It's been a year since Cisco Chief Globalization Officer, Wim Elfrink pulled up stakes and moved his family to Bangalore, India, prompting his mother-in-law to ask what the family had done to deserve it.

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Cisco's cost-saving efforts continue as the networking giant is reported to have canceled some key meetings over the coming year. Corporate Meetings & Incentives is reporting that Cisco has scrapped plans for its annual Global Sales Meeting scheduled for August in San Francisco.

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Cisco recently announced a $100 million investment in product development, service and support for businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Ken Presti talks to Cisco Vice President Andrew Sage about the company's focus on the small business market, which Cisco says is worth $10 billion globally. Sage outlines the three tiers of small businesses that Cisco will be targeting, and how the company plans to serve these customers through partners.

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WIN A MICROSOFT TRAINING COURSE WORTH UP TO $2,995 FROM GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE
Global Knowledge, a Microsoft Subnet learning partner, is sponsoring this month's training giveaway worth up to $2,995 for one lucky reader. Deadline is Dec. 31.
Entry details here.

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As U.S. families prepare to gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, Cisco released its 2008 Corporate Social Responsibility Report to highlight the company's efforts to "improve the health, welfare, and sustainability of its business" and in communities that are less fortunate.

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Overheard at Networking-Forum.com: Members discussing how the the smaller ASR 9000 box pictured has  a "Fisher Price, my first router" look to it. Another reader commented that Cisco's gear has been resembling a kid's toy ever since the Nexus 7000 when Cisco started adding rounded corners to its boxes.

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HP viewed its ProCurve division as a stepchild under former CEO Carly Fiorina's tenure, but when Mark Hurd took over, the new CEO nurtered the unit from contributing a few hundred million dollars in annual sales to some $1 billion.

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So it appears that Cisco is doing more than 'strongly encouraging' its staff to take time off between Dec. 22 and Dec. 24, as previously reported; it is now  shutting down facilities during the week between Christmas and New Year, Cisco confirmed. The plan is part of Cisco's bid to shave $1 billion for fiscal 2009.

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Cisco announced the winners of its Digital Cribs competition aimed at budding movie makers in which entrants were asked to film and interview someone "who has a passion for digital technology and is using it in their home in a unique and creative way." Winners hail from all over the world, including the uber cool artist Robin Glass of Brazil who interviewed is himself, and Spike McKenzie who filmed Australian high schoo

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Cisco and IBM have signed up as among the first members of start-up RPX Corp., established to protect members against litigation from so-called patent trolls - a  derogatory term for companies that acquire and license intellectual property and assert them in court to win damages from vendor companies. RPX says it puchases key patents that could be used offensively against vendors.

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Cisco's involvement in Saudi Arabia is being reported both in awe and with suspicion. Daniel Turner reporting in BOX Forex describes how a late-arriving Cisco delegation led by Senior VP Paul Mountford traveled at 110 miles per hour to get to a groundbreaking ceremony for the King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia's showcase tech city.

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Cisco to make a takeover bid for Riverbed? Could that ever happen? Cisco Subnet blogger Larry Chaffin believes so. In his latest blog post, Larry also predicts that Nortel could be bought by either Juniper, AT&T or Qwest. Larry writes: "Riverbed is looking more and more like a takeover target, they have good numbers even in this down economy and the stock is down just because of the markets.

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Cisco workers are urged to find ways to celebrate the holidays for free this year as bosses in the Cisco Develpment Organization have axed company-funded shindigs. Valleyway says it was sent an internal memo, which states that: "All CDO teams are encouraged to celebrate the holidays, but try to find creative ways that result in no cost to the company.

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Cisco's total number of job listings plummeted 93% in the last week, according to Aaran Rakers, an analyst at Wachovia Capital Markets who tracks job listings at the networking giant. As reported by Tech Trader Daily, Rakers says that Cisco advertised 1,830 openings a week ago and today it is listing just 128 jobs.

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This week's sneak peek of a Cisco Press book chapter is an extract from SSL Remote Access VPNs (Network Security) by Qiang Huang and Jazib Frahim.

Here's the Cisco Press blurb:

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Cisco was one of several investors that pumped $22 million into Finjan, a developer of competitive content security products. Cisco provides content security through its ASA 5500 Series appliances using technology from Trend Micro.

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Cisco has made its first step into the supercomputer big league. Lawrence Livermore National Labs is using Cisco Nexus as "a foundation" for its Hyperion Linux cluster. Hyperion is used for "national security, scientific computing and discovery, and to enhance U.S. competitiveness in high performance computing," according to this Cisco news release.

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An attendee to the recent Cisco annual shareholders' meeting wrote that he was close to tears after watching a video of Cisco CEO John Chambers' visit to the Sichuan Province of China, immediately after the area suffered a devastating earthquake last summer.

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Our favorite geek Jimmy Ray Purser, of Cisco Subnet's Networking Geek to Geek blog and also of Cisco's TechWise TV has started a new podcast series with us. Check out the latest episode in which Jimmy Ray talks to Scott Cunningham of Radianta, about the company's VoIP offerings for the healthcare, retail and emergency services sectors.

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There has been a heated debate as a result of this Network World story which asks the question of exactly how is it that Cisco claims the ASR 9000 can achieve 6.4Tbps of bandwidth with 400Gbps per slot.

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