The networking giant’s new UK supremo, Phil Smith, talks to Dave Bailey about the impact collaborative tools and rich media content are having on the internet, and explains how new networking innovations are helping to combat climate change

Networking giant Cisco posted a set of first-quarter financial results last week showing an eight per cent increase in sales, but with profit down 0.2 per cent year on year. The firm recently announced Phil Smith as its new UK and Ireland vice president and chief executive. He has been with Cisco since its birth in 1984 when it employed 12 people ­ a figure that has since grown to more than 65,000 worldwide. Computing talked exclusively to Smith to discuss the challenges faced by the supplier.

How do you see the current financial turbulence affecting Cisco?

Phil Smith: Our game plan for the downturn will be centered on the increasing role we think intelligent networks will play in all forms of communication and IT, with the top objectives for Cisco being: next-generation company and next-generation customer relationships; collaboration technologies/Web 2.0; datacentre and virtualization; video; and globalization.

Given your focus on collaboration technologies, what is your view of how firms should deal with systems such as Facebook?

Phil Smith: The new generation of collaboration technologies has posed a big management issue, rather than a technology one. Systems such as these need to be deployed and built around this generation of workers ­ if you ban Facebook, you’re cutting off a whole community at the knees.

Next-generation collaboration technologies use a significant amount of internet bandwidth ­ do you think the web could become overloaded?

Phil Smith: The debate about whether the internet will become overloaded has been ongoing for years now. The statistics speak for themselves ­ the footprint of the average internet user is now one terabyte. This is a huge amount of data and when you add in factors such as increasing amounts of video streaming, the vast uploads of user-generated content, software-as-a-service and the number of devices offering access to the web, this figure will continue to expand. In reality the solution will come from a variety of areas both structurally and technologically, and either way it will require a sustained collaboration between governments, the providers of technology and the ISPs.

What is the current state of Cisco’s telepresence offering?

Phil Smith: It’s kind of what we’d always assumed videoconferencing would be like ­ high image quality, near zero latency and no really painful setup requirements. It is all scheduled via Outlook, and firing up the system involves pressing a touchscreen. Indian chain Taj Hotels has telepresence rooms and it charges about £250 per hour. We have about 270 rooms deployed in-house, and we’re getting 40-50 per cent utilisation, where traditionally we would be looking at low single figures. We have logged the number of meetings in these rooms at 144,000, which we estimate has saved us between $230m (£146m) and $240m. Energy costs are always going to be high, and more firms are setting environmental targets, although I am not sure that this actually changes their behaviour in all cases.

Cisco has invested in environmental initiatives, one of them being the Connected Urban Development (CUD) programme ­ could you explain what this is?

Phil Smith: CUD is focused on what we can do with current digital capabilities to improve the way that cities actually operate, given their massive greenhouse gas footprint globally. Can we be smarter with technology and use IT as a separate utility? We kicked off with three pilot cities ­ San Francisco, Seoul and Amsterdam. The aim was to build something with these cities using technology to make them more environmentally friendly and then use this as best practice. Since then we’ve added four more cities ­ including Birmingham.

CUD looks at fundamentally changing the way that cities deliver services to residents. By looking at how traffic flow is managed, for example, CUD uses IT to improve efficiency, and in turn, help cities reduce carbon emissions. Think about public transport ­ it’s not just about getting it all to run on biofuel. It’s about making it a better and more efficient way to travel so that more people want to use it instead of cars. Buses with wireless internet access or specialist information to tell waiting passengers of their whereabouts are examples of how this works.

Source: Computing. London

Tags: Wireless-N, , 802.11n