Routers/Switches /

Cisco Enterprise chief: We need to deliver

New boss looks to lead in IP telephony, but says company must catch up in specialized switching.

Network World Fusion, 02/28/2000

James Richardson is the new general manager of Cisco's Enterprise line of business, succeeding Mario Mazzola, who built the division into a LAN switching powerhouse in six years. Richardson took time out from Cisco's Partner Summit in Las Vegas last week to speak with Network World Senior Editor Jim Duffy about the future of the division.

What are your priorities?

The first order of business is delivery of AVVID [Cisco's IP telephony architecture] in a scalable fashion. We've got a lot of ports out there, we've got a lot of telephones out there, but I think we have to now start to scale the pot.

The second order of business is focusing on content networking - load balancing, Layer 7 switching. We've got a good roadmap, but we have to execute on that.

The third one would be delivery of intelligent network services, virtual private networking being of primary importance. I think we got a great roadmap there too. It's just a matter of getting those things out to market.

In LAN switching, Cabletron is breaking itself into four companies; 3Com is breaking itself into two companies and seems to be getting little, if any, traction in large enterprises; and Nortel Networks is having trouble getting its next-generation Accelar switch out the door. Does Cisco still regard these companies as potent competitors?

We at Cisco are always paranoid about our competitors, especially our legacy competitors. As opposed to commenting on their inefficiencies, I can compliment the capabilities of Mario Mazzola and his engineering team. They were able to develop technologies that were much better price/performing and offered much more value to the customer base than our competition. The evidence of your success is your market share.

Do you see Cabletron and 3Com becoming more competitive by spinning off these companies?

3Com spinning off Palm is probably a good idea. But what's 3Com going to do? Are they going to focus on client - modems and adapter cards, the low-end product line? Are they going to go after new markets? Or are they going to try and come back into the enterprise? It's going to be tough.

But 3Com is a hugely talented corporation. They've got some of their market cap back and some of their strength back so maybe they can make a move back into the enterprise space and reverse the trend.

Cabletron - great platform, company too. Can they reverse the trend and make it back in? Or are they going to niche their way back in by focusing on Layer 4 to 7 or capturing some portion of the enterprise market that's in transition?

They're both fine companies. They've got great leadership. They've had their ups, and they've had their downs. Can they come back? Sure they can. Anybody can. It's a wide open environment.

IP telephony is being referred to as the next tornado to hit the enterprise. Are there any other tornadoes?

Voice over IP and, more specifically, voice-enabled data applications - or data-enabled voice applications - is going to be the next tornado. Pretty much anybody can transport voice over IP. Can you do it with quality of service? And can you integrate the apps that are required to make the business case? It's the apps that create the tornado.

Do you have any 10G bit/ sec Ethernet products under development right now?

We've got to do it, but I don't think we have anything in development.

Do we have architects looking at how we do it? Yeah. Will we do it? Yeah. Do we have a funded, committed engineering project with an ASIC coming back? No. But the more bandwidth you give somebody, the more they'll use.

When we started talking about Gigabit Ethernet two years ago, nobody thought about it. And now it's de facto. And oh, by the way, Gigabit Ethernet's not fast enough for storage applications, so we've got to get to 10G bit/sec.

Where's 10G bit/sec applicable? It's applicable as a high-bandwidth application in the campus as we distribute direct-access storage devices or whatever. Our servers get so overloaded we need to have 10G bit/sec access to them. It's not a matter of if; it's a matter of when.