Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: Cisco

  • The cost of the cloud: How the disrupters are being disrupted

    The cost of the cloud: How the disrupters are being disrupted

    A common factor when talking to tech companies is their talk of disrupting industries, they themselves are not immune from change though.

    This week networking giant Cisco announced they would cut seven percent of their workforce, nearly 5,500 employees, as the company deals with the shift to software defined networking equipment continues.

    Industry commentators are warning Cisco are not alone as software and cloud based services change the tech industry with Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry estimating the sector may shed up to 370,000 positions this year.

    Today I had the opportunity to ask Autodesk’s Pat Williams, the company’s Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific, about the challenges facing companies transitioning to the cloud. At the beginning of the year Autodesk announced they would be cutting ten percent, over 900 jobs, as part of a structuring plan.

    “I think there was a model that we had that as we moved to a subscription business that said we would see a bit of a drop in revenue and we realised our gross margins would be pressed,” he said.

    “What we were trying to do was right-size the business,” Williams continued. “Sometimes you need to do that. It was a very intentional forward looking move we made.”

    Autodesk and Cisco are far from the first tech companies to suffer from the software industry’s shift to the cloud. Microsoft have been probably been the business most affected by the change.

    Cisco themselves have been dealing with this shift for a decade as well, with a major restructure in 2011 that saw 6,500 jobs cut.

    What is clear in a transitioning industry is that Microsoft, Cisco and Autodesk are far from alone in making cuts. As Autodesk’s Williams points out, it’s probably best for managements to be doing this proactively rather than waiting for the changes to force their hands.

    The stories of Cisco, Autodesk and Microsoft show all industries are facing changes. Assuming you’re safe in any sector is brave thinking.

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  • Reaping the security dividend

    Reaping the security dividend

    Boards and executives have finally got the message about security John Stewart, Chief Security and Trust Officer at Cisco.

    For most of the computer era security has been seen as an inhibiter to innovation and speed to market, but now with most businesses finding they face a three year time frame to transform in face of digital disruption Stewart says corporate managments now see security of their products as being a valued feature.

    Stewart bases his view on an online survey, Cybersecurity as a Growth Advantage, where Cisco polled 1,014 senior executives with extensive cybersecurity responsibilities in 10 countries and 11 in-depth interviews with senior executives and cybersecurity experts.

    From this, Cisco found a third of businesses now sees security as being a competitive advantage.

    Digital disruption drives the shift

    Stewart puts this down to boards and senior executives realising how widespread digital disruption is, “it’s highly unlikely Weight Watchers saw the disruption coming from Fitbit,” he muses. “In fact it’s hard to see how anyone could have seen that coming.”

    As a consequence of these widespread and often unexpected disruptions, corporate leaders are trying to shore up their existing positions against unforeseen competitors by shifting to digital platforms as quickly as they can.

    “We have to do digital and if we are going to do digital we have to have strong cybersecurity controls,” says Stewart in explaining why cybersecurity is an important part of this strategy.

    Security as a cornerstone

    “By making cybersecurity a cornerstone of their businesses, security-led digital organizations are able to innovate faster and more effectively, because they have significantly greater confidence in the security of their digital capabilities,” Stewart says.

    Certainly managers are worried about the risks of going digital with Cisco reporting many businesses have put projects on hold due to concerns about security risks, “a lack of cybersecurity strategy can cripple innovation and slow business, because it can hinder development of digital offerings and business models.”

    According to Cisco’s findings, seventy-one percent of executives said that concerns over cybersecurity are impeding innovation in their organizations. Thirty-nine percent of executives stated that they had halted mission-critical initiatives due to cybersecurity issues.

    Encouraging moves

    While the possibility that corporate leaders are taking cyber security seriously is encouraging, that change is yet to be seen in the marketplace, particularly in the consumer Internet of Things market where being first trumps security, design considerations or even basic safety.

    The real test for how important cybersecurity really is remains in the marketplace — will customers pay more for secure products?

    One sense that in Cisco’s marketplace of enterprise customers where security failures could have expensive, embarrassing and possibly catastrophic consequences, customers will pay more for trustworthy devices. In the consumer field it may well be different.

