It looks as though Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers is really getting into this commercial drone stuff.
We wrote in late March that the former longtime Cisco CEO had invested an undisclosed amount in a hot startup called Airware that promotes itself as providing "the operating system for commercial drones." Chambers, who also joined Airware's board, was quoted at the time saying: "The commercial drone industry is poised to throw many markets into transition."
Now we see that Chambers was among the speakers kicking off this week's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's big Xponential 2016 conference in New Orleans.
During his talk, Chambers shared the Top 7 Mistakes Enterprises Make with Drones, and Cisco's Biren Gandhi (See: Cisco's go-to guy on commercial drones) posted a slide from that presentation via Twitter. Gandhi, who talked to us last week about Cisco's commercial drone-related endeavors for a story we just published titled "Commercial drones gaining altitude with top IT vendors," was also speaking at the event this week.
Biren Gandhi/Cisco Chambers advised not:
*Starting with the drone...not the business opportunity
*Underestimating IT implications... data to right person
*Forgetting to tie drones into overall Digitization (IoT) Strategy
*Failing to understand regulations
*Believing manual flight is safe and sufficient
*Operating with insufficient safety and compliance controls
*Selecting a solution without adequate security