Cisco's 4,000 job cuts won't touch new acquisition Sourcefire

Cisco Systems may be "rebalancing" its business by eliminating 4,000 jobs, or about 5 percent of its workforce, but it'll keep its hands off its hot new security acquisition, Sourcefire.

The company said in a letter to Sourcefire management on Thursday that the planned job cuts, announced on Wednesday, would not affect their employees. The letter was disclosed in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Cisco agreed to buy Sourcefire last month for US$2.7 billion and expects to close that deal later this year.

Cisco announced its latest belt-tightening on a call to discuss its fourth-quarter financial results. The move will speed up Cisco's decision-making and execution and help it focus on key businesses, plus deal with uneven economic growth around the world, Chairman and CEO John Chambers said.

But the Sourcefire deal itself is part of Cisco's renewed focus on a short list of key priorities, which include security as well as data center and cloud infrastructure, software, services and video. Sourcefire offers open-source intrusion detection and prevention technology that Cisco wants to include in a security architecture delivered through networks.

Sourcefire has about 650 employees. Cisco said when the deal was announced that it was buying the company for its open-source community and its employees, and that Sourcefire's leaders and employees would become part of the Cisco Security Group.


Cisco's stock (Nasdaq: CSCO) plunged $1.91 to $24.47 on Thursday, a drop of more than 7 percent, after the company gave a weak revenue forecast for the current quarter. Though Cisco posted solid revenue and profit gains for its fiscal fourth quarter ended July 28, it forecast revenue growth of just 3 percent to 5 percent for the current quarter. That would barely hit Cisco's long-term goal of boosting revenue by 5 percent to 7 percent per quarter. Chambers said Cisco was still committed to that long-term target.

Dell XPS 27 Touch review: Looks are everything

Dell XPS 27 Touch $2,099.00 While we have a few minor quibbles with the Dell XPS 27 Touch's design, we think this is the best all-in-one on the market today.

 
When it comes to its high-end all-in-one PC lineup, Dell seems to be operating on the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” principle. The XPS 27 Touch packs a speedy new Haswell CPU under its hood, but that’s the only significant departure from earlier models.

Our review unit, which costs $2100 as of July 17, 2013, sports a quad-core Intel Core i7-4770S processor; 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory; a discrete video card (Nvidia’s GeForce GT 750M); and a roomy 2TB, 7200 rpm hard drive augmented by a 32GB mSATA SSD cache. That’s impressive for any all-in-one, and it helped the XPS 27 Touch deliver a Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score of 262, which means it’s more than two and a half times faster than our reference PC, Acer’s Aspire U. It’s also significantly faster than Vizio’s CA27T-B1. The displays on both of those models are limited to 1920 by 1080 pixels, but they’re also considerably less expensive (selling for $1000 and $1550 respectively).

The Dell XPS 27 Touch produced a high Desktop Worldbench 8.1 score (for an all-in-one, that is). Nevertheless, the Dell’s score places the XPS 27 Touch solidly in the upper half of all the desktop systems we’ve tested so far, although it’s nowhere near the custom-built gaming rigs we’ve evaluated (Primordial Computer’s over-the-top, quad-Titan Medusa hit 385, while Micro Express’s single-GPU MicroFlex 47B scored 421). Unlike most all-in-ones, however, the XPS 27 will satisfy the gamers in your family—as long as their expectations aren’t too hardcore. In our Dirt Showdown, with the game’s resolution at 1024 by 768 pixels and image quality set to low, the XPS 27 delivered a strong 125.7 frames per second. Compare that to our reference PC, which relies on the integrated GPU in its Intel Core i5 3230M processor: It delivered Dirt Showdown at just 47.5 fps.

The XPS 27 Touch is a very reasonable gaming PC, provided you’re willing to compromise on resolution and image quality.

  As befits a new AIO of the Windows 8 era, the XPS 27 is outfitted with a 10-point touchscreen display (this was an optional feature on previous models). Dell boasts that it’s the company’s “brightest and most versatile touch display” to date. I agree, it’s the best touchscreen I’ve seen from Dell. It’s extremely bright, and images and text look fantastically crisp and clear thanks to its 2560-by-1440 resolution. Multitouch gestures are smooth and easy to perform, and the bezel-less design makes using Windows 8 a breeze. But the display is not perfect. I have the same minor complaint about this screen as I had about Dell’s earlier XPS One 2710: Colors, especially skin tones, have a tendency to look oversaturated.

