<img class="gwt-Image" src="/photo/47429552.cms" />Targeting more sales in a span of two years, Chinese telecom gear maker <keyword id="110306" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Huawei-Technologies">Huawei Technologies</keyword> would manufactures its enterprise products at its Chennai plant. The company's India enterprise business revenue increased almost by 50% during the last financial year, thus it eyes a 10-fold jump in the revenue by March 2017. 
 
"We expect revenues to reach $300 million in the next two years. Once we hit the $100-million mark, we would start manufacturing enterprise products in India itself," Kent Tang Kai, sales director-north region, Enterprise Business Department, Huawei, told the Economic Times. 
 
Presently, the Chennai facility is being used to make telecom network equipment for the Indian market. 
 
Kai said the company's business revenue grew 48% during the last financial year to $30 million in India. Its overall revenue from the South Asian nation stood at $1 billion, and the company expects to double its overall revenue to $2 billion by 2016-17. 
 
Moreover, Huawei is targeting internet service providers/telcos, energy, transportation, media, BFSI, and education verticals for its enterprise solutions and services in India. 
 It has around 30 enterprise customers in India, including DEN Networks, Hathway, QTel, <keyword id="6377547" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Adidas">Adidas</keyword>, Taj Hotel, <keyword id="35140" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="BSE">BSE</keyword> and <keyword id="94550" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Tata-Sky">Tata Sky</keyword>, and competes with the likes of Cisco, Juniper, EMC and <keyword id="6367983" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="HP">HP</keyword>. 
 
Huawei, through its enterprise division, is also targeting the country's 100 Smart Cities and Digital India projects, and is currently in talks with state and central governments along with private companies for tie-ups. 
 
(Image: Reuters)

