Classic ScobleShow

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Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, talks about a range of initiatives that Cisco’s working on, particularly an IPTV initiative.

Transcript:

Guest: John Chambers – Cisco
Host: Robert Scoble – ScobleShow

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Where my usual favorite, famous question is to start our interview with who are you? So, who are you?

John Chambers – Cisco
I’m a country boy from West Virginia, son of two doctors, who got in the hard-tech purely because of a friendship and there’s been very fortunate to work for IBM, Wang and now Cisco. l love my job, I love my family, have two great kids. I guess that’s who I am.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Yeah. What do you do? So, that’s, we have a….

John Chambers – Cisco
Well, if you look at what I do and you talk about it from a business persspective, I believe the job as a CEO is to determine the strategy and vision for the company, to select the leadership team in development to implement strategy and vision, to create the culture that you want and to constantly communicate and it includes all the above. From my personal standpoint, I’m somebody that loves my family, loves the outdoors, married my high-school sweetheart, have two great kids, they’re 26 and 28 and (Voice Overlap) now, so, we’re more independent and I just spent four days hunting with my dad and he is 83 and I say just very important times in your life.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Wow, well, we’re at the Consumer Electronics Show 2007 in Las Vegas. What are you doing here?

John Chambers – Cisco
Well, we were here in 2006.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Okay.

John Chambers – Cisco
We said at that time, we thought the Internet was going to play a much larger role and the role of Consumer Electronics in the future people realize and actually, Robert, if you go back to what we said at that time, I’m not keen to give you some of those slides. We were really lucky and reasonably good on almost every major trends that we identified did occur. We spent the last six years to reposition for where we are today, and tomorrow we’ll talk about our vision of how this industry evolves, the role that networking and potentially Cisco to do within that. We’ll talk about why we think you need to position this opportunity; yet being realistic, we are not paid 800-pound gorilla here.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Yeah.

John Chambers – Cisco
We are very large in many other markets, this is relatively new one for us, but, we’ve made a number of moves with companies like Linksys and Scientific Atlanta and I think most electronic devices must be network enabled and the network will be the intelligence to really change the way that you live your life - your life’s experience. So, it’s a human network, you’re welcome to it and Cisco is trying to play a role in that.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Well, yeah I’ve got a look at your TelePresence system. I love that.

John Chambers – Cisco
Okay.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Is Cisco going to be known as the HD Company, the company that wants to push HD all over the world?

John Chambers – Cisco
Well, if there is a killer application, it is video, a high definition video loads networks even more, but I think really it’s a combination, the convergence of Data/Voice/Video with personalization in the market place. The ability to watch what you want? When you want? However you want, whatever device? Find me, follow me, communicate to me in the device that I want. The ability to do that and make it roughly simple; today you have almost got to be a techie to navigate through that.

It’s good for whole industry who make this more simple, more open. Means you got to add value on top of it of course, but simplicity is a huge issue. It is about broadband and convergence now being the tipping point and where you think pretty going to market transitions, we’ll see if we are right on this one and we’ll see if we can prie into this Switzerland if we will in terms of enabling everybody from service providers, their content, to our peers in the device industry, to the consumer device as well into some of their goals. So, it’s a pretty aggressive aspirations, we could sure messed-up a long away, but we’ve given our best shot.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
As a consumer, at least at home I got a — between last year at CES and this year CES, I got a 60M HDTV and that changes everything about how I want to be entertained at home. I know you guys Scientific American — Scientific Atlanta, right?

John Chambers – Cisco
It was great.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Scientific American Atlanta was — what…?

John Chambers – Cisco
You simply interview, it’s hard to keep in mind…

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
I know but I was working on IPTV systems for distributing HDTV to my screen, right? When I worked at Microsoft I saw what they were trying to do, which is deliver four channels or six channels at the same time, so you could watch a baseball game from several different perspectives or you could watch a NASCAR race from several different cars at the same time. Is that something that Cisco is working on or what are you going to talk about in that deal?

John Chambers – Cisco
Well, that’s almost half-an-hour conversation, if you could point out, I’d love to do it. But they answer the questions in reverse order. We, for the first time, are having a brand and an image of a major baseball part.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Yeah.

John Chambers – Cisco
And it will be Cisco Field and you’ll watch the game from 30 different angles whether you’re in the stands or every time whether you’re receiving this from a IPTV of broadcast capability. You’ll be able to watch not only the game you want from any angle you’d be able to gather the statistics, you watch it with your friends across town, so, what you saw a business for TelePresence will come down to the consumer probably in the home in the next five years and what’ll you see is this consumer with social networking will absolutely come into the business world. We think they’re intertwined.