    Probably the most important finding from Cisco’s survey is that businesses are now understanding security has to be designed into products and processes rather than being bolted on as an after thought. If that is true, then we have come a long way.

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  • Cracking open the black box

    Cracking open the black box

    One of the things confronting technology vendors in the past five years has been the commoditization of hardware and the opening up of standards. As software has eaten the computer hardware industry, those companies are being forced to make their systems more open.

    In that world of open systems, it’s the ecosystem of developers and products around platforms that drives success. The best example being the iPhone where the range of third party apps available made Apple’s product the most compelling on the market.

    At Cisco Live in Melbourne last week Susie Wee, the company’s Vice President in charge of the company’s DevNet developer relations program, described how the networking company is opening their systems with Application Program Interfaces (APIs) to build an ecosystem.

    “What we want to do is help people with this transition,” says Susie. “With the network, with the infrastructure and with the cloud we want people to get more out of it.”

    Cisco, like most hardware companies, are finding the shift to opening their data streams to be wrenching. The business model of a decade ago involved mysterious black boxes running on proprietary software with the data dished out sparingly.

    While the the ‘black boxes’ still remain, becoming a ‘platform’ and making data available to all comers is very much a cultural shift for once dominant hardware companies like Cisco.

    The question for IT hardware companies is how long they can defend their proprietary software systems – the hardware side is already slowly declining as software defined equipment takes over – while establishing dominance with their software and data feeds.

    Users too need to be treading carefully as those APIs and the data being fed through them is subject to the business imperatives of the

    Cisco hopes they can achieve this through their current market power and business networks, it is a hard ask for them though. For the entire tech industry, the shift to an API driven marketplace is going to be testing.

    Paul travelled to Cisco Live in Melbourne as a guest of Cisco

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  • Bringing cybersecurity into the mainstream

    Bringing cybersecurity into the mainstream

    “Cybersecurity is out of the dungeon and now selling itself as a business service,” says Cisco’s Chief Security and Trust Officer, John Stewart.

    Stewart was discussing his company’s security challenges at a Cisco Live briefing at their Melbourne conference yesterday.

    The shift to security as a business service follows the pattern of computerisation in business believes Stewart, “at first businesses said you can’t keep important documents on computers, then they said you could only keep important data on computers”

    For Stewart, the fact c-level execs recognise the importance of cybersecurity is a positive sign that indicates organisations are taking IT and communications security seriously.

    When asked what keeps him up at night, Stewart said it was worries about infrastructure security, the Ukrainian power network’s experience after an attack from a seriously motivated group of hackers indicates just how serious this is.

    Interestingly Stewart remains focused on the risks of security breaches, as the Internet of Things rolls out it may well be the integrity of data streams becomes a far greater focus for system administrators and security officers.

    Paul travelled to Cisco Live in Melbourne as a guest of Cisco

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  • When software ate the network

    When software ate the network

    I’m attending the Asia Pacific Cisco Live in Melbourne Australia this week which is starkley illustrating the shift in communications technologies and the business models around them.

    To kick off the press program Cisco made a joint announcement with Australian incumbent telco Telstra on the rollout of a smart software defined networking product.

    Software Defined Networking uses basic computer hardware, basically glorified personal computers, to do the jobs of the expensive routers, switches and network appliances that were insanely profitable for companies like Cisco a few years ago.

    It wasn’t so long ago when Cisco executives were taking technology journalists out to earnestly explain how Software Defined Networking (SDN) was feasible.

    Today, SDN is defining both the telco and communications industries as companies like Telstra look at bundling IT networking and software services into their offerings to prop up their falling margins. India’s Reliance Communications are a good example of how providers are trying to shift into new marketplaces.

    For telcos, communications vendors  and IT hardware sellers the changing technologies illustrate what Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreesen meant when he described how “software will eat the world.’

    Software is eating the IT hardware industry and telcos are seeing – hoping – it’s another lucrative opportunity. Businesses in other sectors should be thinking about how software is going to change their world.

    Paul travelled to Melbourne for Cisco Live as a guest of Cisco

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