Huawei on expansion mode! May make enterprise products at Chennai

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56300c829dd7cc15008c54a4-875/cisco-chuck-robbins5.png" alt="Cisco Chuck Robbins5" data-mce-source="Cisco Live/Business Insider">Cisco Live/Business InsiderCisco CEO Chuck Robbins</img></div></div></div>Cisco did some bargain shopping this week when it acquired a startup called <a href="http://investor.cisco.com/investor-relations/news-and-events/news/news-details/2017/Cisco-Announces-Intent-to-Acquire-Viptela/default.aspx">Viptela for $610 million.</a>Just one year ago, Viptela was valued at $900 million by its investors, according to the database that tracks such things, <a href="https://my.pitchbook.com/#page/profile_1886807354">Pitchbook.</a>The startup had raised over $108 million in venture funding from VCs like Sequoia, and it achieved that valuation when it raised $75 million in May, 2016, led by European and Russian VC Redline Capital Management.The sudden sale of such a hot startup, and the discount price, has not gone unnoticed among Silicon Valley VCs and tech industry insiders trying to gauge the health of the <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> startup scene.We've talked to two sources close to the company who described a promising business with decent sales but a variety of problems that opened the door for Cisco to walk in and snatch it at a bargain price."There was internal dysfunction, and investor dysfunction," one person told us. <h2>Founders and investors made millions</h2>Viptela offers a way for companies to connect remote offices to their corporate networks using Viptela's router and software hosted in the cloud. It was considered a market leader in a new area called software-defined wide area networking or SDWAN. That's a new way to build networks that relies on software to do fancy control functions.According to one source inside the company, the board sold the company on the cheap mostly because making sales in its niche of wide area networking was hard, competition was rising and the co-founders were running out of steam to build it into a long-term independent company. The founders wanted to see the technology be successful, and it might have a better shot at thriving inside of Cisco.Meanwhile, Cisco's offer was enough for the cofounders to walk with multi-millions, and all the investors to make money, even the late-stage investors. They had a clause in their agreement that protected them if the company sold for less than their valuation. All the investors made money, both sources told us."The only people to get screwed were the employees who joined in last year, everyone that came on near their unicorn-level valuation, they got caught," one person told us.This is, however, a typical risk for employees who join a more established startup. They typically get less equity and more of a chance that their stock won't be worth much if the company's value drops.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5908d3c77dea727b118b5daa-1632/viptela-team 1.jpg" alt="Viptela team" data-mce-source="Sequoia" data-mce-caption="The Viptela founding team signs their series A term sheet at Sequoia in 2012 (left to right) Back: Venu Hemige, Khalid Raza. Front: Atif Khan, Amir Khan, Ramesh Prabagaran" data-link="https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/cisco-acquires-viptela/"><a href="https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/cisco-acquires-viptela/">Sequoia</a>The Viptela founding team signs their series A term sheet at Sequoia in 2012 (left to right) Back: Venu Hemige, Khalid Raza. Front: Atif Khan, Amir Khan, Ramesh Prabagaran</img></div></div></div><h2>Not a Trojan horse for Cisco</h2>Viptela was a startup founded by a team of accomplished engineers from Cisco, Juniper Networks and Alcatel Lucent which had been turning <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2873608/sdn/viptela-brings-software-defined-wans-to-the-enterprise.html">heads in its niche.</a> Rumors had <a href="https://www.cloudgenix.com/should-cisco-acquire-viptela/">been swirling for at least a couple of days</a> that this deal was in the works.Interestingly, four months ago, Viptela hired a new CEO, a man named Praveen Akkiraju. He was famous in his circle as a long-time Cisco engineer who became the CEO of a contentious joint venture between Cisco and EMC known as VCE. When the relationship between Cisco, EMC and VMware devolved, EMC bought out Cisco's interest in VCE. But Cisco retained a 10% stake and it got to put its own guy - Akkiraju -in as CEO. After Dell swallowed EMC, including VCE, Akkiraju was basically out of a job. He landed at Viptela in January.One rumor says he was brought in just to orchestrate a sale to Cisco, but both people we talked to told us this wasn't the case. At the time he was hired, he was expected to be a long-time CEO.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5908d41c2f6ae433008b6013-400/praveen akkiraju.png" alt="Praveen Akkiraju" data-mce-source="YouTube/CiscoSP360 " data-mce-caption="Praveen Akkiraju" data-link="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvmazAtLjyI&amp;feature=player_embedded"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvmazAtLjyI&amp;feature=player_embedded">YouTube/CiscoSP360 </a>Praveen Akkiraju</img></div></div></div>One person told us that the real reason for the change was fractures inside the company that would have been a lot for him, an outsider, to fix.The two co-founders were having disagreements, sources told us. On one side was Khalid Raza the cofounding CTO and on the other was Amir Khan, the co-founding CEO (who became president after Akkiraju joined) and his brother Atif Khan, who was running the sales engineering department. Meanwhile, the company's key investor and board member was Michael Goguen. Goguen was a partner at Sequoia that had funded the first two rounds of the company, about $33 million. But in March, 2016, <a href="https://twitter.com/sequoia/status/708549364428316672">Sequoia fired him, it said,</a> after a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse was filed against him. He gave up all his board seats, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/13/fired-sequoia-partner-will-forfeit-board-seats-source.html">CNBC reported.</a><h2>New threats</h2>Viptela wasn't failing. It had landed 25 Fortune 500 enterprises as customers and deals with carriers like Verizon and Singtel who used its product to sell cloud networking products to other big companies, it said.One person told us that Viptela had grown itself into about $25 million of revenue. Based on that, Cisco's price was more than fair. "These guys did $25 million in revenue for last year and sold for over $600 million. A $610 million exit? That's a great story," this person told us.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/56e70ef791058422008b63bf-696/screen shot 2016-03-12 at 1.15.44 pm.png" alt="Michael Goguen" data-mce-source="LinkedIn" data-link="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-goguen-23314"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-goguen-23314">LinkedIn</a>Michael Goguen</img></div></div></div>But competition was growing in the field and Viptela needed strong, solid leadership and a board that believed in them to fend off the threats. There were startups like Aryaka, Versa Networks and CloudGenix, for instance. And Cisco had invested in a competitor, too, VeloCloud.Plus, Cisco had a couple of its own competing products, such as a product called "Intelligent WAN" or iWAN. And Cisco had bought a startup called Meraki for $1.2 billion a couple of years ago. Meraki is mostly known for its wireless LANs, but was being used by small businesses to connect remote offices to cloud apps, too.All told, when Viptela went looking for a sale, it wasn't in a position of negotiating strength. Even so, most analysts believe the Viptela's technology will be a good fit for Cisco's iWAN products, helping it sell more networking software to enterprises and service providers. Cisco is trying to remake itself into more of a software company, so this purchase could be great for Cisco.While the whole Viptela team is joining Cisco, it's unclear if both founders will be going to Cisco as well. Viptela declined to comment, Cisco did not return a request for comment. Get the latest Cisco stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/csco-Quote"> here.</a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marines-corps-machine-gun-wielding-robot-controlled-by-tablet-2017-4">The Marine Corps is testing a machine gun-wielding robot controlled with just a tablet and a joystick</a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="9oNXZ5YTE6uZrALmGcVdaskrZsLWksA1" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '9oNXZ5YTE6uZrALmGcVdaskrZsLWksA1',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

