LAS VEGAS – Cisco Systems engineers have their work cut out for them according to CEO John Chambers who announced an aggressive plan to introduce a new technology every four months.
During his keynote address at the annual Cisco Networkers user conference here, which drew approximately 10,000 customers and partners, Chambers demonstrated one of Cisco’s newest developments: telepresence.
The technology, which Chambers said won’t be available until later this year, will allow business groups to communicate and collaborate using voice and video conferencing.
“Intelligence between different networks, this will allow new business architectures to set in and provide higher productivity,” said Chambers.
He added that up to 50 per cent of productivity gains over the next several years will be through collaboration.
The idea, said Chambers, is to allow users to interact from anywhere, anytime, using any device. “I’m asking the engineers to take a Star Trek approach to building telepresence.” It’s a beam me up Scottie scenario, he added.
“We stay where there are network connections to all products. Advanced technology like digital video and telepresence depends on customer response and how they see opportunity for new products,” said Chambers.
Making business sense
According to Zeus Kerravala, vice-president of infrastructure and security research at Boston-based Yankee Group, telepresence is interesting but still a few years away from making it into the mainstream.
One piece that is missing, said Kerravala, is what this actually means for the business. “If you’re an end-to-end Cisco environment, and the network empowers a hospital, how can doctors provide better patient care? How can teachers educate better? How can lawyers handle more cases?” he said.
To tie in the needs of the business, Chambers said it’s important to listen to CEOs and CIOs and begin to align both IT and business goals. “We intend to lead not just in technology, but also in how we redo business models.”
One of the company’s goals over the next three to five years, he added, is building an intelligent information network that would combine both business and technology architectures.
“The message around Cisco as a platform, the network getting more intelligent, ubiquitous connectivity, delivering applications anywhere on the network all makes sense,” said Kerravala. “The network does matter and particularly for Cisco, they want the Cisco network to matter.”
