Industry News

Cisco’s John Chambers tells partners it’s time to pounce on the next market transition

Extract from an article originally published in CRN magazine, 28th April 2008

To hear John Chambers tell it, there’s a new network in town. As the chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems geared up for the Cisco Partner Summit 2008 in Honolulu, he crafted a message that he hopes will inspire partners to follow him down a new path, on a course that he says could catapult the vendor and its channel to the forefront of the IT industry.

That path? Collaboration fuelled by intelligent networking via online Web 2.0 tools and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Collaboration which combines technologies such as VoIP, unified messaging, instant messaging, IP video, presence, mobility, SaaS and Web tools like blogs and wikis that enable customers to more easily communicate with each other is the linchpin of Cisco’s strategy.

Collaboration marks the next phase of the Internet and will drive improvements in productivity for the next decade, particularly as business users latch onto social networking and other Web 2.0 technologies previously thought solely to be the domain of kids, Chambers said.

“It’s actually accelerated now, because a lot of the basic concepts in collaboration are now taking off”, Chambers said. “The network will probably enable the next major wave of IT spending as well as communication spending. So the role of the network has changed: It’s changed from being infrastructure, primarily a box mentality, to an architecture approach that provides business solutions, and as such, we at Cisco have to change and so do our channel partners”.

Ian Roberts’ comment on this article:

When John Chambers speaks, the world listens.  I am not saying we are visionaries, but, this has been our message for the last two years ;o)

A number of technologies have exploded throughout 2007, from Facebook and the iPhone to the Nintendo Wii.

Extract from a BBC News Website item published 1 January 2008 

But what will be making the headlines over the next 12 months?

The BBC News website gives its predictions for technologies that could become big in 2008.

1. The Web to Go
2. WiMAX
3. Mobile VoIP

On-Communications CEO, Ian Roberts comments: 

I totally agree with these Hot 3 from BBC News. As always the devil is in the detail, and I have explored this in individual postings.

The number 1 technology prediction for 2008 from BBC News.

Extract from a BBC News Wedsite item originally published 1 January 2008.

One of the biggest drawbacks of web applications is that they can only be used when there is an internet connection.

Although mobile working is becoming increasingly common, ubiquitous connectivity is still a long way off. But there are tools that are beginning to blur the online and offline worlds. Over the last 12 months a number of technologies have emerged that could have a significant impact on the way people use the web.

Search giant Google announced its Gears application whilst Adobe launched Air and Microsoft released Silverlight. All the technologies have the ability to take rich web content and make some of it available offline.

For example Adobe has shown off an Ebay desktop application built using Air that would allow users to do much of the legwork required in setting up auctions offline. The next time the user connects to the internet the listing would be posted to the website.

Silverlight offers the reverse - the ability to build desktop applications and allow them to run in a web browser.

Google Gears does not allow the creation of new applications but does allow web applications to be taken offline. For example, the developers of the free online office package Zoho use Gears to allow users to use their applications in a similar way to a normal desktop office program.

2008 should see more examples of applications built with or using one of the three tools to make a truly seamless computing experience.

On-Communications CEO, Ian Roberts comments:

Web2.0 is going to change everything. Momentum has been building for some time. It has been years since Silicon Valley has invested in traditional software companies, and all the high growth software businesses are delivering their technology in the ‘Software as a Service’ format, not the traditional Client Server Model.

Google, Salesforce and the UK’s Youmanage are leading the world in Web2.0 services. Our own business model supports Web2.0 services as companies need symmetrical broadband and Internet connections to make full use of Web2.0 services. We are almost exclusively a Web2.0 company in terms of our own IT. No desktops, no servers, just high speed wireless Internet access into and within the office via laptops.