How Cisco bought a $900 million startup for just $610 million

Netflix, Juniper and Intuit explain how Amazon is eating the $3.5 trillion IT industry

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5640dccbbd86eff45b8bd49d-908-681/chuck robbins-hans vestberg.png" alt="Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg" data-mce-source="Cisco/Business Insider" data-mce-caption="Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg" />Cisco/Business InsiderCisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg</div></div></div>Cisco and Ericcson on Monday announced a huge new partnership that they believe will generate $1 billion for each company by 2018.Each of them had to do something to combat the merger mania going on all around them.This partnership is a direct response to Nokia's $17 billion purchase of Alcatel-Lucent, announced in April. Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent were two of Ericcson's biggest rivals in providing equipment to the telecommunications industry.Cisco competes with all of these companies as well.What's telling is that Cisco, under its new CEO Chuck Robbins, chose this partnership arrangement, instead of using some of its approximately $62 billion in cash to buy part or all of Ericcson, which has a $32 billion market cap. Cisco has reportedly been in talks with Ericcson for the past 13 months, <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/3003133/cloud-computing/cisco-ericsson-team-up-as-industry-consolidates.html">reports Nework World's Jim Duffy</a>. <h2>Why the deal makes sense for Cisco</h2>There were plenty of <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/ericsson-juniper-are-next-as-nokia-wakes-up-industry-real-m-a">rumors and speculation that someone would buy Ericcson</a> after the Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent deal was announced, and Cisco was a likely candidate, as the two companies seem to fit together. Cisco is a leader in computer networking equipment and is particularly strong in selling its gear to businesses and government. Ericcson is best known for computer networking equipment that builds wireless networks, and is particularly strong in selling its gear to service providers (telecoms, mainly). Ericsson also is known for its big consulting services unit.Meanwhile, Cisco also needed to do something to counter the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/making-sense-of-dell-emc-vmware-2015-10">merger of Dell and EMC</a>, which will create a powerhouse in the <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> server/storage market, with a goal of grabbing away some of Cisco's networking market as well.And Cisco needs a European ally to battle Chinese networking powerhouse Huawei Technologies, who has been signing up deals with European service providers like it was chowing down potato chips - 15 in 2015 as of the summer, and about as many in 2014, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/17/huawei-says-europe-is-like-a-second-home-market/">the Wall Street Journal reports.</a>So a union between the two companies makes sense. But Robbins isn't going for the big splashy acquisition at this point. He's into partnerships, he explained in a blog post, pointing out out that this is the third big partnership under his tenure.The first was with Apple, where Cisco will build networks that work better with iOS devices; then came <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28865646/cisco-100-million-joint-venture-chinas-inspur-group">Cisco's $100 million joint venture with China's Inspur Group </a>to give Cisco a piece of China's growing cloud computing action. There was <a href="http://www.crn.com/news/networking/300076558/partners-to-ericsson-stay-away-from-juniper.htm">also some speculation that Ericcson</a> would counter the Nokia/Alcatel-Lucent deal by buying its Cisco's rival, Juniper Networks. Ericcson and Juniper have long been partners. There's no telling where this partnership with Cisco will leave Juniper, and investors are worried. Juniper's stock is tanking, <a href="https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;ion=1&amp;espv=2&amp;ie=UTF-8#q=Juniper+ticker">down about 8%.</a> Cisco and Ericcson will be reselling each other's products and jointly developing new products for a bunch of up-and-coming new network equipment markets.These new markets include:<ul><li>The Internet of Things, where everyday objects get chips and sensors to connect to each other and to various software programs for functions like data collection.</li><li>Software-defined networking; a new way of building computer networks that uses software to control the network and uses less hardware and/or less-expensive varieties of hardware;</li><li>"Network-function virtualization" which is all the rage in service provider networks these days, where various "network functions" become software apps (such as "load balancers" that make networks perform more efficiently, or firewalls.)</li></ul> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/robohon-japanese-smartphone-tech-projector-robot-humanoid-2015-10">This new robot smartphone dances, responds to voice commands, and has a built-in projector</a></h3> <div> <div> <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script> <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Z5a25ieDqYM-xdHZFqmUVPtpZg8kIMxH" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div> <script> if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; } RunFunctions.push(function() { var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', 'Z5a25ieDqYM-xdHZFqmUVPtpZg8kIMxH',{ autoplay: 'false' }); }); </script> <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div> </div> <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script> </div>

