The Evolving Needs for Enterprise Networking
July 21, 2004
Over the last 20 years Cisco Systems has been on a fascinating journey with its customers as data networks have undergone revolutionary changes. Two decades ago, the corporate network only served a few, discrete functions. Now, the network is the business. And these days, companies large and small across the globe rely on Cisco technology to make their businesses work better.
News@Cisco spoke with Pierre-Paul Allard, Cisco's vice president of enterprise marketing, about how corporate networking has evolved over the past 20 years, what business customers now want from their networks, and how Cisco is meeting those needs.
How have the networking needs of Cisco's corporate customers changed over the years?
Pierre-Paul Allard: Companies are no longer at the stage of comparing router to router and switch to switch but, rather, are looking at how to fit products together to form the best networks and communications systems. They want networking technologies that are relevant to their business challenges, such as reducing operating expenses or overhead while increasing revenues and profits. They are looking to extend the reach, capacity, and capabilities of their networks. Cisco's customers need better ways to make use of their data centers, connect to workers, improve their LANs, and extend their WANs. So, today, it is no longer about "speeds and feeds" but about architecting the best networking system to deliver the applications businesses need and to create a foundation for future network development as technology inevitably advances.
How do you learn about the needs of Cisco's business customers?
Pierre-Paul Allard: Cisco takes pride in its relationships with its customers. Our interactions are both formal and informal. In my role, I meet with hundreds of customers a year in a variety of venues and settings, from Cisco's annual CIO Summit to one-to-one briefings. We hold about 200 meetings a quarter with customers at our San Jose offices. We have such established venues as our Executive Briefing Center, where visitors from around the world have the opportunity to identify current and future business needs and exchange ideas with Cisco experts. We also host the Cisco Technical Advisory Board, where industry experts meet with us and our customers to exchange ideas on technology advances. We try to find as many ways as possible to interact with our customers. This has been a hallmark of Cisco and what we feel has been the reason for our success. Only by working so closely with our customers can we understand their communications and business needs. Their needs drive our research and development.
Businesses have widely varying communications needs depending on their industries and markets. How does Cisco address all of these divergent technical challenges?
Pierre-Paul Allard: Yes, that's definitely true. There are so many networking options now that you have to understand a customer's specific business needs. The finer-tuned you can make your products, the more value a business will get from those investments. Applications are the focus for businesses and the network needs to work to support the specific applications of each company. Given the unmatched breadth and depth of our product line, Cisco can offer network equipment and technologies customized to virtually any industry or business. But it's not just the magnitude of our product lines that helps us help our customers. With over 20 years of experience in corporate networking, we have developed a very refined understanding of our customers' needs. We've helped far more businesses build their corporate networks than any other networking equipment maker. Thanks to Cisco's 20-years of experience, we have developed specific industry knowledge for most markets, including education, health care, government, transport, retail, banking and manufacturing, to name a few. Also, Cisco has developed a rich array of equipment for everything from SOHO to the largest international conglomerates.
How does Cisco's network of partners help its business customers?
Pierre-Paul Allard: Our network of partners brings it all together for our customers. With more than 40,000 channel partners and more than 3,000 certified partners, we have a partner for just about any IT need a business may have. Our partners range from integrators to software developers, from wireless experts to security professionals, from partners as big as IBM to as small as one-person consultancies. Such a vast network of partners took every day of our 20-year history to develop. Only over time have we been able to find the best of the best.
With such a wide breadth of partners, Cisco helps reduce the footwork customers need to do to pull all the elements together for their business communications systems. We like to think of Cisco as filling the role of an architect for network construction while our partners bring the specialized skills to execute on the network goals. Our equipment and knowledge provide a consistency necessary for successfully assembling or extending a network. No one would hire a different architect to build each room of a house. In the same way, architectural consistency across a business network is just as important. Such consistency is particularly crucial for today's more complex networks and business communications needs. Employees, for example, want the same experience connecting to the corporate network from their desk at the main office as from a dial-in connection in a motel room. You only can achieve this through careful, consistent network architecture.
How has Cisco's relationship with its customers evolved over the last two decades?
Pierre-Paul Allard: Over the years Cisco has become more than a networking equipment vendor to our customers. We have become a trusted business advisor. It's not just the CIO that looks to us for advice, but more and more CEOs and boards of directors count on us for advice on how to use information technology to improve their businesses. It has been a very interesting journey for us over past two decades as our products and services have become increasingly important to the success of our business customers. We are looking forward to the next 20 years.
