Amidst a rapidly changing, unpredictable economy, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers sees one certainty in the future: The Internet will continue to explode as more people and billions of devices link together.
While discussing “painful” layoffs at the networking giant during a presentation at the CEO Forum in Raleigh on Thursday, Chambers’ mood heartened when he discussed the “Internet of Things.”
But he also readily conceded that Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), which operates its second largest corporate campus in RTP, faces challenges in capitalizing on opportunities.
“This is the hardest economy to read that I’ve seen in my life,” he told the sellout crowd of more than 450, “and the pace of change isn’t just accelerating, it’s growing exponentially.”
The Internet, said Chambers, has developed in four specific phases. The first phase, which included the rise of email as an essential communication and business tool as well as the rise of search, led to the second phase, the establishment of e-commerce platforms.
The third phase, said Chambers, was the social network, which expanded the reach and power of individuals. The current phase, the one just beginning, said Chambers, “is the internet of things.”
The transition has already happened. We have devices that are IP-enabled in our homes today – smart refridgerators that know when to order replacement water filters, and AC controls that learn how to control the environment and temperature in your house.
But it extends further than this smart technology, said Chambers. The applications of networking devices within the “Internet of Things,” extend to manufacturing and agriculture functions. It will revolutionize crop yield, production times, and staffing needs, said Chambers.
A decade ago, said Chambers, “there were only 10 million devices connected to the Internet.”
“Today there are 10 billion,” said Chambers, “and in another decade, there won’t be 100 billion, there will be 500 billion.”
It’s a bold prediction for the future of technology, and one in which Cisco, the company that Chambers leads, expects to play a vital role.
“Almost everything will be IP-enabled,” he predicted, “and it will bring together literally 500 billion devices around the globe.”
The majority of connections, said Chambers, will be machine-to-machine connections. Chambers estimated that these connections will represent 45% of the total networking connections across the globe.
“The majority of the benefit,” he explained, “will be connections that are machine-to-people.” An estimated 34% of connections will be machine-to-people or people-to-machine. The remaining 21% will be people-to-people network connections.
Chambers used an example of a parking garage, where each parking space is enabled with an RFID tag to notify drivers about parking availability. This enables the garage manager to know when to staff the facility, and when technology could accept and process payment, indicate availability, and so forth.
“This is just the beginning,” said Chambers, “this is where the future is.”
