Hardware: Hot!

Hey, what can you deduce from the twin blow-out quarters just reported by Cisco and Hewlett-Packard? Maybe this: Hardware is back!

We've gone through these cycles -- seven, eight years ago, a company could sell servers and networking gear and make tons of money and have a stock multiple that could make even Henry Blodget pay attention. And then everyone decided hardware was a commodity kind of business and all the money fled to the Web, and then Web-based services. (Nobody seems to salivate over software plays anymore. Who wants to go to a cocktail party and brag that they just bought a hunk of SAP stock?)

But apparently we're back in a hardware upswing. Maybe all that used stuff from defunct dot-bomb companies finally either got soaked up or is now too outdated to be worth using.

UPDATE: Barron's doesn't think my comments about hardware hold water...

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