Cisco and Ericsson say their new partnership will bring them a $1 billion apiece

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/548f2178ecad04c22e5c33d9-1099-824/troll-statues-1.jpg" border="0" alt="troll statues"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/7584124420/">Gage Skidmore via FLickr</a>Trolls</img>A few months ago, Surya Panditi was living in a nightmare but today he has happily reinvented himself as a cofounder of not one, but two, consumer tech startups.
Earlier this year, he was working as Cisco's&#xa0;<a href="http://newsroom.cisco.com/execbio-detail?articleId=532851">senior vice president and general manager of the Service Provider Networking Group</a>, a unit responsible for some of the company's most advanced networking products. 
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ciscos-surya-panditi-fights-troll-2014-7">Someone had posted a website about him filled with libelous accusations</a> about his personal and professional life. We won't repeat them, but will say they involved his romantic and work-related relationships. They also included the name and photo of another innocent person.
Panditi had been struggling to get this website removed for about two years, but was caught in the Catch-22 of such anonymous sites. He wrote to Wordpress and even Google and got no response. 
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53d293186bb3f75b5417adad-850-637/cisco-svp-surya-panditi.jpg" border="0" alt="Cisco SVP Surya Panditi">CiscoCisco SVP Surya Panditi</img>Sites like Wordpress generally won't remove controversial websites without a court order, Wordpress&#xa0;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ciscos-surya-panditi-fights-troll-2014-7">confirmed to Business Insider at the time</a>. And the courts won't issue such orders until the anonymous person can be found, or at least a legally expensive manhunt and attempt to find the person was completed. 
So,&#xa0;Panditi threw up his hands, hired a lawyer and launched that manhunt. In the process he tried to unmask a Cisco whistleblower, known as Corporate Renegade, who was famous within the company for leaking gossip to Cisco blogger Brad Reese.&#xa0; 
We caught up Panditi recently. He told us he never found the anonymous troll, and&#xa0;<a href="http://www.bradreese.com/blog/11-24-2014.htm#comment-1732620222">Corporate Renegade's secret identity remains intact.</a> But he was successful in getting the website removed.
 On top of that, after Business Insider first told his story, it went viral and he recieved a surprise outpouring of support from others, who also benefited from this mission. 
"I was contacted by a vice president of another large company in the Valley who had a similar experience," he said. "The bigger story is when you can anonymously say things that are untrue, there's not a whole lot people can do. In Europe, there are 'right to be forgotten" laws. We don't have those."
As part of his original mission to find the troll, Panditi uncovered 24 similar websites filled with similar accusations about other executives. These were others that worked at Cisco, as well as people employed by EMC, Ericsson, HP, Juniper, Microsoft, Oracle, and Symantec.
Since his fight began, all 24 of those websites have been removed, a search of them conducted by Business Insider has shown.
If that wasn't a happy enough ending, there's more. Earlier this month, Panditi publicly launched one of two new consumer startups he's since cofounded. (He <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2824446/cisco-subnet/cisco-reorgs-trimming-svp-ranks.html">left Cisco in October</a>&#xa0;when Cisco undertook a massive reorg that reportedly affected 25,000 people.)
<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5498a30069bedd3175525c3b-392-558/fancify.png" border="0" alt="Fancify"><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fancify-keyboard/id930654563?mt=8">itunes.apple.com</a>Fancify</img>By December, he was up and running <a href="%20https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fancify-keyboard/id930654563?mt=8https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fancify-keyboard/id930654563?mt=8">with Fancify</a>, a keyboard app for the iPhone that lets you beautify a text message with special fonts, colors graphics.&#xa0; Although the first step is an app, Panditi tells us that he hopes Fancify becomes s platform that can do for texting what graphics did for email.
He's also working on a second startup, still in stealth, in the travel industry.
He's feeling happy, he tells us. Having spent most of his career selling computer equipment to enterprises he likes learning about the consumer side of the tech industry.
"I've made a significant change in my life, reinventing myself in a later stage in career."
And it feels pretty good to vanquish a troll along the way.

