Roundup: Cisco, Fortress, Isilon

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

Cisco reports fourth quarter and fiscal 2010 results. Cisco (CSCO) saw its shares fall about 7 percent in  after-hours trading after the company reported its fourth quarter and fiscal year results for the period ended July 31, 2010. Net sales for the fourth quarter were $10.8 billion, up strongly from last year but just short of analysts' expectations. "This was yet another very strong quarter with a number of record financial results for Cisco, closing the fiscal year in a tremendous position of strength—a compelling financial model, a well-tuned innovation engine and solid execution on our growth strategy," said John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco.

Fortress reports second quarter 2010 results.  Fortress International Group, Inc. (FIGI) announced its financial results Wednesday for the three and six months ended June 30, 2010.  Fortress reported $22.7 in revenue, an increase of 88 percent over last year.  "With our healthy backlog of $51.5 million, combined with the business we expect to close during the second half of the year, we expect to continue our positive trend as we move into the balance of 2010," said CEO Thomas Rosato. "Our confidence is strengthened by the high level of RFP and RFQ activity coming from new and existing customers, both domestically and internationally." Fortress reported an increase in net income from continuing operations of $0.4 million, compared with a net loss of $13.6 million in 2009.

Isilon selected by Sony Imageworks. Isilon (ISLN) announced that Sony Imageworks, the Academy Award winning visual effects company behind "Alice in Wonderland" and the "Spider-Man" trilogy, has deployed Isilon scale-out storage to help power its leading-edge post-production pipeline.  Sony Imageworks simplified data management by consolidating a wide range of file-based applications onto a single file system using Isilon's X-Series, featuring its OneFS(R) operating system. "We're all about creating visually stunning imagery," said Nicholas Bali, senior software engineer, Sony Pictures Imageworks. "To do so, we need every artist focused on the job at hand, not on storage management. With Isilon, we can do just that, because it's simple to manage and easy to scale. Now we can generate more iterations in the same amount of time and turn out better imagery, which leads to a better product."  Imageworks will leverage its own large Linux compute cluster, an Isilon 36000X and the Isilon SmartQuotas data management application as well as the SyncIQ software application to replicate data between primary and off-site 36000X clusters.