In a discussion with Dataquest, he explains how he is connecting what seems to the rest of the world as disparate dots and, in particular, explains why he chose India to play such an important role in his strategy. Excerpts

Why is every companyincluding Ciscoacquiring social networking companies?
Not many companies are acquiring social networking companies for changing the thought process. We are using social networking as the next productivity model. So, you will see us not only acquiring social networking companies, but also taking a lot of concepts from successful social networking sites and building them into processes that will drive the productivity of our company.

If you think about what Cisco does, we are usually very, very effective in catching market transitions. So, it isnt social networking separate from TelePresence, separate from unified communications, separate from YouTube. It is going to be new business models delivered by the network, virtually around the world. Other people may be acquiring social networking companies to moneytize these kinds of things. That is not what we are after. We are after business process change.

Why the transformation from Cisco Systems to Cisco? Has the infrastructure growth plateaued?
Let me break the question into parts. I think there have been two phases in the Internet explosion. Phase I was when the Internet was used to order online, customer self-service online, and employee self-service online, and when it came to India for back office, and to China for manufacturing. It drove productivity for a decade and Cisco benefited hugely from that. It also began to redraft the process change. Now, what is interesting is that productivity has slowed down in the last three years. What seems to me is that we are about to enter the second phase of the Internet.

Phase II will be built around convergencedata, voice, video, and mobility. It will result in dramatic transformation of business models. How we deliver our support to our customers will be done primarily out of Indianot back office support, but primary support. It will deliver virtually around the world.

Just as in the first phase, Cisco started putting to use many of the capabilities of that time, for business, such as beginning to do consumer self-service online. Many of the things that our children started, such as the wikis and YouTube, will now go into the business. And we think that will drive a decade of productivity. Now this is in theory. Remember, we were the one to predict the first phase of the Internet accurately. We first did it ourselves, and then we readied the way for the next decade with our customers. Had someone invested a dollar in our company when it was started, today it would be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So, it has been very consistent throughout.

What Cisco does well is that it catches these market transitions...
We are entering a market transition where the network will become a platform for all kinds of communications. And, the buzzword is about collaboration. It is not about one-to-one productivity change; it is many together. So, it is about how we collaborate seamlessly with our customers and with our partners such as Infosys, Wipro, and Tata.

To answer the other part of your question, we said five to six years ago that you needed to think about 100% network growth. No one in the world believed it. We built our products that time to cope with that growth. Today, most of our customers feel networks will grow 50-100%; but 100-200% is given; and no one is saying 200-500% isnt possible. And the killer app is videotelepresence, virtual meetings, etc.

So, I think it is all the three things happening at the same time. You first have convergence of data, voice, and video over common infrastructure, not separate ones. The second thing is the Internet entering its second phase, built around collaboration. And, the third thing is that as this grows, this will cause dramatic change in business models.

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