For security nuts and enterprise clients, Cisco is launching an iPhone app, called Cisco SIO, to put Cisco Security Intelligence Operations in users’ hands. The app gives giving users real-time access to security information and also lets users create personalized alerts to show security threats that could impact their network.

Powered by the Cisco’s Security IntelliShield Alert Manager Service, the app informs, protects and enables IT staff to respond in real time to alerts and threats to the network. The application will deliver data on early warning intelligence, threat vulnerabilities and sill suggest solutions to any problems that take place. It also provides unique IP and URL address e-mail and Web reputation look-up powered by the Cisco’s IronPort SenderBase Security Network. Via the app, you’ll also be able to access Cisco security news and information from the company’s blog, Twitter feed, podcasts and press releases, which Cisco hopes to use to engage with the greater security technology community.

Cisco’s Security Intelligence Operations product has four main components. Cisco SensorBase is a threat-monitoring network pulls in data from allof Cisco devices and services. Cisco IntelliShield is a historical-threat database of 40,000 vulnerabilities and 3,300 IPS signatures; and more than 600 third-party threat-intelligence sources, which track more than 500 third-party data feeds and 100 security news feeds around the clock. Cisco also offers enterprises a Threat Operations Center which is composed of 500 security analysts around the world that monitor and research threats 24 hours a day. SIO also offers real-time updates with recommendations and other content to try to help clients track threats, analyze intelligence and more.

As the iPhone increasingly gains traction as a mobile device used in the business world, enterprise giants like Cisco are also throwing their hat in the ring. Real-time information, especially when it comes to IT security, is necessary to have on-demand. Cisco has also rolled out apps for its WebEx Meeting Center and mobile offerings.

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Details are scarce at the moment, but Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Telefónica Europe (O2) are said to be looking to buy the venture capital-backed company for a price ranging from $200M to $400M. We’re digging for more information.

Jajah was founded back in 2005 and in March 2006 introduced the world to a pretty decent consumer service that allowed cellphone users access Jajah’s low-cost calling system through their mobile devices, over the Web. Jajah went on to raise $28 million in VC funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, Deutsche Telekom and Intel.

The Skype rival amassed about 10 million users when in April 2008 they announced a deal that would bring its premium voice services to nearly 100 million Yahoo Messenger users more. The deal proved crucial for Jajah, which connected its 1 billionth call last Summer. And that was before it turned to Twitter to spread the voice service even more.

Jajah says it currently serves over 25 million consumers and business callers in more than 122 countries, and provides calling access to more than 200 destinations globally. It’s unclear how much revenue it is generating from these users, but it’s apparently enough – or has enough potential to scale and grow – to make for an interesting strategical acquisition target for companies with deep enough pockets to engage in a bidding war.

It’s odd to see O2 mentioned as one of the companies who’s sitting at the negotiation tables, and I consider Microsoft and Cisco to be more likely buyers. Both of them sit on heaps of cash and are undeniably acquisition-hungry, and Redmond has the added benefit of having entered into a partnership with Jajah on enterprise IP communication solutions.

The price range seems to be on the high end, but that’s what happens when a bidding war goes the way the company that’s on the table (and its financial backers) would want it to go.

We’re cataloging this as a solid, plausible rumor for now and will update with more information / confirmation as soon as it comes in.

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Cisco is at it again. The company is acquiring the set-top box business of one of China’s largest cable companies, DVN, for $44.5 million. This is peanuts compared to Cisco’s latest acquisitions including the recent acquisition of ScanSafe for $183 million. A few weeks ago, Cisco announced a $2.9 billion acquisition of mobile networking infrastructure provider Starent Networks, which followed the $3 billion acquisition of video video-conferencing company Tandberg in late September.

Under the terms of the agreement, approximately $17.5 million will be paid up front, with an additional maximum amount of $27 million to be paid over four years based on sales performance. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2010.

