The address was peppered with stats befitting just that kind of transformative scale: By 2015, there will be 10 million connected cars from BMW; By 2017, 25 percent of companies will have their own app store; By 2018, there will be 190 exabytes of annual global mobile traffic; 99 percent of the world is not yet connected, yet by 2020, 20 billion devices will be connected to the Internet.
Chambers said the company is closing in on that goal, with 31 percent of the market today. “We are very close to becoming the No. 1 player in security,” he said. He laid out the same goal for what he called the collaboration market.
Fast IT
The theme of Fast IT ran through the CEO’s presentation, as he underscored the need to develop and bring products to market more quickly than ever before. Citing many examples of the company’s progress, where change occurs twice as fast as it did just three years ago, Chambers insisted they have more work to do.“We’re not moving fast enough,” he said. “We are pulling away from our peers, but we have to move faster.”
Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
One key to increasing Cisco’s agility, according to Chambers, is Application-Centered Infrastructure (ACI), a major focus area for the company as it pushes forward in its support of the Internet of Everything. ACI, according to the company, allows IT deployments to take place simply and securely, in the data center or the cloud."It's clear that our customers want to consume in a software-centric way," one executive said, adding that ACI responds to customers' desire for flexibility and speed.
Fog Computing
One term gaining traction in Cisco circles is fog computing, related to cloud computing, yet located closer to the edge of the network, allowing real-time local analytics. The company describes fog computing as an intermediate step between cloud and on-premises computing that extends data, computing, storage and applications closer to users, providing higher quality service.“Typically, the Fog platform supports real-time, actionable analytics, processes, and filters the data, and pushes to the Cloud data that is global in geographical scope and time,” according to the company website. In addition, Cisco says fog computing could improve application performance in environments where it's tough to connect to the cloud, like in transit tunnels, underwater or at remote locations.