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Cisco to approach Oakland As about ballpark branding(InfoWorld Daily Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Cisco Systems Inc. is warming up for what could be a grand slam deal with the Oakland A's major-league baseball team. The dominant networking vendor has scheduled a press conference for 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at its headquarters in San Jose, California. According to news reports, Cisco has been working out a deal to build a high-tech stadium for the A's in Fremont, California, a suburban city between San Jose and Oakland. In an announcement Monday, Cisco said that the press conference would provide information on "Cisco Field and ballpark village." Last month at the Oracle Corp. OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Cisco President and Chief Executive Officer John Chambers described a ballpark of the future at which fans could use their smart phones to buy electronic tickets and later to keep score and hit an instant-replay icon to re-watch a controversial play. There would even be a place for the vendor's new TelePresence high-definition videoconferencing system, which could be used to show the game in restaurants at the ballpark and let diners contact remote friends to watch along with them. A Cisco-branded ballpark could be an advertising bonanza for Cisco, which recently has been breaking out of its stodgy enterprise LAN foundation with technology for home entertainment and for IP (Internet Protocol) TV. The San Francisco Bay Area is rife with high-tech-branded sports parks. The A's currently play at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland. The San Jose Sharks' home is the HP Pavilion, and the major-league baseball Giants are based at AT&T Park in San Francisco -- formerly Pacific Bell Park. Networking vendor 3Com Corp. once affixed its name to the San Francisco 49ers' football stadium in San Francisco, which is now named for home-entertainment components maker Monster Cable Products Inc. Copyright 2006 InfoWorld Media Group, Inc. |