Cisco networking systems and technologies

Cisco

According to the Cisco video (Cisco, 2014) SAP Big Data Solutions will enhance the firm in a variety of ways, especially when complementing existing Cisco (and SAP) software and applications already in use within the current Cisco system. SAP (SAP, 2014) is a German software company with offices in a large number of countries including the United States. The company has been in existence since the early 1970's and has a number of wide ranging software applications that assist companies, especially in the analysis of data.

SAP's HANA platform supports the analysis of a large amount of data in real time. This support allows companies such as Cisco to approach customers with effective and efficient computing data analysis support no matter how large the customer or need for parallel processing. The SAP HANA studio allows for "administration of the HANA database, and modeling of the data in HANA" (SAP video) even when installed on hardware other than the HANA appliance. This feature is a key selling point for Cisco since many of the customers they approach appreciate the efficiency and cost-saving that the HANA offers. Cisco, and Cisco customers, are oftentimes looking for immediate answers to complex questions that can difficult to ascertain when the analysis of huge amounts of data is involved. HANA allows Cisco to process and analyze that data in an environment that most often does not affect the customer's ongoing day-to-day computing operations.

One of the risks to using HANA however is that there is a certain loss of data control that many large companies (and small) do not wish to lose. Therefore, it would likely behoove Cisco to be cautious in its HANA usage; ensuring that the data is kept confidential is a key point to its successful implementation. SAP, of course, states that "the software helps you move, improve and govern your data" (SAP, p.4) and it does this with complete confidentiality.

Cisco Systems is an information technology (IT) company providing such services as data centers, networking, collaboration, virtualization, Cloud solutions, servers, security services, and Networking software. Cisco is a publicly traded company on NASDAQ and its recent price has hovered around the mid twenties. Based on Cisco's financials, the company's most recent yearly revenues were approximately $17,820 (in millions) with earnings per share of .64. Cash dividends for the year were .34.