Cisco is looking to boost it’s cable business offerings with this acquisition. Cisco says the Chinese cable market is currently the largest in the world with 160 million subscribers and is predicted to grow to as many as 200 million over the next three to five years. DVN’s box unit will become part of Cisco’s International Cable Business Unit within the Service Provider Video Technology Group.

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Cisco has added another company to its coffers with the acquisition of ScanSafe for $183 million. A few weeks ago, Cisco announced a $2.9 billion acquisition of mobile networking infrastructure provider Starent Networks, which followed the $3 billion acquisition of video video-conferencing company Tandberg in late September.

ScanSafe provides software-as- a-service (SaaS) Web security solutions for large and small businesses. Tom Gillis, Ciscos’s VP and general manager of its security technology business unit, said in the release that the acquisition would help further Cisco’s vision “to build a borderless network security architecture that combines network and cloud-based services.” ScanSafe’s service will be integrated with Cisco’s AnyConnect VPN Client, a virtual private network (VPN) product to offer a cloud-security service.

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2010. While Cisco has always implemented a strategy of acquisitions, the fact that it has opened up its purse strings three time in the past month is a good sign for tech M&A overall.

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Cisco is on a buying spree this month. This morning it announced a $2.9 billion acquisition of mobile networking infrastructure provider Starent Networks, which follows on the heels of another $3 billion acquisition announcement two weeks go for Two weeks ago it announced the $3 billion acquisition of video video-conferencing company Tandberg.

You add $3 billion here and $3 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.

Cisco has always been a large acquirer, and the fact that it is opening its purse strings again is a good sign for tech M&A overall. But these are relatively large bets for Cisco, which needs to keep at the forefront of networking technologies. The Starent acquisition gives it a strong play in mobile data networks as carriers migrate to 3G and 4G platforms. Broadband is moving to mobile, and Cisco needs to be there.

If this acquisition helps it compete more effectively against the likes of Ericsson and Nokia Siemens, mobile data networks could become one of its fastest growing businesses.

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By 2013, annual global IP traffic will reach two-thirds of a zettabyte, according to a new forecast of IP traffic issued by Cisco today. What is a zettabyte? It is a trillion gigabytes, dummy. (I had to look that up too). And that number represents more than a fivefold increase in IP traffic from today. (See the forecast in the tables below).

What is driving this growth is video. Cisco forecasts that 90 percent of consumer IP traffic (which makes up the majority of total IP traffic) will be video in 2013. Cisco also predicts that mobile data traffic will also be overtaken by video, reaching 64 percent of total mobile IP traffic by 2013. Part of this might be wishful thinking on Cisco’s part, which needs broadband usage growth to continue apace in order to sell its networking gear. But part of it is also the fact that these numbers are based on the percentage of bits traveling over those broadband pipes, and it doesn’t take a lot of fat video files to fill those up.

Cisco is a big believer in the growth of mobile video, expecting it to grow from 33 petabytes a month in 2008 to 2,184 petabytes (or 2 exabytes) a month in 2013, which represents a 131 percent compound annual growth rate. (No wonder it bought the maker of the Flip video camera). As impressive as those numbers sound, at that point, mobile data will only make up 4 percent of total IP traffic. (Good thing Apple finally decided to get with the program and add video to its upcoming iPhone 3GS). In the chart below, you can see how big a role Cisco expects video to play in mobile data traffic. Video is the green part of the bar graphs. Standalone data (dark blue) is also expected to grow quickly.

The devices expected to drive this 131 percent annual growth in mobile data are not so much current 3G mobile handsets, but next-gen “3.5G and above” (in green), as well as laptops and other portable computers (in orange). By 2013, I bet it will be pretty hard to tell the difference between those two segments. Until then, Cisco is offering free apps for the iPhone and Blackberry that lets you check your network speed on the go.

Table 1. Global IP Traffic, 2008-2013

Source: Cisco VNI, 2009

Table 1. Mobile Data Traffic 2008-2013

Source: Cisco, 2009

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Earlier this month we reported that Cisco Systems had acquired Pure Digital Technologies, the makers of the popular Flip Video cameras. Today, Cisco officially announced the deal, which was for $590 million in stock. (We had the price at “north of $500 million).

