Cisco’s growing again, and CEO John Chambers has called the beginning of a tech recovery. But don't assume this is the proverbial rising tide that's going to lift all boats.

First the good news: Cisco (CSCO) turned in a bang-up quarter. For the three months that ended on October 29, the seller of networking gear managed $9 billion in sales and 35 cents per share in profit, both of which outpaced even the most optimistic analyst expectations. Even better, Chambers said the current quarter will also shape up nicely – a promise that sent Cisco stock up a healthy 3% after hours.

But even in Cisco’s celebration, there were hints of caution. Though he signaled good results for this quarter, Chambers wasn’t willing to set sales and earnings targets for the rest of fiscal 2010, saying it’s too soon to assume that this recovery has legs. He asked analysts to maintain their ho-hum expectations for Cisco's financial performance, despite his apparent optimism – basically requesting that they keep the bar low, even though he feels more confident that he can clear it. More

A storied financier of startups expands — but its new businesses have yet to take root.

A year ago, when venture capital firm Sequoia Capital ordered its portfolio companies to slash costs in the face of a sick economy, even healthy businesses, such as LinkedIn and Zappos.com, complied.

As word of the edict spread, many non-Sequoia startups also trimmed their budgets — a testament to the venture firm's influence in Silicon Valley and beyond. In its 35 years in business Sequoia had nurtured the likes of Atari, Apple (AAPL), Cisco (CSCO), Yahoo (YHOO), and Google (GOOG). If it was bracing for the worst, the situation must be serious.

But just as Sequoia was commanding its upstarts to contract, the firm was plotting an ambitious expansion of its own. Throughout 2008 and into this year Sequoia tried entering entirely new businesses, hiring professional investors to build a hedge fund, as well as an asset-management group that would mimic the wealth-preservation approach popularized by major university endowments. More

Shaw is the latest non-technologist to ascend at Intel. Photo: Intel.

Who rules techland? Increasingly, it isn't the inmates.

In May, when Craig Barrett retired as chairman of Intel (INTC), the choice of his replacement marked a momentous occasion for the granddaddy of the semiconductor industry.

That Jane Shaw became nonexecutive chairman of Intel is a big deal, but not because she is Intel's first outsider to chair the board or because she is the first woman.

What makes her role noteworthy is that she is the first non-technologist in that seat. Yes, she has a science background, with a doctorate in physiology and a career in the pharmaceutical industry. But she's not a technologist in the Silicon Valley sense. More

On the face of it, Cisco’s bid to purchase Norwegian videoconferencing rival Tandberg for $2.98 billion looks like a crushing victory for Cisco. After all, CEO John Chambers has been a tireless advocate for Cisco’s version of the technology, using it to slash his travel budget and pitch a new way to work – and he’s nabbing Tandberg for a mere 11% premium over Wednesday closing stock price. (Tandberg trades on the Oslo Stock Exchange.)

Surely Tandberg must have seen the growing threat from Cisco (CSCO), and wilted under pressure?

Not exactly. Read the fine print, and this looks like a good deal for Tandberg for three reasons. More

Apple's (AAPL) "It's only rock and roll" event Wednesday triggered a flurry of fresh reports from analysts who track the stock, including Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, Caris's Robert Cihra, Needham's Charlie Wolf and RBC's Mike Abramsky. (See AppleInsider for a concise summary of their generally positive remarks.)

But we were particularly taken by the report issued Thursday morning by Brian Marshall, who took over the Apple beat at Broadpoint AmTech when Shaw Wu left for Kaufman Bros.

Borrowing a device Wu liked to use — and one that reflects the way investors talk about Apple on the financial boards — Marshall set it up as a debate between the Apple bulls and the Apple bears:

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Even with Yahoo deal Microsoft will continue to struggle — and lose money — online.

The anti-climactic deal of the year is now out.  Long after the sizzle faded from Microsoft's (MSFT) failed $40-billion-plus bid for  Yahoo (YHOO), the two companies announced Wednesday they'll do what sympathetic observers urged them to do two years ago. They'll stop competing on search and search-advertising technology, enabling them to combine forces against Google. (GOOG)

Critics frowned on Yahoo (where's the "boatloads" of upfront cash Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz promised she'd extract from Steve Ballmer?) and praised Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal going so far as suggesting the tide may turning in the tired monopolist's favor. Perhaps. Beyond the something-must-be-said-because-they-called-a-press-conference chatter, however, a few points to consider: More

The shrinking of the tech sector threatens creativity and new thinking

By Christopher Lochhead, strategy advisor and former chief marketing officer, Mercury Interactive

Is Silicon Valley at risk of becoming Detroit 2.0 — a company town dominated by a handful of big, uninspired conglomerates?

Lochhead advocates a mix of innovation and consolidation

Consolidation is replacing innovation as the hot strategy. During his company's battle for PeopleSoft, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison declared that the software industry has entered  a "period of contraction and consolidation."  

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophesy: Oracle has gobbled up at least a dozen more companies since it closed the PeopleSoft deal in 2005, and a big purchase of Sun Microsystems is pending. And other companies widely are expected to follow Oracle's acquisitive ways.

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On The Kudlow Report on CNBC, Jon Fortt discusses whether the tech rally still has legs.

Roundtable brings together top tech executives

Before there is Brainstorm Tech (the conference) there is Infotech Forty (the forum).

Fortune senior writer Jon Fortt and I are co-chairing an intimate event for a group of high-ranking technology executives whose jobs are becoming increasingly strategic in their corporations. No longer are these chief information officers and chief technology officers the folks who make company computers and software run; they play key roles in making sure their enterprises meet financial and other goals.

Attendees include Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, SAP tech chief Vishal Sikka, and Albert Cheng, executive vice president, digital media for Disney's ABC group. More

Can smarter networks save the planet?

Unlike many technology confabs the upcoming Brainstorm Tech event is produced by journalists with the aim of creating a conference that is an informative, lively and multifaceted as a feature article in a magazine. Fortune writers and editors always get good story ideas from Brainstorm Tech. But sometimes the conference anels and discussions evolve from stories we've already run in the magazine or online.

One such panel, taking place on the second afternoon of the conference, is Fear of a Dumb Planet, featuring Doug Eberhard, senior director and industry evangelist at Autodesk, Rick Hutley, Vice President Global Innovations, Cisco, and Bill Pulleyblank, Vice President, Center for Business Optimization, IBM's Global Business Services.  The conversation owes a big debt to a story that senior editor Jeff O'Brien wrote for our annual FORTUNE 500 issue. IBM's Grand Plan to Save the Planet is a sweeping look inside IBM's "Smarter Planet" effort to make the world a better place by bringing intelligence to dumb networks. Jeff, who is moderating the panel at Brainstorm, acknowledges in his story that IBM's Smarter Planet campaign is in many ways a not-so-veiled effort to secure federal stimulus money. But he also shows places where smarter networks are making a real difference in quality of life.