How A Cisco Exec Vanquished An Internet Troll And Saved 25 People

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53dd8c356bb3f7145b3d85d2-1200-924/cloudflare-1.jpg?maxX=480" border="0" alt="CloudFlare" width="480" style="float: right;" />ReutersCloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince</div></div>CloudFlare, best known for its cloud cyber-security service, is growing at a mind-boggling pace. 
Over the last three years, CloudFlare has grown 450% annually, and is currently adding about 5,000 new clients a day, Matthew Prince, its programmer/lawyer-turned-founder, tells us 
It is now handling the equivalent of roughly 5% of the entire web's traffic through its servers and, just as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-a-monster-in-the-making-2012-2">we predicted in 2012,</a> CloudFlare is indeed a monster company in the making. 
Prince is on a mission to 'build a better Internet.' To do so, CloudFlare's technology serves as what many call the "digital bouncer" for its 2 million-plus client websites. That means it fights off malicious hacker attacks. 
But CloudFlare is bigger than just a cyber-security firm. It also improves a website's performance by offering classic networking services like routing and switching (helping computers connect over the Internet), load balancing (making sure computer servers don't get overloaded), and performance acceleration (helping websites run faster) among other things. It is essentially creating a cloud service that parallels the features of many of Cisco's hardware products. 
Prince wrote his college thesis on "Why the Internet was a fad" (which he now calls "embarrassing") but his experience working on the Internet from its early days made him realize the "incredibly disruptive" potential of it. Now he wants to help the Internet live up to its promise - a place he calls, "where anyone, anywhere can publish information and get access to that information."
We had a chance to catch up with Prince and ask more about his company's explosive growth. The below interview has been edited for clarity.
Business Insider: Why is your company growing so fast?
Matthew Prince: The honest answer is we don't entirely know. We have done almost no marketing, we have a nascent sales team, but we have a large client base from Fortune 50 financial services to national governments across the world. Just this week, we added Reddit, the 17th largest site in the U.S. If we added up all the page views of our customers' sites, then we would have over 400 billion page views a month.
BI: What's drawing people to your service?
MP: We made resources that were previously only used by big companies like Google available to everyone online. The initial interest in CloudFlare is for security, but that's only for about 25% of our customers. Another 25% want to get more out of their infrastructure, and the rest of our users sign up because they want access to our analytics and other ancillary services. 
BI: For those who don't fully understand your service, what's a good comparison?
MP: If you asked, "What company are you disrupting?" and if you made me just pick one, I think it would be Cisco. If you look at the entire Cisco line - routing and switching, load balancing, security, DDoS mitigation, performance acceleration, all of these functionalities - that's what CloudFlare is doing. But instead of selling you a box to do that, we're providing you a service, which is extremely easy to provision and deploy. It's the same as Amazon Web Services taking, for example, what HP used to sell you as a box and deploying it as a cloud service. 
BI: I'm still confused. So your service basically builds a cloud firewall in front of your clients' websites and protects it from attacks?
MP: That's actually only for security, which is a meaningful part of the business. But you first have to understand how the current Internet business is changing. There are three core tiers to any Internet infrastructure. The base at the bottom is the store and compute level. In the past, HP, Dell, EMC, IBM and thousands of different companies would sell you a box and you would store your data there. Now, we've got AWS and god willing someone else, but we're not going to have thousands of different vendors anymore. It's going to be a relatively limited number of vendors dealing with enormous amounts of data.
The next level above that is application. Once upon a time, there were really three companies that controlled most of the software application revenue in this space: SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. Great fortunes were made for these companies. They had these bundles of applications that were used to perform a whole bunch of different functions. The <keyword id="6356323" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Enterprise">enterprise</keyword> would buy the Oracle suite and then use its database, CRM system, and accounting features in a single package. And it took forever to employ all of these applications, but you kind of got locked in to whatever bundle you bought.