Pure Digital will become part of Cisco’s consumer business group, which includes Linksys home routers and set-top boxes from its acquisition of Scientific-Atlanta. Cisco is calling the Flip cameras a new form of “visual networking,” whatever that means. In reality, the Flip is built for the YouTube generation. It is designed to take videos and immediately upload the to the Web. (Its output is a handy USB stick that flips open and plugs in directly to a computer). In other words, it is a device that encourages activities that consume a lot of bandwidth. As a networking company, Cisco wants you to use as much bandwidth as possible.

It is also looking for new growth markets across consumer devices, enterprise Web communication apps (like WebEx, Postpath, and Jabber), and even into enterprise servers and storage.

Pure Digital has raised $68 million over the past five years from Sequoia, Benchmark, Steamboat Ventures,and others.

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Flip cameras – dead simple and small video devices that are tailored towards users who want to upload video to the Internet – have become massively popular. One source says the company has sold more than $200 million worth of the tiny cameras in the last couple of years. Based on reviews of the recently released Flip Mino HD, we’re not surprised. The devices cost between $130 and $230 and have spawned a large group of copy cat competitors.

One potential buyer, says a source, is Cisco, which has been more active recently in acquisitions. Ned Hooper, Cisco’s chief M&A guy, is said to be actively looking to buy or invest in consumer startups that offer high-bandwith-using services. A hot startup like Flip, which is helping to fuel the explosion in user generated video (much of which makes its way online), fits in perfectly with that strategy.

The company is backed by Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, Crescendo Ventures, Focus Ventures, Morgan Stanley, AllianceBernstein and Steamboat Ventures (the venture capital arm of the Walt Disney Company) and has raised at least $68 million in venture funding.

Update: We’re getting another source that says this “is a done deal,” that Cisco is confirmed as the buyer and that the price is “north of $500 million.” Founder and CEO Jonathan Kaplan is said to be taking around $80 million off the table personally. This hasn’t been confirmed.

Update: It’s a done deal.

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Layoffs in the tech sector are accelerating.  It took exactly three weeks for tech layoffs to surge to 300,000, according to our Layoff Tracker. Since late January, when the tracker hit 200,000 layoffs, another 100,000 job eliminations have been announced or completed. In contrast, it took five weeks for layoffs in the tech industry to hit the 200,000 mark, and four months for layoffs to hit 100,000 last December. The total number of layoffs since we began tracking since the financial crisis began in late August is 300,093.

The past few weeks have particularly brutal for the technology space, with substantial layoffs announced by Pioneer (10,000), Cisco (3,000), Panasonic (15,000), NEC (20,000), Electronic Arts (1100) and AOL (700). Even Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, who both managed to avoid layoffs in the past few months, were forced to make cuts to their workforces. And Google, who was immune to layoffs until late January, continued giving pink-slips in the past three weeks with the company’s exit from radio. Sadly, a few start-ups weren’t able to weather the storm, with eBaum’s World cutting all of its workforce.

Obviously the tech industry is not immune to the current economic climate, and if the past three weeks are any indication, things could still get worse for the tech space before they get better. Maybe that economic stimulus plan will help turn the tide.

If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article. (For who is hiring, check out our job board).

Below is a list of late January and February layoffs from our tracker:

