How Cisco divvies up its R&D

Cisco chief development officer Charles Giancarlo says the big switch/router company gets 25% of its revenue from carrier customers, but spends disproportionate amount of its R&D on building new carrier gear. “Even though service provider is not quite as large a business for us as enterprise, the nature of the service provider business is one that drives greater demand for R&D. Albeit we probably spend less on sales for service providers. So there’s a bit of a trade-off. [Service providers] are bigger customers and require fewer salespeople, but on the other hand they require larger amounts of R&D.” More from his interview with Network World’s Phil Hochmuth.