ROBERT CARDINThe dual-articulated hinge enables you to adjust the display’s height as well as its angle. Dell’s XPS 27 Touch is a nice, attractive system, but I do wish the company had paid a little less attention to looks and a little more to usability. This AIO is super pretty, and the changes I want would probably make it a little less so. While the media card reader and two USB 3.0 ports are conveniently located on the left side of the bezel, the HDMI ports (in and out), Thunderbolt/Mini DisplayPort, gigabit ethernet, and four additional USB 3.0 ports on the back of the display are obscured by the stand and are difficult to reach.
ROBERT CARDINMany of the XPS 27 Touch’s I/O ports are obscured by the double-articulated stand (which enables you to adjust the height as well as the angle of the display).

  I’m also not a fan of the four touch-sensitive buttons on the lower left corner on the front of the display. A proximity sensor causes these unlabeled buttons to light up when you hover your finger over them, although the only one you might use on a regular basis is the Eject button for the DVD burner. And speaking of optical drives, if you want a Blu-ray/DVD combo, you’ll need to move up to the $2600 model, which also comes with 16GB of memory and Windows 8 Pro. But if you get your movie fix via Internet streaming, you won’t care.

Aside from those quibbles, the Dell XPS 27 Touch is an exquisite all-in-one.  

Windows out of touch as PC shipments crash

All manufacturers bar Lenovo showed a massive decline in PC sales in the second quarter of the year, with buyers continuing to purchase tablets over laptop devices, according to Gartner’s latest PC market share research.

PC shipments in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) were weakened in the second quarter of 2013, with a 16.8% decline over the same period last year, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decreasing shipments, said Gartner.

Ranjit Atwal research director at Gartner, said: “The European economy has not helped. Touch on laptops today has not been as effective for consumers. Touchscreens will only come into their own at end of this year with the availability of the new Intel [Haswell] platform.”

Haswell will introduce "thin and light" laptop designs, which Atwal expects will help to stimulate the PC industry.

He said part of the problem with the PC sector is a lack of innovation, in spite of the launch of Windows 8 last year: “The PC industry has not really innovated for the last five years. Windows 8 was an evolution rather than revolution.”

But this is slowly changing, according to Atwal, with some PC manufacturers building software around their hardware platform in order to differentiate products.

“The sharp decline in the second quarter of 2013 was partly due to the shift in usage patterns away from notebooks to tablets, and partly because the PC market was exposed to inventory reductions in the channel due to the start of the transition to new Haswell-based products,” said Isabelle Durand, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"Touch-based notebooks still account for less than 10% of the total consumer notebook shipments in the last quarter."

HP held the top position in EMEA, Garter said, due to better results in the professional PC market. Lenovo was the only top five vendor to exhibit shipment growth, recording a fourth consecutive quarter of growth.

“The PC market is changing, but it still represents a $200bn opportunity,” said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO, Lenovo.

Preliminary EMEA PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 2Q13 (Units)

Touch Screens Are Tested for Piloting Passenger Jets

With a swipe of his finger across its surface, Mr. Bonnet called up a list of European airports and selected Charles de Gaulle, near Paris. A vivid three-dimensional map appeared, representing a proposed flight plan, which he manipulated using the familiar pinch and zoom gestures used to operate smartphones and tablet computers. The development of touch-screen technology has enabled a similar revolutionary new approach to cockpit design.

By the end of the decade, says Thales, one of the world’s largest makers of aircraft cockpits, pilots could start dispensing with buttons, trackballs and keypads for performing many routine flying tasks in favor of icons that can be dragged and slide-to-scroll menus.

“The idea is to reduce as much as possible the number of buttons and control panels and replace them with virtualization,” said Mr. Bonnet, the head of cockpit innovation at Thales.

“We have reached such a high level of complexity today,” he said, with the flood of data that streams into cockpit computers from the plane’s systems and from the ground. “We want to create an interaction that is more intuitive and that reduces the workload, helping to keep the pilot focused on flying.”