• Total Layoffs: 426
• Total Employees: 300,093

Company	Date	Location	#	%	Source
Sapient	February 14, 2009	BANGALORE	300	8%	THE TIMES OF INDIA
Google (Audio Ads)	February 12, 2009	Mountain View, CA	40		Google Blog
Pioneer	February 12, 2009	worldwide	10,000	25%	Reuters
Nokia	February 12, 2009	Finland	625		Business-Standard
AMCC	February 12, 2009		100	17%	Yahoo
NetApp	February 9, 2009	USA	480	6%	U. K. Register
Cisco	February 5, 2009	San Jose, CA	3,000	4%	BusinessWeek
Wall Street Journal, News Corp.	February 5, 2009	New York, NY	14	2%	PaidContent.org
LA Times, The Tribune Co.	February 5, 2009	Los Angeles, CA	300		LA Times
About.com	February 5, 2009	New York, NY	19	10%	Rueters
Panasonic	February 4, 2009	Tokyo, Japan	15,000	5%	Bloomberg
THQ	February 4, 2009	Agoura Hills, CA	600	24%	SIlicon Alley Insider
Electronic Arts	February 3, 2009	Redwood City, CA	1,100	11%	TechTrader Daily
Bloomberg	February 3, 2009	New York, NY	100		Reuters
The Walt Disney Co.	January 31, 2009	New York, NY	200	5%	LA Times
eBaum’s World	January 31, 2009	San Francisco, CA	13		NewTeeVee
Broadcom	January 30, 2009	Worldwide	200	3%	scoalTECH
NEC	January 30, 2009	Wordwide	20,000	7%	NYT
Zazzle	January 30, 2009	Redwood City, CA	40	15%	TechCrunch
Freescale	January 30, 2009	Worldwide	2,400	10%	Austin American Statesman
Hitachi	January 30, 2009	Worldwide	7,000		BBC
Sierra Wireless	January 29, 2009	Vancouver, BC	56	10%	Fierce Wireless
Teradyne	January 29, 2009	North Reading, MA	532	14%	Boston.com
Toshiba	January 29, 2009	Tokyo, Japan	4,500		EETimes
Nexon Games	January 28, 2009	Vancouver, BC, Canada	90	100%	Gamasutra
AOL	January 28, 2009	New York, NY	700	10%	TechCrunch
Citrix	January 28, 2009			10%	Reuters
SAP	January 28, 2009	Walldorf, Germany	3,000	6%	SAP
Parametric Technology Corp (PTC)	January 28, 2009		250	5%	Reuters.com
Skyworks	January 28, 2009	Woburn, MA	150	4%	StreetInsider.com
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	January 27, 2009	Palo Alto, CA	113	8%	LAw.com
STMicroelectronics	January 27, 2009		4,500		EETimes
IBM	January 26, 2009	Armonk, NY	2,850	1%	WSJ
Texas Instrument	January 26, 2009	Dallas	3,400	12%	EETimes
Sprint Nextel	January 26, 2009	Overland Park, Kansas	8,000	14%	Bloomberg
Philips	January 26, 2009	Amsterdam, Netherlands	6,000	5%	AP
Fox Interactive Media	January 26, 2009	Los Angeles, CA	100	5%	TechCrunch
Unisys	January 26, 2009	Global	1,300	4%	Computing.co.uk

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Cisco announced today that it has acquired Jabber, an open-source IM and presence protocol used by Google Talk and Gizmo, for an undisclosed sum.

Cisco will try to use Jabber as a means of improving its messaging offerings in the business world. Jabber’s technology enables collaboration across a wide array of presence systems such as, Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Sametime, AOL AIM, and Google, which made it an ideal target for the company.

“Enterprise organizations want an extensible presence and messaging platform that can integrate with business process applications and easily adapt to their changing needs,” said Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice president, Collaboration Software Group. “With the acquisition of Jabber, we will be able to extend the reach of our current instant messaging service and expand the capabilities of our collaboration platform. Our intention is to be the interoperability benchmark in the collaboration space.”

The amount of the acquisition were not announced, but considering Cisco’s desire to break into the enterprise IM space, especially in the face of new enterprise messaging services like Yammer and Present.ly, it was a hole Cisco needed to fill.

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Not a bad outcome for a company whose software development team is based in Bulgaria. PostPath previously raised a total of $30 million. Its most recent round was a $15 million series C in January, 2007. Investors included JAFCO Ventures, Matrix Partners and Worldview Technology Partners.

