Speaking in Israel today where he was handing over $2.5 million to boost economic development there, Cisco CEO John Chambers expressed his continuing confidence in two bedrocks of his company’s long-term strategy: service provider network investment and Israeli technology.
“As long as a country or geography has at least two or three major service providers who are moving at the same time you are going to see them continuing to build out networks,” he said. “We clearly bet on this, not in the last year or two. We bet going back six, seven years ago when we put almost 50 percent of our R&D investment in service providers.”
Cisco has spent more than a billion dollars buying nine companies in Israel over the past decade, and Chambers, choosing to forgo the corporate “we,” told his listeners that he isn’t done shopping.
“I’m going to continue to acquire companies here,” he said, noting Cisco has bought more companies than in any other location other than the United States. “I think you are going to continue to see us being very proactive in this country. We see a lot of innovation occurring here across everything.”
In anticipation of Chambers’ trip, there was chatter picked up last week on our Cisco Subnet regarding speculation – well, hope, actually – that the company may be looking to make Radvision its latest buy in Israel.
No news to report on that front, but Chambers never leaves home without his checkbook.
