Welcome to this episode of Executive Insights, where I speak with Todd
Gurela of Cisco Systems about how Cisco is transforming from being more
than just a technology provider, to a company working with an ecosystem to
provide outcomes to their customers.
Hey, thanks very much, Kevin.
Great to be here.
It's great to see you.
So, you know, when we were talking about doing this session, you know, one of the
things that we started talking about, how Cisco you were trying to convince
me, it's really more of a solution company than a product company, you
know, can you give me, give our, give everybody one example really where Cisco
is doing more of a solution business?
Sure.
So most people think of Cisco just as a networking company.
Certainly there's a lot of products involved in that, but when you look at
what the network can do today, the amount of telemetry and the amount of data
that comes from the network itself, uh, location services is a great example,
whether you're in a factory and you're looking for inventory and where it's
located, what part of the factory and doing inventory management under wifi.
Or if you're in an office space and you're doing social distancing here,
as people come back to the office.
Those are just two great examples of how location services are enabled
by the network that, you know, we traditionally have built out and
how the software over top of it is now giving you those insights.
So do you have a specific example of an implementation that you've done
for a specific customer and I'm not looking for the customer name, but
just to help everybody understand a little bit more of what that means.
Sure.
So, um, right now in some large factories and large automotive factories,
we've done some of this where, you know, they have a very just-in-time
process on their manufacturing floor.
So they are looking for, you know, where is the inventory that's going
to be needed to be moved to the, to the line, to allow, you know, those
engines that they're putting in the six, six cylinder engine that they're
putting in today, what pallets need to be moved to the line of what time?
And that's all being done right now at a few auto manufacturers
underneath wifi, with active RFID tags.
And, and it's a great example of what's being enabled in the manufacturing space.
In office environments, we've already been working with some of the large consulting
firms out there as they've deployed, um, technology in their office space
so that they can return to the office.
And we're doing exactly that where, you know, as an employee comes
into the building, the devices that they're carrying, keep track of where
they've interacted in the building.
So that should there be some sort of a sickness or something that needs to be
notified to other employees, you can look at what proximity they were in and
HR and, and the operations team of the, of the company can now send out notices
that maybe somebody has been exposed.
So it's interesting because with our dependence on networking on wifi, RFID,
all of these different technologies, it's funny that the network, and
you're what you're describing,
it's almost becoming like the central nervous system.
Absolutely.
There's so much data that can be garnished from the network itself.
And we look at it as almost data exhausted.
Most cases, people don't even realize what's available out of it.
This technology change or the maturation of the technology has
driven some changes within Cisco.
I mean, the, your group exists for, for example, I mean, give me a sense of within
Cisco, what, what has happened internally in order to capitalize on some of these
opportunities that you just outlined.
Sure.
So the reason that we formed an industry solutions group at Cisco
was because we really needed to be able to show our customers and show
our own Cisco, uh, employees and partners, how Cisco is relevant to the
lines of business of our customers.
So how are our technology is being utilized and deployed?
For real use cases that our customers are looking for specific outcomes
around, um, you know, whether it's in the hospital environment and you're
looking at integrating, uh, medical IOT devices into the network so that they
can be better maintained, monitored,
and also the patient health can be looked at holistically.
Those are the types of things that, um, you know, we've had to go further
than just the traditional, hey, we'll supply you a network, we'll
secure it, those kinds of things.
We now have to go into, what is it gonna take to integrate those types
of solutions into a holistic use case so that our customers can actually
deploy in a more effective way and really get the outcomes quicker.
So Todd, it's interesting that what you're talking about is, you know, I guess in
the past you could consider it Cisco is largely technology provider, you mentioned
securing the network, and, but now, and, uh, uh, installing technology, but really
looking at your, your group was formed in order to make sure a customer was
getting their outcome that they wanted, what is a business outcome that they
could need in applying that technology?
Absolutely are, you know, if you look at the holistic solutions that Cisco can
bring, not just network security, but also the, uh, other automation of how
you're going to deploy these technologies.
Um, you can really get to that business outcome much quicker and, and
across every industry from healthcare manufacturing, banking, retail, et cetera.
It's the same type of process.
There's a recipe to how you need to build the enabling technologies
to get to that outcome quicker.
Interesting.
Yeah.
So you kind of touched on something which is always a big topic, as you said secure.
Right?
So in talking about cybersecurity is always an interesting discussion.
Um, you know, maybe, can you expand on that a little bit about, you know,
what is Cisco's role in cybersecurity?
What do you see it as, as, as, uh, what's the responsibility
of Cisco with that topic?
Sure.
So Cisco is taking a very ballistic approach to security.
A once upon a time security from a networking perspective was
just looked at as an appliance.
And really if you put a firewall in place, you know, that's, you,
you've done your job security wise.
Uh, with the different types of threats and activities that are happening
now, uh, you know, around the world, whether they're government or private
sector, um, it's important to really look at security in a holistic way.
And what we look at is how are you going to detect?
How are you going to defend?
And then how are you going to mitigate against, against
those threats in the future?
