Cisco's plans might include data centers, might not include Flip camcorders

Speculation has been rampant this week around Cisco on a couple of fronts. The company is variously rumored to be (a) eyeing an acquisition of Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the Flip camcorder, and (b) planning the rollout of a data center server that will rival high-end offerings from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell.

While Cisco was reticent about the details, the world's major enterprise router maker confirmed to Reuters earlier this week that a data center announcement -- involving new technologies and partners -- is in the works for this coming Monday. However, neither Cisco nor Pure Digital has confirmed to anyone that rumors of a Cisco buyout of the Flip camcorder manufacturer are in any way true.

Although an acquisition of Pure Digital would certainly fill out Cisco's fledgling consumer strategy all the way to the proverbial edge, the rumor seems to fly in the face of recent statements by Cisco CEO John Chambers. At the Goldman Sachs technology conference in New York City about three weeks ago, Chambers said publicly that he has "no interest" in buying a consumer device company.

Cisco has made a number of acquisitions in recent years, including Internet conferencing provider WebEx, home network equipment maker Linksys, and instant messaging service Jabber, to name just a few.

Speaking at the Sachs conference at the end of February, Chambers acknowledged that Cisco will also make "multiple acquisitions" in the future, and he added that "most of them will be small." But Chambers also told investors that, "Within the consumer side of the house, I have no interest in a device."

Chambers' remarks were taken at the time to rule out another rumored acquisition, that of BlackBerry mobile device maker Research In Motion. However, Pure Digital's Flip -- a pocket-sized product for shooting video and posting it on the Web -- is nothing if not a consumer device, either.

It's also the case that, about six weeks before his Goldman Sachs appearance, Chambers declared at CES that, "Video is the next killer app."

Yet in his keynote speech at the show in Las Vegas, the CEO made no mention of camcorders, focusing instead on Web-based video conferencing as a replacement for global business travel. There, he also talked at CES about Cisco's expansion to the consumer side, but the discussion was more or less confined to Cisco's new EOS platform and LinkSys Media Hub.

Cisco's EOS will distribute entertainment media to homes, deliver content recommendations, and monitor consumers' home networks, Chambers said. Announced at CES, Cisco's LinkSys Media Hub is a device for storing and organizing multimedia content.

Pure Digital is thriving in the camcorder niche. The seven-year-old company has raised $68 million in venture funding. With about $200 million in Flip recorders sold already, the start-up is reportedly the top seller of camcorders in the US and second only to Sony on a worldwide basis.

Cisco already owns cable set-top box manufacturer Scientific Atlanta, in addition to Linksys. So the acquisition of consumer device maker Pure Digital wouldn't exactly be without precedent. On the other hand, maybe people should just take Chambers at his word. Unless company strategy has changed markedly since late February, Cisco just isn't interested in picking up another consumer device maker right now.