get a footprint.

I disagree that there are any good reasons to buy Cisco UCS (other than to shut the network guys up). It is silly to lock yourself into an uber costly and proprietary network architecture just to get a few x86 servers that are in the same chassis. You are completely wrong on memory for virtualization being a Cisco advantage. IBM's eX5 chip set is far and away the industry leader in x86 memory expansion, both from a raw capacity and latency perspective. IBM has completely designed their own IO bus architecture and memory subsystem to scale a four socket server to about 3 TB of memory. IBM also uses memory buffers, which UCS does not use, for low latency. If it is about memory for virtualization, IBM is hands down the best tech.

[A Non e-mouse]

Cisco employees prefer iPads

I think it was telling that CIsco employees would usually turn up with iPads to meetings, rather than a Cius.

When asked why, I was usually told that either they were in too short supply to allow employees have them, or that the boss wouldn't buy them one.

[Anonymous Coward]

An also ran, but worrying times ahead

I hate Cisco semi-proprietary rip-off lock-in culture with a passion, so don't see this as a sad loss in itself. The world of business IT is changing very much for the worse though under the onslaught of crappy unmanageable consumer devices. I'm glad i finally got out of any kind of support duty last year, gut I feel for those stuck with the brunt of supporting idiot users on 'their' shiny gimmick sans management tools .

[Tim Bates]

Re: An also ran, but worrying times ahead

>The world of business IT is changing very much for the worse though under the onslaught of crappy unmanageable consumer devices.

Tell me about it - I keep seeing/heaing of schools buying iProducts in bulk... But as far as I can tell, the only tools for managing this scenario are based on the idea of rolling out self-made corporate apps, not purchased 3rd party apps (which is what the schools buy them for).

You can at least lock them down with provisioning profiles, but that usually isn't the biggest concern the IT people have with these devices.

Android isn't any better with basically exactly the same problem. At least they have the benefit of being cheaper in most cases.

[itbod]

Sensible move.

OMAP5 is coming. With hardware virualisation + a dock with display port, usb 3 and ethernet.

Support for QNX and Android etc.

Havind a dedicated Cisco tablet seems like a waste of resources.

[Confuciousmobil]

Windows tablets?

Expect a similar article about them in a couple of years (if they are available that soon)