KEY POINTS:
Cisco Systems chairman and CEO John Chambers, one of the IT world's most engaging public speakers, was in his usual fine form when he took to the stage in Sydney last week.
Strolling, in typical Chambers style, through the Trans-Tasman Business Circle audience he suddenly honed in on
a random victim and demanded: "Do you like change?"
The hapless audience member could do little more than nod furiously and turn red.
"You like change a lot? I noticed you're married. Have you changed spouses recently?"
The rest of the crowd found it hilarious.
"Change is great when it happens to you, not when it happens to me," explained Chambers.
"Yet we have to build an environment in our businesses and governments which allows this to occur at tremendous speed."
One of the key drivers of change at present is the Web 2.0 phenomenon which is enabling unprecedented levels of collaboration around the globe, he said.
A flagship Cisco product aimed at cashing in on demand for corporate internet collaboration tools is the company's top-end TelePresence video conferencing system.
"We think oh no [Web 2.0 is] for those way-far-out people in Silicon Valley," Chambers said.
"It isn't at all. All Web 2.0 is is a set of technologies that enable user collaboration. And while social networking and web services are part of it, it's also this TelePresence virtual capability, unified communications. This will, in my opinion, drive productivity for the next decade. If you don't understand the power of this collaboration you'll get left behind - as a company or as a country."
Cisco's core business is being an internet "plumber" - a provider of the routers and switches linking the network - but Chambers' growth plans involve it becoming more about selling the applications, such as videoconferencing systems, now using the internet.
"We're proud to be plumbers, it's a very honourable profession, and it sure is very lucrative, but we're about to become solution providers," he said.
Chambers' has had an unusually long reign of 12 years as Cisco CEO. Since he took over the job in January 1995 the company has grown its annual revenues from US$1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) to about US$30 billion.
Chambers talks about upping that growth rate even higher through a round of acquisitions designed to capitalise on the strong demand for internet services he is advocating.
"Most economists would say half the productivity achievements of the last decade were due really to IP [internet protocol] technology and the network but you haven't seen anything yet."
He says Cisco is itself using online collaboration to boost its productivity and speed up its acquisitions.
When Cisco spent US$32.2 billion last year acquiring video technology specialist Scientific Atlanta, the deal took 45 days to close. This year Cisco's US$3.2 billion acquisition of web conferencing company WebEx took just eight days to complete using internet communications and data sharing tools.
Chambers says the TelePresence technology, which uses giant screens to make videoconferencing participants appear life-size "is so effective that you and I could play Texas hold'em and I could tell when you've got the card - your pupil's dilated. You've got to wear sunglasses if you're going to play against me."
He says Cisco will save US$150 million in travel expenses next year using the technology.
"I know for a fact that's going to occur because I've already taken the budget away from everyone."
Cisco's New Zealand country manager, Geoff Lawrie, says given this country is grappling with full employment, increasing national productivity needs to involve using the types of technology Chambers talks about.
"Probably more than any other country, because of New Zealand's state in the economic cycle and where it is geographically in the world, it needs to look at that kind of stuff and say: 'Well, how do we collaborate with the world?'," says Lawrie.
"That whole idea of how do you get your mind around the collaboration environment that's going to exist in the world and the speed at which business needs to be done, and how you move to use those technologies to make you more intimate and more collaborate with your customer base, is a hugely relevant issue for New Zealand."
While the TelePresence system costs several hundred thousand dollars, Lawrie says several New Zealand companies are interested in installing it, for reasons including saving time, travel costs and cutting carbon emissions.
"We have some people who are super hot about doing it for lots of different reasons. For the first time one of the compelling reasons is actually travel and the green footprint - that has much more resonance with organisations right now than it ever did before."
Let's hope videoconferencing doesn't curb international travel completely. If it does people like Chambers won't get the chance to embarrass random Australians in front of their colleagues.
Simon Hendery travelled to Sydney as a guest of Cisco Systems.
