Abstract: As the end of the year approaches and everyone is pressed for time, we are going to cover only a few sessions of this excellent conference: Big Picture Mega-Trends, Internet traffic growth, Cisco’s WiMAX strategy resulting from their Navini Networks acquisition, and an informal chat about Cisco’s Service Provider mobility strategy.
Note: Editorial comments or opinions are in italics font.
1. Big Picture Mega-Trends
Cisco CEO John Chambers kicked off the conference presentations by leading the audience through what he referred to as a “Disruptive Journey.” Here are his key points:
· We are now in the second phase of the Internet, which is being driven by increased use of video, collaboration, and Web 2.0 technologies (social networking, P2P sharing, and wiki’s).
· Globalization will continue to level the playing field and benefit developing countries. (Hence, Cisco sees those countries as important new markets).
· Personalization of content and information will transform business models.
· User behavior is driving collaboration and innovation. High quality video conferencing (e.g. Telepresence) is a good example of this.
· There is a blurring of the lines between users and consumers. It’s important for a vendor/ service provider to deliver the maximum flexibility to enhance the user experience.
Cisco is thinking 3 to 5 years out for business opportunities. They are planting a lot of seeds and nurturing them. Trends they see stimulating growth:
· Telepresence is changing every aspect of how Cisco interfaces with customers and themselves. Video collaboration will dramatically transform business models and change the nature of business. Within three years, customer contact will be almost entirely virtual, according to Chambers. The network will change to enable new business models that will result from this dynamic.
· Social networking inside organizations will enable correlated information flows, which will result in higher performance.
· Virtualization will continue: any device to any format to any content to anywhere in the world, with security. This is what routing is all about, according to Chambers.
· Service providers must transition from supplying infrastructure-like basic services (e.g. pipes) to advanced new Web 2.0-like services. They will need to partner with content providers and pursue advertising based business models.
· Voice and video broadcasts will become free. New collaboration services will be added on top of those freebies. All services will be delivered over an IP network.
· Video is the killer application of Web 2.0: for both residential (IPTV and video sharing) and business (video conferencing) markets.
The complete report is at: