The Architect: Q&A with John Chambers

The second thing is there hasn’t been a new hardware player in the data centre for decades, and contrary to all the prognostications, we are breaking away there. We have very much established ourselves. We are in the top three x86 players, we’re winning a lot in the cloud, which is the second generation of virtualisation data centres, the product is winning most of the performance awards, and it isn’t servers separate from the network separate from storage, it’s that combined, first in a physical data centre, then in the cloud, then all the way in your home. And [we] build VDI and other capabilities off of it.

The third area you think about in terms of the approach is video. Video is the next voice. When we built a router, nine years ago now, that did a billion phone calls – voice, if you will – everyone thought we were crazy.

Of course, [5000] or 6000 CRS-1s later, and 500 customers-plus, we are now building a router than does a billion videos.

 Solution providers and the industry as a whole hear often about your 30 adjacencies, or the 30 to 50 adjacencies. One thing we consistently hear from channel partners is that they are overwhelmed by the level of opportunity, from smart grid, to video and health care and the rest. How do you want them to prioritise? What do you want partners to go after?

They’re the same issues we have. First of all, be realistic given the market. Which areas do you have differentiation and which areas do you want to invest in? The good news is it’s a portfolio play.

I talk about the very top of our big bets, and I separate them into categories. Small to medium business, IP next-generation network, borderless networks, and then the next generation, data centre virtualisation, video, and then the next generation after that, clouds and what we’re doing with EMC, and smart grid.

You think of it in buckets and those are the major moves we’re going to make. Then we’ll do a portfolio play and tie them all together. I wouldn’t try to be all things to all people. I would say based on the business case, where do you move, but what has to change is you don’t want to take on a competitor on a single, stand- alone product. When I talk with the leaders of large retailers, you can imagine I don’t talk routers and switches, I talk about how does their physical world come together with your virtual world.