Of today’s Fortune 500 companies, only 24 per cent existed 25 years ago but in the next 25 years 40% of them will be out of business.
Those were the fantastic days in Montreal, Canada. Cisco, the leader in many IT domains, exposed its ambition. With the tagline “Be Bold”, which is basically a call for the partners, to transform their business practices to adapt to the demanding business needs of the customers, John Chambers, CEO, Cisco, climbed up the gigantic stage and went on revealing his vision in a way which only John can do – moving from rows to rows of audience.
Making the entire gathering of 2000+ partners spellbound, he released his doses of wisdom in consisted interval of time. First, the company (Cisco) is changing to adapt to the era of IOT, which Cisco terms as IOE or Internet of Everything. Secondly, how digitization is rapidly taking centre stage.
He said, “It is a tough time for the today’s CEOs as they are under immense pressure. As their customers are becoming smart and competition and start ups are becoming nimble. IOE becoming all pervasive.”
Out of the entire US$19 trillion dollars IOE market, Cisco estimates that the public sector will account for US$4.9 trillion, retail US$1.5 trillion, manufacturing US$3.9 trillion, education US$0.9 trillion, telecommunications and information US$1.3 trillion, energy and mining US$0.8 trillion, financial services US$1.3 trillion, and healthcare US$1.1 trillion.
One very important observation he brought out to the audience that of today’s Fortune 500 companies, only 24 per cent existed 25 years ago but in the next 25 years 40% of them will be out of business. So he said either you disrupt or be disrupted.
He said, “Start ups don’t think like we do. They don’t think linearly in terms of growth, they think exponentially. They want to move with a speed that is not one or two times faster, but 10 to 20 times faster.”
He added, “So many companies have missed technology transition and fallen apart. You miss one market transition, and you will be left behind in this industry. Look at all the companies including Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel, Digital Equipment and Dell.”
As per him, He maintained: “The next 10 years to be a period of “explosive growth” not seen since the ‘90s glory days of the internet. This new digital age will be five to ten times the impact of the internet today.
He said that very soon every business, City, Country, Home, Car, Wearable will become digital. To be precise by 2020 75% of businesses will become fully digital. But 30% of these digitization efforts will be successful because companies fail to innovate and reinvent. And Cisco’s success is because of its reinvention of itself and creating a better partner ecosystem which will create sustainable difference.
For example Cisco had to make some tough changes to build the agility. The company had to cut very good number head count globally.
He addressed all the partner ecosystems including SPs, consultants, Sis, Influencers, Learning partners, Intercloud Partners, Technology partners, Distributors, Channel partners, Cloud partners and ISVs to join hands in positive and constructive manner to create value for the customers.
As per him for Cisco Security is his their no.1 priority and it required end-to –end approach. Tomorrow security challenges will be so vast that it will be very difficult to handle and the vendor will need to do the innovation with speed in order protect the customers and only Cisco cannot do it itself as support of the partners will be an absolute necessity.
Finally…
He concluded with addressing the partners to exploit the unlimited opportunity that is lying ahead for them. Together with the partners, they can out-innovate, out-compete and out deliver others in the competition.
