The Ash Economy How the volcano eruption exposed the vulnerability of the global supply chain.

The Big Money (Apr 26 2010)

1. On Monday, April 19, the closing of Cisco Systems' $3.3 billion acquisition of Tandberg, a Norwegian teleconferencing company, served as a product demonstration. Marthin De Beer, Cisco's (CSCO) senior vice president of emerging technologies, whose flight from San Jose, Ca., to Oslo had been canceled, and Tandberg CEO Frederik Halvorsen held a virtual press conference using the merged firms' equipment. As the ash cloud emanating from Iceland wreaked havoc on global business travel, Cisco's Telepresence service (think a very high-end Skype) boomed. Competitor Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) said that one client, a pharmaceutical firm, doubled the use of its videoconferencing service last week. Thanks to cheap and pervasive information technology, Cisco's Telepresence and its competitors have emerged as a sort of redundant network for business meetings. When face-to-face meetings are impossible, executives can go to a specially equipped conference room, flip a switch, and share bad jokes and ... (Read Full Article)

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