The Architect: Q&A with John Chambers

Another game-changing acquisition at the level of Tandberg, will we see one this year? You will see constant game- changing acquisitions. We don’t do them just to acquire. We do them when the market is right, when the price is right, and we try to catch market inflection points.

If you’re setting your strategy off your competition, by definition, you are two to three years behind. When our competitors, who haven’t been able to acquire, start to acquire. When our competitors who haven’t believed in a vertical stack begin to do a vertical stack.

So, to me, it’s about execution.

Any holes in the portfolio?

Constantly. The nice thing is we’re right on this architectural issue and there are going to be constant holes you’ve got to firm up. Security is our No. 1 emphasis across the whole company, mainly because it’s our customers’ No. 1 issue. There is no such thing as a secure data centre or network. That is huge for the future and huge for the industry.

So that’s an area [where] we have to do dramatically better – you can’t unless you’re in the data centre, unless you’re in enterprise, unless you’re in service provider, unless you’re in wireless, unless you go all the way to consumer, any device to any content.

I don’t know how to resolve the issue without this. On the positive side, it’s great it’s the focus. On the negative side, you’ve got to say, ‘What took you so long? If you’re the only architectural play, which you probably will be, why don’t you move faster?’ And that’s probably fair criticism.

Security in and of itself can cause a huge upgrade cycle. It’s an architectural play.

prospects are as bright as they were a few quarters ago,” Scott Dennehy, engagement manager and senior analyst at Technology Business Research, wrote in a recent research note.

“While TBR believes Cisco’s overall strategy is solid, the company may simply be too large and dispersed to achieve growth rates comparable to smaller and more-focused competitors.”

When it comes to its key networking competitors, many are looking to exploit Cisco’s aggression as hubris. HP, for example, has been relentless in touting HP Networking wins against Cisco and in December launched a trade-in program through which VARs can save 20 percent on HP networking gear if they trade in certain Cisco Nexus or Catalyst switches.

Attacks all around

Many of Cisco’s other competitors, from Juniper Networks and Brocade on the data side to the marquee names in wireless, videoconferencing and WAN optimisation, have also stayed on the attack against Cisco, painting Cisco’s end-to-end architectural vision as too expensive, too closed, too proprietary.

Some analysts have taken up that mantle as well. A much-circulated November 2010 report by Gartner took aim at Cisco and the idea of single-vendor dominance in networking and infrastructure.

“After interviewing various organisations that have introduced a second vendor into their Cisco infrastructures, it is clear that in most cases today there is no financial, operational or functional basis for this argument,” wrote analysts Mark Fabbi and Debra Curtis.

“The reality is that a single-vendor Cisco network isn’t necessarily less complex, easier to manage or more reliable than a network with multiple vendors when implemented with best practices.”

Chambers acknowledges Cisco's monolithic structure may be a rod for its own back: "On the negative side, you’ve got to say, ‘What took you so long? If you’re the only architectural play, which you probably will be, why don’t you move faster?’

"And that’s probably fair criticism."