What's happening now is that these bundles are getting unbundled to smaller parts. So you got Salesforce, which is doing CRM, Box for collaboration, NetSuite for financial reporting, and a million others.
So instead of a really small universe of companies that control the applications, now it's getting blown up to thousands and thousands of companies specializing in particular niche of all things.
Q: And what does that have to do with CloudFlare?
MP: On top of all of this, which I call the 'edge,' a whole bunch of [specialized computer] boxes used to exist. So think about what Cisco or Juniper makes, that has a firewall in it. There's a whole bunch of companies that are making those boxes that sit on the top 'edge.' That's what we're building - but in the cloud.
We're taking all of this functionality, and a big part of it is firewall and security, but it's also performance and load balancing and switching and routing, doing all of that. You can take CloudFlare's service and stick it in front of Salesforce or Workday or Box's servers. CloudFlare can sit in front of it and do all the functionalities that you used to have with the hardware companies. We've built data centers all around the world that sit between users of websites and the actual services, so instead of you having to actually buy a box for this, you could just deploy our service.
BI: Tell me more about the security part. How effective is CloudFlare against hackers? 
MP: About 1 out of every 20 web-requests pass through CloudFlare. So you probably have used our network hundreds of times in the last 24 hours, without even knowing it.
If you're an attacker, we're an incredibly frustrating thing because we help stop those attacks from ever hitting our clients' infrastructure. We actually see hackers who advertise services to launch DDoS attacks on behalf of others say they'll charge 20 to 30 times more or not even do it if it's against CloudFlare. 
BI: What attack or client do you remember the most?
MP: We work a lot with an organization called the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is an organization that protects journalists from being kidnapped or something, or helps those at risk when publishing controversial stories. 
So the director came in to our office with three African bloggers. One was from Ethiopia, the other was from Angola, but they wouldn't tell us the third one's name or where he came from because death squads were hunting him down in his home country. All three of them came up to me and hugged me, saying, "We couldn't be doing what we're doing without you, because the government's trying to silence us. They're trying to shut us down and launch attacks, hack our servers. CloudFlare stands in front of it and is able to make sure we stay online."
That's a pretty powerful thing. 
BI: What are some the trends you see in the cyber attack space?
MP: There's definitely an uptick in the number of attacks targeting the DNS infrastructure. DNS is what takes Amazon.com or Businessinsider.com and turns it into an IP address. If you can shut that down, then it can shut down the effective ability for anyone to get to a website. And I think we're very good at dealing with it.
There's also a lot of creativity on how hackers use other people's resources to help launch an attack. We're seeing old Internet protocols, like NTP, which stands for Network Time Protocol, exploited to launch these very high-scale attacks. The attacks we see have gotten over 400 gigs/second, and those are some of the biggest attacks that we've seen.
BI: In 2012, rumor was some VCs were offering to invest in <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/cloudflare-reveals-50m-round-from-union-square-ventures/">CloudFlare at a $1 billion+ valuation but you accepted a $50 million investment</a> at a lower valuation. What can you tell us about that? 
MP: We've actually never maximized our valuation. Our last valuation, if it wasn't the lowest valuation, it was close to it. But we really wanted to have Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, because he's just a really deep thinker on the future of the Internet and how things work. Just maximizing valuation has never really been the primary driver for us than making sure we could find the right people. It's better to be long-term greedy than short-term greedy.
BI: What's next? An IPO?
MP: We're cash flow positive now. So we get to choose our own destiny and figure out what it is that we want to do next.
But if you want to see what our roadmap product line is, just kind of look at the entire Cisco catalogue. And say how could this become a service? And if we don't have it already, then that is probably something that we are working on. We still admire Cisco, and we think they are making great hardware. But we just want to become the service version of that. We think that's a really attractive business.

