Networking Is Back, Says Cisco's Chambers

LAS VEGAS -- In front of a standing-room-only crowd Wednesday evening here at the NetWorld + Interop show, Cisco CEO John Chambers delivered a fast-paced talk that touched on all parts of Cisco Systems' networking businesses while also outlining the importance of changing business processes with IT.

Chambers also told the crowd -- some of whom had lined up 45 minutes before his 5 p.m. keynote speech -- the same good news he delivered during the company's quarterly earnings call the day before: That IT spending was clearly on an uptick, as evidenced by Cisco's profitable showing.

"Clearly, something fundamental has changed over the last three months," Chambers said, talking about corporate IT spending. CEOs, he added, seem to have "taken their foot off the [spending] brake.

"It's a pleasure for networking to be back," he added.

While Chambers spent a good part of his hour-long speech talking about Cisco's different areas of technology focus -- a list that includes security, IP telephony and wireless, along with its core switch and router business -- he also emphasized the need to change business processes to take advantage of information technology, a task he said was more important than just writing a check for more networking gear."You can spend a lot of money [on IT] and be disappointed," Chambers said, using Cisco's own experiences with e-learning tools as an example. Cisco didn't reap productivity rewards from the expensive rollout of e-learning technology, he said, until the company changed delivery methods to allow for more flexible learning on schedules that better fit employees' needs.

Enterprises, Chambers said, need to change their business processes to take advantage of the productivity gains technology can deliver. The network, he said, "is the enabler of business strategy. But if you don't change the underlying process, you will not get the benefits."

On the technology side, Chambers said that Cisco's IP telephony business showed a 25 percent growth in the last quarter, a sign to him that an overall move to IP-based telephony is a given. "It's more a question how quickly people move" to IP telephony, he said.

In a humorous demonstration near the end of the talk, a Cisco employee walked Chambers through the security systems for a fictional company, showing an integrated approach that linked security cameras, phones, loudspeakers and PCs with software that could identify personnel, detect rouge wireless access points, and deliver instant messages over a single IP network.

After the formal conclusion of his speech, Chambers stayed and talked with attendees, after inviting them to ask him questions. While some asked direct business questions, others just wanted to take their picture with Chambers, or asked him for an autograph.0