Cisco going consumer, names new CMO

Cisco Systems is making an effort to enter more strongly into the consumer electronics marketplace, and has named a new Chief Marketing Officer, Susan Bostrom.

"Cisco is pretty ambitious. They are established in the business marketing, but not in the home," said Marty Brandt, partner at San Francisco-based consultancy TrueBrand. "They want to extend out of B2B. It'll be interesting to see how they take home electronics to the marketplace."

Last year, Cisco made numerous acquisitions to help it make a splash in the CE field. In November, it spent $6.9 billion to acquire Scientific Atlanta, which makes set-top cable boxes. Last summer, it spent $61 million to buy Kiss Technologies, maker of DVD players.

Cisco is said to be planning new home entertainment products, coming out of the Linksys division, which markets home networking products.