This $1 Billion Startup Handles 5% Of All Web Traffic And Is Ready To Take On Cisco

<div class="KonaFilter image-container float_right"><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53cda41decad04c75dec975b-1068-800/paul-singer-6.png?maxX=480" border="0" alt="Paul Singer" width="480" style="float: right;" /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Global_Financial_Context_Paul_Singer.jpg">Wikimedia</a>Paul Singer</div></div>Elliott Management Corp., a $25 billion activist hedge fund founded by Paul Singer, has spent more than $1 billion to take a 2% ownership of data storage firm EMC, the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/activist-investor-pushes-emc-to-break-up-1405915262?ru=yahoo">Wall Street Journal reports.</a> 
That would make Elliott the fifth-largest shareholder of EMC, which is one of the largest in Elliott's 37-year history, according to the WSJ.
The move is largely seen as an attempt to demand that EMC split off its subsidiary VMware unit. Elliott thinks the separation could boost EMC's lagging stock price and potentially attract acquisition bids for EMC from other tech giants like Oracle, HP, and Cisco, the report said. 
EMC calls itself a "federation model," where different businesses run under one big umbrella: its core storage unit; its cloud software producer, Pivotal; its security arm, RSA Information; and VMware. This strategy has been <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/elliott-to-weigh-activist-options-for-emc-later-this-week/?_php=true&amp;_type=blogs&amp;_r=0">questioned by some investors</a> saying it causes friction internally and slowing efficiency. VMware is by far the biggest unit of EMC, with a market value of $41 billion, or a third of EMC's total market cap. EMC owns 80% of VMware.
EMC declined to comment on this story. Elliott and VMware were not immediately available for comment.
EMC's data storage business has struggled lately with the emergence of cloud storage technology. Its first quarter sales increased only 2% year-over-year, while its net income dropped almost 30%. The company will release its second quarter earnings on Wednesday.
The market, however, wasn't too surprised by today's news. RBC Capital Markets <a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/07/21/emc-rising-possible-elliott-action-highlights-35-to-37-per-share-value-says-rbc/">wrote in a note today</a>, "Talk of spinning-off VMware is not new, and management has made it clear it's not in the best interest of EMC to do so." It said EMC acquiring the remaining 20% stake of VMware is the more likely scenario.
Elliott Management is the latest in a slew of activist investors making noise in the tech sector. ValueAct Capital played a <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2013/08/26/ballmer-exit-another-sign-of-growing-influence-of-activist-investors/">big role in shaking up Microsoft's management</a> structure in 2013, while billionaire investor Carl Icahn continues to be a major force among companies like Apple and eBay. 
Elliott's most recent activist play occurred in January, when it demanded costs cuts and stock buy backs from the network infrastructure company, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-13/juniper-said-to-be-targeted-by-activist-fund-elliott-management.html">Juniper Networks.</a>

You Searched For "Cisco Juniper EMC" and got 8 results

Huawei on expansion mode! May make enterprise products at Chennai

BI India Bureau

How Cisco bought a $900 million startup for just $610 million

Julie Bort

Netflix, Juniper and Intuit explain how Amazon is eating the $3.5 trillion IT industry

Julie Bort

Cisco and Ericsson say their new partnership will bring them a $1 billion apiece

Julie Bort

How A Cisco Exec Vanquished An Internet Troll And Saved 25 People

Julie Bort

This $1 Billion Startup Handles 5% Of All Web Traffic And Is Ready To Take On Cisco

Eugene Kim

An Activist Investor Takes Aim At A Multi-Billion Dollar Tech Company

Eugene Kim

Inside Facebook's plan to eat another $350 billion IT market

Julie Bort