Under John Chambers, Cisco Systems Inc. spent years selling investors and customers on the concept of an Internet of Things -- the vast and growing conglomeration of cars, appliances and other gadgets connected and communicating over networks.
Chuck Robbins, who succeeded Chambers at the helm, says the networking-equipment maker’s next big chunk of growth will come from keeping all those devices safe.
“When you connect 500 billion things, it’s going to create a massively distributed technology landscape -- the security requirements across that entire footprint are going to be tremendous,” Robbins said in an interview at the company’s San Jose, California, headquarters. “They’re going to be so dynamic and real time that the network will have to play an unbelievably key role in solving that issue.”
Robbins, who took the top job in July, is seeking to reignite growth at the company whose equipment provides the backbone of the Internet. Cisco, like other longtime technology providers, is trying to maintain its relevance as computing increasingly shifts to Web-based services from providers such as Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., which have the expertise to build their own software and hardware.
Large corporations buy computer and network security from an average of about 40 to 50 different providers, making it difficult to manage and keep updated, Robbins said. That makes responses to threats slow and leaves systems and data at risk, he said.
Cisco reported $464 million of security revenue in its most recent quarter, up 4 percent from a year earlier, matching the growth rate of total sales. From 2000 to 2010, Cisco averaged 13 percent annual sales growth, even including the dot-com collapse and the financial crisis. It’s grown at an average rate of 4.3 percent since then.
Cisco won’t make the same mistake as other companies that have missed the shift to cloud computing, Robbins said.
“The worst thing you can do is deny that something is happening in a market that’s moving as fast as ours is moving,” he said. “We are transitioning from a position of strength.”