And, uh, what we've done is we've acquired a number of companies over the last
five years, and holistically Cisco has the largest security portfolio — really
larger than any of the total of, if you put all other security players in
the one company, uh, we've got more security portfolio in what Cisco does.
So it is really about automating security.
It's about identifying the threats and then, uh, putting in place the appropriate
tools so that the operators of the networks and operators of the applications
can really, um, you know, secure and lock down who has access to what.
The biggest approach to things today is building things under
a zero trust architecture.
So assuming there's always a threat, even if you have isolated air
gap networks or isolated air gap applications, that's critical to look
at it from a zero trust perspective.
So that wherever is logging into that system, whoever's accessing that
network, um, it's, it's key to know, you know, that they've been validated
to be the right person or device,
in many cases, when you look into IOT.
Yeah.
So I almost hear you saying, you know, it's, it's easy to think of
the old days when, uh, you know, you just worried about, did I secure my
end points, my laptops, and so forth?
And if I have a firewall, I might be okay.
What I hear you saying is the network is the one place where really
you might be able to detect and understand any anomalies, uh,
assuming everybody that's on the network might be a bad actor?
Getting back that concept of the network as a sensor, the network is a fantastic
sensor to know what's happening, who's accessing, and what devices are there.
Yeah.
So like in the old days when Sun Microsystems used to say the network
is the computer, really, I guess you're saying the network is the security maybe.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
So, you know, and so along that same topic, right.
And certainly in, in the parts of the business that Schneider's in,
you see a lot of what would be considered traditional OT systems.
Now are coming on to the IT network.
Right.
Um, you know, I'm just curious, what's your perspective on how is
that impacting CIO organizations, uh, that, that you're interacting with?
Is that changing their scope?
Um, what kind of impact is it having on them?
So it's pretty much universally now the CIO is being looked at as,
um, you know, what are you going to do to help us secure our systems?
Um, no longer can businesses make decisions around deploying systems,
you know, in a vacuum where maybe the CIO or the IT department gets
called in to help with the actual deployment, uh, today the CIO and the
IT departments have a seat at the table.
And the reason they have a seat at that table is because of security.
So as OT systems are migrating to modern systems that are based on a
standard protocols that are based on more IT infrastructure and network.
Um, it is more and more critical for the CIO to have a seat at the table
during that decision-making, uh, when they're truly, um, you know, making
the, uh, evaluations of what type of architecture are they going to build.
Um, and we've seen it pretty much universally accepted now
in all sectors, all industries.
We actually, for our factories, created a new one organization within the CIO
organization, just to deal with the factories as we're making them smart
and bringing them onto the IT network.
And, uh, cybersecurity was one of the reasons that the factory guys
actually wanted the CIO team involved in order to make sure that they
were doing all of the right things.
So, uh, it sounds like we're not the only company that's
experiencing some of those changes.
No, absolutely.
And you know, the IT network that OT is building on, isn't always the
internet, the way we think of it.
It's still sometimes an isolated network, but it's utilizing the same set of
tools that IT has traditionally used.
And that, that is something that's, you know, been a big advantage as we see
these modernization of these systems.
So, so as we're seeing these modernization of the systems and you
see, um, this transformation that's occurring, that we've kind of touched
on, uh, in order for your team to provide an outcome based, right?
Solution for a customer, you know, are you doing it all, all on your own or
is there an ecosystem around you in order to help deliver those solutions?
No, I mean, the ecosystem is really the delivery engine.
Uh, we look at it as Cisco is an enabler of the outcome that
customers are looking for.
So partners like Schneider,
absolutely, we, you know, we go to market with Schneider where,
you know, you're delivering the total outcome to the customer.
We're the enabling aspects of it.
And, uh, and certainly we bring the expertise that we can bring with respect
to network, compute security, um, application, performance management,
all those types of things, which are
core to our portfolio, but it's core to the enablement of the outcome that you're
looking to deliver to your customers.
In some cases, Schneider might be taking the lead in some of these.
Sometimes it might be one of our partners.
Other times I could see where maybe Cisco is taking the lead as a trusted advisor.
So the relationships really are changing depending on who is the most
closest to delivering the outcome that the customer is looking for and
the roles and the systems change.
Is that something you observe as well?
Yeah, absolutely.
And it really depends on the solution area.
If you look at smart buildings right now, obviously Schneider has a very,
very strong place in the overall building infrastructure and building
management systems and things.
But when you're looking at what's happening, as people are renovating
their, their office space today, often Cisco is leading that conversation
and we're bringing in the, uh, the digital technologies that Schneider has.
So it's a very complimentary relationship when we look at
how the ecosystem needs to work.
And then both of us work with smaller ecosystem players to
deliver the total outcome as well.
So, Todd, thanks very much for sharing some of your insights on what's happening
inside the industry, and certainly Cisco is a major player, uh, the perspective
is a very valuable and important one.
Thanks very much, Kevin.
It's great to be able to help you simplify the complexity to our customers.
Talk to you soon.
Okay.