May 2nd, 2006 |
Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, gave the opening keynote this morning, kicking things off just prior to the opening of the expo floor. At its core, Chambers’ topic was a familiar one, if you’ve seen him speak before: “the network is the platform”. For this particular speech, Chambers honed in on promise of the “network quadplay”: data, voice, video and wireless over the network, and how that will transform not only businesses, but our lives as consumers, too.
Chambers touched on a topic he talked about at last year’s keynote, the concept of networks evolving from supporting simply transactions, to enabling interactions and collaboration. He explained how Cisco itself has invested heavily into its own IT infrastructure and unified its communications onto the network, and after 3-4 years, started seeing payback as various departments around the company (IT, accounting, manufacturing, HR, and so on) began to take advantage of the systems. Once that happened, Chambers said they saw the revenue per employee start accelerating and creating what he calls a “sustainable competitive advantage”.
A couple of demos were given that showed how “quad play” is helping companies in the transportation market. First he showed a demo of a rail line that uses networked sensors along the tracks to monitor trains’ locations, live video taken from the locomotive, and other data about the trains, and sending it to the person who controls the switches along the tracks. The combined data provide an overall picture of the region and help optimize train routes. Similar demos were shown that applied to the trucking industry, and airlines.
Chambers wrapped things up by summing it up this way: “Networked IT is back, and it’s enabling new experiences and collaboration”.
You can listen to a podcast of the Chambers keynote on the PodTech.net site.
You can find more photos in the gallery.
We should have a video of the keynote up on this site this evening…
