Cisco: We've made some bad buys

We've made some bad buys: Cisco VP

A quarter of the acquisitions Cisco recently made haven't worked, according to senior vice president Howard Charney, and the company which made its name as a network plumber is moving deeper into software as it begins competing with Microsoft in certain areas.

Mr Charney made the admission speaking at Cisco's Networkers conference in Brisbane .

"There are some acquisitions that we spent a lot of money on in the 90s that some people might say in hindsight that wasn't so smart of you , " he said.

"At least two-thirds or three quarters of these meet a financial standard that has to do with products in the marketplace, satisfying customer needs, increasing customer satisfaction and providing some functionality that we didn't have. "But the converse of that is also true and approximately a quarter of our acquisitions don't work."

While he wouldn't name specific companies, he said that these were still beneficial as they delivered new intellectual property, staff, and users to Cisco.

Mr Charney also said Cisco was pushing harder into software.

"In the future we're going to be behaving more as an overt software company rather than a hardware company that gives a bit of software with it.

This is largely to help position Cisco in the emerging frontier of unified communications, and Mr Charney said this was the one area where it wouldn't be working with Microsoft.

Microsoft's massive desktop installed base puts it in a strong position for the unified communications battle, but Mr Charney said Cisco is focused on displacing Microsoft in this area.

"When it comes to UC we really believe we have a great offering that we'll keep investing in.

"Perhaps at some point a customer will have to choose whether they buy a Microsoft solution or a Cisco solution."

In his keynote speech earlier in the day , Mr Charney quoted historic figures from French authors to Groucho Marx in describing education, training, information and infrastructure as the four main technological drivers that are changing society.