Chambers: Video is the ‘killer app’: ”
SAN JOSE, Calif. — 8:50 a.m. PST — Cisco CEO John Chambers just said that ‘if there is a killer app, it is video,’ as part of his keynote speech kicking off the Cisco C-Scape analysts conference here.
‘Things like YouTube are just the baby steps of the impact video will have on networks,’ said Chambers, who has already introduced the company’s new big-vision theme (’The Human Network’) and the technology vision that supports it (’Network as the Platform.’)
Live-blogging this, so quotes may not be word for word… Chambers opened talking about how Cisco differentiates by combining vision, strategy and execution… said it took 6-7 years to change the company internally (’changing the reward system, who got promoted or not’) to get buy-in on the current track.
Singapore to get 1 Gbps to the home: Getting to some good stuff now about India, focus on globalization… ‘moving 10 of our top execs into our globalization center in India. Use our own technologies… (videoconferencing) to change support… Drive all four elements of our strategy from India. This is a huge investment for the future.’
Says Singapore is planning for 1 Gbps to the home… ‘not that much more expensive to do a gig.’
now transition into service provider market
why did US stop innovating? Stopped investing
SPs going to be experience providers, not plumbers.
‘we define service providers today by their access technologies. Who cares! Want to define them by the experience [they deliver].’
More as we catch up!
8:50 a.m. — Showing off now… it is impressive though how Cisco strategy slides from the past are pretty good at predicting the future, especially the gradual improvements in networks.
Next level: Quad play
9:07 a.m. — Jim Grubb demo now, showing a Cisco media player — small box with Ethernet jack and video input/output to make any display a smart device on the network.
Waiting for the inevitable Grubb salary/budget joke… there it is, Chambers says Grubb’s staff doesn’t need to be that big… ha ha ha
Before demo, Chambers said about video: ‘I really do not want to store all the ‘Desperate Housewives’ and Duke basketball games on the DVRs in my house.’ Content should be in the network, he says.
Applications are going to drive the service provider business… and video is going to be a large part of that. Telepresence (Cisco expensive teleconferencing). The data center will be virtualized first, and then it will go all the way out to the end…
9:12 — We are now hearing about Cisco plans with Oakland (Fremont!) Athletics to build a new baseball stadium.
(Will reserve my arguments against this stuff)… he is talking about watching multiple replays, multiple cameras (because of how wired/networked the stadium is)… use cell phones as credit cards… ‘we’re learning how to push experiences.’
End to end SP quad play. Consumer iHome end to end play. New services.
Telepresence? ‘It’s my favorite new technology.’
save $140 million? ‘it will change the way we collaborate’ play texas hold em, see pupils dilate.
Thought this year was all about execution… wrong. Need to keep innovating as well.
9:20 a.m. — Big close, puts up the slide that shows how Cisco market cap dwarfs that of closest 10 competitors combined.. says the opportunity ‘to be the major company in IT and communications is in front of us.’
Whew! Watch this space for more from the conference today and tomorrow. (As long as the Cisco folks don’t kick me out of my ‘reserved Cisco’ seat up front, heh)
(Via GigaOM.)
Posted by Iain Verigin 
Posted by Iain Verigin 
Posted by Iain Verigin 
Blogs Wiki’s – What’s Your Market?
March 14, 2007In the past few weeks I’ve noticed a lot of posts on “blogging” or “the blogging experience”. It is interesting that big and small bloggers are all writing about this. They want to know who their readers are and how to serve them better. ( I’ve got a list at the end of this post.)
Friends/Colleagues – It has been my experience that my readership largely consists of close friends/colleagues ( 1-degree-of-separation ) and the people I meet via blogging are 2-degrees-of-separation away. For example, I met Andrew@Nyquist via blogging and it turns out that I’ve worked with many of his colleagues. It is rare for anyone outside of 1-degree to contact me. This experience similar here and inside of my office (where I edit a research blog/wiki with much more content than out here). Getting readers beyond friends is difficult.
? Executives don’t read blogs ? - I particularly like WRKoss’s comment “that people responsible for the development of leadership talent in companies, do not read blogs.” I think this has a lot to do with the fact that executives have long been in a group that subscribes to “news aggregator” services. They did not lose them during the cutbacks of the early ’00’s. I find that this group often comments that blogs & wiki’s are “too noisy” and/or “I already get all that stuff”. In general, they ascribe very little value to them and do very little to support them. Most blog/wiki software inside corporate walls are “rogue” installations kept far away from IT staff. It is a rare Exec who supports them publicly. Luckily for me a few do exist. Given all these obstacles I chose to ignore this group. They are well served by the existing media. That said — many execs do read my blogs & wikis.
Non-executives – I’ve been focussing on serving this group for over a year now. To them blogs are a “gift from heaven”. They can get regular updates on their markets and have a way to build a quick database of this information (with wikis). Many in this group have responsibility to track news & markets in a detailed way. There is huge benefit to them. They tell me this on a weekly basis.
Unfortunately, this is “good news / bad news” for most bloggers. Good news is that there are loads of under-served people in this segment and Bad News is that these guys don’t cut checks.
Conclusions/Actions – (If my experience is commonplace) This is a big challenge for bloggers looking to monetize their content ( ie the Om Malik’s of the world ). I think he’s got the attention of the non-executive reader to the tune of 10k’s of readers, but will he be able to keep it up if execs are not reading? For guys like Fred Wilson who’s first circle is great and really know how to make friends on-line – the blog world was made for them. For the rest of us, there are lots of readers out there who are very under-served. Extracting value from them, in corporate status and in $$$ is difficult, but I don’t think that is why we’re blogging.
Links