Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco - Recovery is fragile but Cisco is expecting mid-teen growth. 2001 was worse













John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, talks to CNBC's Jim Goldman.
- Company recently optimistic about growth globally
- Analyst day in Silicon Valley
- Reiterates 12-17% growth, surprise
- Optimisim last few weeks and months
- Technology is "Cool" again
- Costs cut as much as possible by co's
- CIOs need to think about innovation in technology
- Bottom in Q1'09
- Summertime seeing first sequential growth
- Cutting to Innovation
- First stage of economic recovery
- Concern about false front? Overseas buyers retreat with weak dollar?
- FX NOT a big impact. US is not carrying world
- Selling architecture - video, productivity
- Growth in the mid-teens
- Billions of $$ spent on key deals
- DOJ , SEC, FTC scrutinizing M&A
- Cisco successful at M&A - 90% of acquisitions fail - do you keep engineers, top management, gain marketshare?
- 70% of Cisco's deal hit or exceed plan - gadzoox
- Competitive advantage
- Most companies want to be acquired by Cisco - 135 deals
- 30 major competitors in every field in exciting markets
"We are the most aggressive this last year that we have ever been," Chambers said. He ticked off several big moves the company made just between Oct. 1 and mid-November, including four acquisitions around the world and a partnership with EMC and VMware. The deals included the major acquisitions of wireless IP infrastructure vendor Starent Networks and of video powerhouse Tandberg. Cisco couldn't have done all that without a new management structure introduced in the past few years, which he said ended the classic "command and control" organization in which one or a few top executives drive all new initiatives."

John Chambers is Chairman and CEO of Cisco. He has helped grow the company from $70 million
when he joined Cisco in January 1991, to $1.2 billion when he assumed the role of CEO, to its current
run rate of $36 billion. In November 2006, Chambers was named Chairman of the Board, in addition to
his CEO role.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

john is the man of the century. he is sharp, witty, and classy.

great image and icon for silicon valley.

J said...

I agree

Roger said...

Surprise 12-17% growth!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

70% of Cisco's deal hit or exceed plan - gadzoox