Since the transition more than a generation ago from mechanical flight controls to fly-by-wire systems that use computers to control many aspects of flight, avionics engineers have sought to harness the power of electronics to make air travel safer and more efficient. While marketing touch screens for cockpits is a way to get plane makers and airlines to upgrade their systems, the migration toward touch screens is advanced by manufacturers as having the potential to enhance flight safety and improve efficiency.

Touch-screen advocates list several advantages over traditional cockpits, including the elimination of physical space constraints for instrument displays, since all the information the flight crew needs can be searched for and reached from the same set of screens. The displays can also be customized to present only the relevant data and input options that the pilot needs for a specific phase of the flight, be it takeoff, cruise or landing.

“It’s a bit like using your iPhone to find a pizza place,” said Mr. Bonnet of Thales. “You are very happy, once you have located it on your map, to be able to have the telephone number displayed as well — the right information, close to where you would expect it to be and not somewhere deep inside the user interface. The idea is to hide the complexity.”

Of course, avionics makers face challenges familiar to anyone who has tried to read a tablet outdoors on a sunny day or type a text message while being jostled in the back seat of a speeding taxi. “Sunlight readability is a big one that we are working to solve, because unlike a portable device, you can’t pick up a dashboard display to turn it” away from the sun, said Kenneth Snodgrass, director of technical sales at Honeywell International in Phoenix, another avionics maker. “A second is inadvertent touch. If you’re flying in bad weather, in turbulence, and you need to be able to change something, you have to be able to make sure you get it right.”

Touch screens first made their way into military jets two decades ago, when Thales integrated the technology into the cockpit of the French Rafale fighter. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter being developed by Lockheed Martin will also have instrument panels with touch-screen interfaces. But the concept is still relatively new to commercial jets.

Two years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States and its counterparts in other countries approved the use of so-called electronic flight bags. Pilots could replace reams of paper operating manuals, checklists and charts with digital versions loaded onto a tablet computer. Several airlines have embraced this paperless system.

“Touch screens have had to earn their way on board,” said Mr. Snodgrass. “It can’t just be a bunch of pretty colors. It has to be something the pilot can use.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article contained incorrect caption and credit information for the accompanying photograph. The photograph shows a touchscreen developed by Rockwell Collins, not Thales. The photograph should have been credited to Kathy Houser of Rockwell Collins, not Thales.

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Ultrabook Prototype Combines Touch and Eye-Tracking Technology

The latest wave of Windows 8 ultrabooks blend keyboards, mice, and touchscreen gestures into a (theoretically) seamless experience. But even with touch as an input option, accessibility remains an issue for people with limited mobility, or those who suffer from long-term repetitive stress injuries.

A prototype ultrabook from Tobii and Synaptics shows what the solution to those problems looks like: a notebook that uses a built-in eye-tracking system to register input, as well as a pressure-sensitive touchpad that can register gestures more precisely and in three dimensions.

I’ve personally checked out Tobii’s eye-tracking technology at CES the past few years. It’s evolved from something experimental and somewhat gimmicky into a useful and intuitive tool. I tried out the developer edition of Tobii’s eye-tracker on a Windows 8 machine at this year’s CES. The experience showed me how handy eye-based input can be — I quickly jumped through onscreen tasks like selecting e-mails to open from a list or browsing through an array of photos onscreen. People with little or no use of their own arms and hands can, with practice, use only their eyes to navigate through any number of digital experiences.

For those with some or full use of their hands, the pressure-sensitive touchpad opens up new input possibilities, too. It can sense how hard you’re pressing, and input can be measured in not just two dimensions (x and y), but three (x and y and z). The applications to take advantage of this will likely need to be more customized than the eye-tracking tech, which can be adapted to work like a mouse or other pointer.

A lot of hype has centered around voice dictation technology (Dragon Dictate is often a solution for those that currently suffer from wrist or hand ailments), but in an office setting or situation with a lot of noise, dictation is less optimal. You can use your eyes, or a touchpad, just about anywhere.

You can expect devices like the Tobii-Synaptics prototype to start hitting store shelves sometime next year.