So, it won’t be about a device pay application with any device to any applications. It will — things that we think of rocket science but it’s really cool today with the high definition 60” TV every child play five years from now. So, we’re excited about it, we just more see if we can play a role in making a difference.

Robert Scoble – ScobleShow
Yeah. What else you’re going to talk about tomorrow, what’s going to be the big thing that people remember out of the keynotes that you do?

John Chambers - Cisco
Well, I hope that the big thing is, Cisco is not only VCOs not then consumer market, but with the proper amount of humbleness, this company could be one of the largest players in this market and we do it different that appears, we will do it using our strength that the network for the role it will play in the future. We would do it through partnerships that are sustainable with both partners winning long-term. By the way, tell Bill Gates (Inaudible) I want to partner with.him. Bill and Steve and I have been talking for quite a while on what we can do meaningfully together.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Yeah.

John Chambers - Cisco
We’ll also talk about how this is tailor-made in terms of a lot of this personalization in changing the human experience in the human network, this is really what Cisco has done in business concerns about it. Now, we’re trying to bring it to the consumers.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Yeah. Do you listen to podcasts or video blogs or any of that stuff?

John Chambers - Cisco
Started to do more and more of it, in fact, some of the technology my team has — tell me about for tomorrow, they said, “This is (Inaudible) three to five years old,” so I’m already doing that today, if you got to get further ahead.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Well, I was just on John Edward’s plane last week, he’s trying for President and it was really remarkable, his team was a video blogger, a blogger, a Quicker photographer and a podcaster. That’s was his PR team, as the way they talk to the world and listen to the world, I just want to — how that’s going to change Cisco and what products you’re thinking of or services, you’re going to think of doing for this new world where I can create media now, not just ABC or CNN or MTV, the normal everyday person, I mean I’m using pretty deluxe camera and use $4000 cameras. But, you don’t need to go that crazy. We have lots of video bloggers in our blog house today who are using $200 - $300 cameras and pushing video out to YouTube, to millions of people. What CISCO is going to do in terms of that?

John Chambers - Cisco
Well, first of all, I think this concept won’t just be with the consumer and a small segment of consumer or for the politicians, it would change everybody. 15 years ago we said, the Internet will change the way you work, learn and play and 7 years ago – at this conference we said, it will be driven by the consumer the next wave.

So, I think whether you’re republican or democrat, whether you’re in this country or in Jordan or Germany or India or China and I’ve been very honored to be able to talk to all these leaders. They understand the power that networking will bring, the personalization that it will bring, and how traditional ways of giving your news or giving the ideas will change dramatically.

So, I think what you see for John Edwards or John McCain or Kenny (ph) and Nancy Pelosi or some of the others is an understanding where this goes in the future. I think it’s very healthy and in that way you’re able to listen to people to respect and have the interest that will challenge you and allows you to personalize what I want to listen to as well as how do you get that messy job in the community. So, I’m the optimist here, I’m really excited about being in the Consumer Electronics Show and we’re just trying to do a good job and not messed-up the opportunity we have.

Robert Scoble- Scobleshow
What’s the one belief that you think people have about Cisco that you’d like to change? Do you want to be seen as a different kind of company or are you trying to change?

John Chambers - Cisco
Well, no it’s fair. The one thing that perhaps people don’t know about Cisco in the consumer market is that we are driven by the customer. We are in that sequel technology and that we are pretty good about catching trends three to five or seven years before they become obvious and then becoming a leader in it. What I’d like for people to know is not only really serious about consumer market with a proper amount of hesitation, we’re very optimistic about where this goes and I’d like (Inaudible) will just give us a chance and for the partners to do the same thing.

Our track records have been good on beginning new markets (Inaudible) peers. Hopefully this consumer market based upon the Scientific Atlanta, the Linksys (Inaudible) - there’s other technology acquisitions we’ve done to change peoples’ lives in a big way. When you look at the future, many of your devices in your home, they either have powered by Cisco, Cisco products or Cisco partners. We’ll see if we can make that dream happen.

Robert Scoble- ScobleShow
Thank you very much for spending some minutes of your time. I know your audiences and customers are waiting to talk to you.

John Chambers - Cisco
Robert, thank you. But I’d like to know more in depth in the future. I liked your questions, I learned from them and if you don’t mind I’ll challenge back when appropriate.

Robert Scoble- Scobleshow
Oh, I would certainly would like to get you in your office, so on a more Internet place.

John Chambers - Cisco
All right my friend.

Robert Scoble - Scobleshow
Thanks.

John Chambers - Cisco
Thank you for taking the time.

Robert Scoble- Scobleshow
Thanks.

Tags: Cisco, John Chambers, IPTV

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 at 1:10 am and is filed under CES Las Vegas 2007, Corporate, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.