CRN Interview: Bill Nuti, Symbol Technologies
Bill Nuti surprised Wall Street and the networking industry when he left Cisco Systems in July to become president and COO of wireless vendor Symbol Technologies. As the company prepared to launch an extensively overhauled channel program early next year, Nuti talked with Infrastructure Editor Larry Hooper about the mobility market and Symbol's role in that segment.
CRN: When you were at Cisco Systems, you were viewed as the heir apparent to CEO and President John Chambers. Why did you make the move to Symbol?
NUTI: Well, it's no more complex than the growth opportunity that Symbol has over the course of the next decade. I look at the company as being well-positioned to take full advantage of the age of mobility.
CRN: I grant you that there is growth in the wireless market right now, but why do you think that growth will go to Symbol vs. other networking players?
NUTI: It's not necessarily about wireless. The information revolution started with the age of centralized computing. It then moved to the age of distributed computing, which moved to the age of personal computing. The age of personal computing led to the age of networking and the age of networking is now quickly turning to the age of mobility.
CRN: Symbol has a strong presence in vertical markets, but in the corporate office market, aren't companies going to look to the traditional networking vendors?
NUTI: I couldn't disagree more. [The networking vendors don't have the experience or the product portfolio to drive an end-to-end mobility solution.
CRN: But Symbol doesn't have the relationships with the corporate IT managers that will be making the mobility buying decisions. The networking vendors do.
NUTI: That's fair to a certain degree, and we are completely focused and knowledgeable that we need to expand outside of our core vertical markets,which would be retail, manufacturing, logistics and transportation,into new vertical markets. We are targeting markets in health care, hospitality and education because right now we see more opportunity for end-to-end mobility solutions in those spaces than we've ever seen before.
We recognize that our ability to get closer to corporate IT as well as operations and to expand vertically are going to be crucial for us to have success.