Cisco looks to globalize through 'brainforming'

Innovation in places all over the world is driving a second phase of globalization, and Cisco Systems wants to tap into that trend through "brainforming," the networking giant's CTO said Wednesday.

Brainforming is different from brainstorming because it lets you filter ideas and come up with solutions while still collecting proposals, said Padmasree Warrior, who joined Cisco from Motorola earlier this year. Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and social networking can help make it happen, she said.

Warrior spoke to reporters in San Francisco from the Cisco Live user conference in Orlando via Cisco's Telepresence high-definition conference system. She and other executives highlighted the company's embrace of globalization, including the establishment of its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, India, last year and efforts to develop talent around the world.

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Innovation in places all over the world is driving a second phase of globalization, and Cisco Systems wants to tap into that trend through "brainforming," the networking giant's CTO said Wednesday.

Brainforming is different from brainstorming because it lets you filter ideas and come up with solutions while still collecting proposals, said Padmasree Warrior, who joined Cisco from Motorola earlier this year. Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and social networking can help make it happen, she said.

Warrior spoke to reporters in San Francisco from the Cisco Live user conference in Orlando via Cisco's Telepresence high-definition conference system. She and other executives highlighted the company's embrace of globalization, including the establishment of its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, India, last year and efforts to develop talent around the world.

"Traditionally, capital flowed from developed markets to emerging markets and emerging markets were passive recipients of innovation. That model will change in the next few years, where we'll have multiple centers of economic power," Warrior said.

The IT industry enabled globalization and is now helping to bring about its second wave, she said. "Ten years ago ... we always created products and solutions for the developed markets, and then we stripped off features and we took them to emerging markets to try to sell them there," Warrior said.

Now innovation, as well as capital, is coming from emerging markets as well, she said. For example, India has developed ways of using SMS (Short Message Service) for mobile transactions that are new to developed countries, Warrior said.

Meanwhile, emerging markets will have unique requirements that Cisco will need to develop for, and there will be a more diverse set of ideas being aired about technology, she said.

To meet the growing demand for its technology in emerging markets, Cisco is aggressively expanding its education and training efforts, other executives said Wednesday. There will be a need for 3 million more people trained on Cisco technologies in the next five years, 80 percent of whom will work for the company's customers, they said. The others will be needed at channel partners and Cisco itself.

Cisco already has regional training centers in Johannesburg and Amman, Jordan, under its Global Talent Acceleration Program. It plans to open ones in India and China, probably by year's end, executives said.

The company also plans to set up two more globalization centers like the one in Bangalore, where Cisco has placed several high-level executives and plans to place one-fifth of its executives across all corporate functions by 2012.

Discussing her new position, Warrior praised the corporate culture at Cisco as customer-focused and pragmatic.

"We know what we're good at and we know what we need to go after," she said.

Visual networking -- combining elements of social networking into video -- is Cisco's best bet over the next three to five years, Warrior said. Collaboration and application delivery through WebEx is another big bet, she said. But the company's routing and switching foundation will also be important, she added.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.