Just finished watching this lovely talk & interactive session by John chambers titled ,”The Power of the Network to Change the Way We Work, Live, Play, and Learn”.
John Chambers provides rich evidence of the way Cisco Systems has leveraged its core philosophy into a durable high tech success story. Chambers' basics:
- Catching market transitions;
- Supply an educated workforce capable of teamwork;
- Providing the appropriate infrastructure; and supportive government.
He sees that in this globalized world of ibusiness, working this wisdom into a viable marketplace plan "is like a multidimensional chess game". He takes the argument further to demonstrate how only the paranoid survive, and Cisco's top 10 network IT competitors from a decade ago are gone. The networking business is indeed a competitive business – look at the marketcap swing of big competitive players like Juniper & Sycamore. Chambers accentuates the fact that decades ago, Cisco was imagining a future where there would be "access anywhere anytime via any device," and that Cisco weren't just going to build routers and switches, but went into storage, wireless, and security." His customer focus punch - "if you listen to customers in the right way, they'll tell you what market transitions are going on." He says while Cisco may be proud to be an American company but jobs will go wherever the best infrastructure, innovation and supportive government is.
You have to give it to Cisco – for holding on to a tight leadership position where things can change more rapidly, for an irrepressible appetite for acquisitions(some may say killing the promising), ability to spot upstarts and quickly move in to acquire or compete with them, coming out of tough times so well and more importantly despite all the acquisitions and tough times maintaining the image and branding of showing only correct results (its not for cisco to be forced to rewrite books of accounts, or be vulnerable for SEC investigations or turnover of key executives on such suspected charges) – Cisco's record stand tall. While some may still point out about impending new typesof competition and a noticeable lack of spark in its new initiatives and arguably under leveraging acquired assets.
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