Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, was back again uttering all the buzzwords such as Cloud Computing, SaaS, Social Media, Green Products, Blogging etc., but this time at the Gartner Symposium. He said his company has 26 priorities this year, up from one or two in previous years.  He said Cisco’s Telepresence technology has saved his company $150 million a year in travel expenses. He said he sees Cisco’s IT budget will be up 10% with spending going to collaboration. Cisco has restructured itself around collaboration. For instance, there is no single head of engineering. Instead Cisco has a council of 9 top engineering heads at the company. “For the first time collaborative IT will be so intertwined with the business strategy you won’t know the difference between the two,” said Chambers.

Among other topics, Chambers said:

• Cisco has never been just a hardware or software company, but is learning on the fly to be the glue between the two categories. That glue is expected to be collaboration.
• On business applications Cisco will partner with Oracle, SAP and Microsoft to offer collaboration.
• Cisco wants more play on the desktop but with partners. He said he was pleased with Cisco’s partnership with Microsoft.
• Cisco intends to be a player in consumer virtualization and services in markets such as sports and entertainment.
• Cisco is tracking the emissions and energy impact for its routers and other products. “Anything connected to the network can and will be green,” said Chambers. Chambers argued that the network can be a green IT enabler.
• Cloud computing will become a mesh of interconnected networks. Cloud computing “is just another evolution of the Internet.”
• On SaaS, Cisco said WebEx use internally is up 2,500 percent.
• On online community – he said discussion forums and blogging have increased dramatically within the company.

Cisco Boss Betting Big On Buzzwords by Om Malik