Chambers Lays Out Vision For Partners

Cisco president and CEO John Chambers kicked off the company's annual partner summit on Tuesday with a high-energy presentation that offered a lot of thematic flash but not so many details.

The event, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, was staged around a rock-and-roll motif. Presenters continually incorporated the phrase, "rattle and hum" into their speeches, a reference to an old U2 album, and a U2 cover band welcomed the crowd into the convention hall with a mini-set of the Irish band's songs.

Partners looking for specific updates to Cisco's programs were to receive that information from later presentations by Chambers' lieutenants, including Paul Mountford, Karl Meulema and CTO Charlie Giancarlo.

Chambers focused instead on a broader vision for the future of networking, security and the technology industry in general. The CEO expanded upon his characteristic rapid-fire delivery by wading out into the crowd at least a half-dozen times, cameras following him around as he addressed audience members more intimately.

Noting that 88 percent of Cisco's revenue now comes from the channel, Chambers said the company will focus particularly hard in the coming months on the security and voice sectors. But even though the industry seems to be rebounding from the endless bad news of a few years ago, Chambers says this recovery isn't as robust as some people might hope. He cited a survey that shows only 60 percent of companies surveyed plan to increase their tech spending in the coming year, and only 35 percent of them plan to do more hiring.

"CEOs are notoriously risk-averse, and they're exhibiting a little more caution than you usually see during a recovery," he says.

He predicts that what job increases do occur will happen more in the commercial market than in the enterprise space, and he says one way Cisco is responding to this is by moving from a horizontal to a vertical sales model, to take advantage of the increased service needs of various sectors.

Overall, he assures partners that the company's decision to change its architecture around converged networks, security and services puts it in a good position going forward. "We're in the right spot at the right time; our job is to not mess it up," he says. "The good news is, we have a multiyear advantage over our competitors, and if you give that up, you have no one to blame but yourself."