There's an interesting article by Larry Dignan on eweek.com today that takes a look at Cisco. It surely raises an interesting question.

Can Cisco Be Cool Again?
Opinion: Cisco CEO John Chambers says "the excitement is back in networking" and the company can transcend into new markets. The giant may just get its mojo back.

NEW YORK—Cisco CEO John Chambers worked the crowd at the company's financial analyst meeting here, outlining a vision where the network—run by Cisco gear, of course—serves as a platform that follows you around as you flip between work and play. The convergence means "the excitement is back in networking," says Chambers.

For anyone following the networking sector—essentially a bunch of companies making commodity boxes and mergers of also-ran plodding giants such as Lucent and Alcatel—a little excitement would be welcome. The big question is whether Cisco can be cool again. Can Cisco, which for a fleeting moment during the dot-com boom was the most valuable company in the world, regain the mantle as a tech darling?

As the article notes, Cisco's trying to walk that thin line between innovation and safety. And while the partnerships mentioned with SAP and Microsoft certainly add clout to the networking giant, there's not much innovation in partnering with either. It's a teaming of the lumbering giants of industry, and all very safe for everyone involved. There's precious little risk or innovation on the horizon, although certainly incremental improvements will be heralded as a new dawn in networking by the internal marketing shills.

Cisco CEO John Chambers is quoted as saying "We have to have the ability to capture market transitions before they
become obvious. Once they are obvious, it's too late."  Too little, too late has been a market delivery mechanism for Cisco for too long.

The article cites several areas where Cisco could innovate and bring real, true advances to networking. Video convergence is one area, but given what they've deployed thus far, they're already late to the party. Will they innovate? Or will they buy a startup that does something really well and spend 18 months figuring out how to incorporate the newcomer into the Cisco brand while the rest of the sector moves forward?

The bottom line of the article is this - Cisco will have to transcend networking if it's going to continue to grow. Can Cisco do that? I wonder. To thrive, they'll have to get beyond cool, they'll have to innovate, and they'll have to do real R&D (not just acquisitions). Only the best solutions can drive Cisco to a thriving future.


Technorati Tags: Cisco, VoIP, Video, convergence, unified communications