As software moves to the cloud, Cisco wants to capture some of the higher margins that go along with that, as opossed to simply pushing boxes that quickly decline in value. Many of us already rely exclusively on Web-based email, but corporations are only now making the shift.

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Who do you trust more, Google or Toyota? The answer might depend on where you live. In its annual corporate reputation survey of 60,000 people worldwide, the Reputation Institute finds that Google scores highest in the U.S., but is No. 2 worldwide after Toyota. On the global list, Ikea is No. 3, Johnson & Johnson is No. 5, and Walt Disney is No. 12. Apple doesn’t even make it into the top 25 (see below).

Using the same data, Forbes breaks out the top 75 companies in the U.S. In the U.S. alone, Apple is No. 17, HP is No. 18, Intel is No. 19, Dell is No. 25, IBM is No. 35 and Microsoft comes in at No. 43. Bringing up the rear is Motorola at No. 50, Cisco at No. 55, CBS at No. 62, and American Express at No. 75. (See partial list below).

These rankings are based on an opinion poll, but they just don’t seem right to me. How can Dell be No. 25, with all of its customer service issues last year? And why is American Express, which regularly ranks as one of the most admired companies in the world and one of the top brands, dead last?

It is instructive to compare some of these rankings to the top 100 brands, as measured by an estimate of brand value. (See below). Google, again is No.1. Microsoft is No. 3, IBM is No. 6, Apple is No. 7, Toyota is No. 12, HP is No. 16, American Express is No. 20, Intel is No. 27, and Dell is No. 41. About the only company the two rankings agree on is HP. These brand rankings feel like a better measure of reputation to me than the Reputation Institute’s survey.

What do you think? Take our own poll. Vote for the companies you trust or admire the most. Multiple answers are allowed.

Editor’s note: I put in BMW twice by mistake in our poll, so please only vote once for BMW if you vote for it at all. I’m keeping the existing poll up rather than put up a new one and throwing away the votes that have already been cast.

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SoonR, a backup service focused on enabling access to your files from mobile devices, has raised $9.5M from Cisco Systems in a Series B round of financing. This brings the total funding for this two-year-old company up to $15.5M.

SoonR synchs your files to cloud storage via a downloadable client that runs in the background of both Macs and PCs. When you’re on the go, you can access these files with the web browser in your mobile phone. While the user interface served up will be tailored to the capabilities of your phone, the functionality will always be the same; you can view, print, share, and fax files. You can also a browse backup copies of your emails and talk on Skype.

In September 2006, we wrote about how SoonR had partnered with WebEx (since bought by Cisco for $3.2 billion) so that WebEx conferences could be accessed via SoonR on the mobile. This recent round of funding should help forge even greater connections between SoonR and Cisco’s technologies.

If you’re an American, you would be forgiven for not having heard of SoonR since the company has primarily sought user adoption in Europe. It has partnered with many European carriers such as TeliaSonera of Denmark. CEO Patrick McVeigh says that European carriers are more willing to adopt features like SoonR because there is more competition among them, and issues like coverage – a major topic of advertising here in the states – have already been solved. He expects the United States to reach the point of where Europe is currently at in this respect by around 2009.

You can sign up for a free version of SoonR through its website, but you’ll have to pay a premium through a carrier if you want more than 100mb of storage. McVeigh says that despite SoonR’s focus on the mobile access of files, 60 to 80% of usage is still through the PC browser, suggesting that it serves as a decent all-purpose backup solution as well.

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Webex is still ubiquitous (I am asked to view a WebEx presentation almost daily), but it’s expensive and bulky. And if you aren’t on a newish Windows PC, there’s a good chance it isn’t going to work properly. WebEx is exactly the kind of a company that is being disrupted by new web startups, who are creating cheaper and better alternatives to older web applications.

A bunch of startups have launched over the last year to provide cheaper and more flexible alternatives, including open source “clones” of WebEx functionality. Teamslide, DimDim (open source), 1videoconference (open source), Vyew, Live Meeting and SlideShare are all competitive with WebEx in one way or another, and all are better at cross platform collaboration.

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