Cisco’s CEO is stretching his company in all directions. Can it hold together?

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14303574

by martincmartin • 17 years ago

10 7 17 years ago

tptacek2• 17 years ago

The Cisco smart grid initiative makes perfect sense to me; it's barely even an extension to what Cisco already does.

Here's the situation they find themselves in: if they can control or influence the design of residential power meters, which are tiny boxes made by 10 different companies that cost less than $1000, then they can dictate terms for how those meters will talk to the utilities. And what they'll dictate is IPv6.

The result will be massive purchases of IPv6 connectivity gear, by utilities, from Cisco. They have to see it as a second ISP gold rush.

Since smart meters are deployed in only a tiny fraction of markets, but will absolutely inevitably be deployed everywhere in 10 years, it may be that all Cisco has to do to make this happen is buy a smart meter manufacturer; these are companies with (perhaps) 8 figure revenue streams.

If you wanted to get all blue-sky about the opportunity, you could point out that Cisco would end up with a second end-to-end network, including the last mile, that would touch every residence and business in the country, all running on equipment that Cisco had de facto design control over. What else could they do with that? Who knows. I'm sure someone there has some idea.

schemer2• 17 years ago

Microsoft's present is Cisco's future. Cash rich but without any innovation. Just copying whatever the new kid on the block is doing. It's just one paradigm-shift away from obsolescence.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

There's just a huge difference between the way those two companies do business. Microsoft builds things. Cisco buys them. They may have comparable positions in their respective sectors, but they have utterly unrelated business development models.

schemer2• 17 years ago

Cisco does build things. Lots of switches and routers, they are all built in China by Foxconn. I think what you mean to say is that Microsoft is a software company while Cisco is a hardware company. Two different ways of doing business.

sho• 17 years ago

Yes? No? Who cares? Take it to motleyfool.

gamble• 17 years ago

Comes off as a bit of a puff piece. It's interesting to contrast the perspective in this article with the employee reviews on Glassdoor.

Cisco’s CEO is stretching his company in all directions. Can it hold together?

Related Stories