Executive Thought Leadership

Information is at the center of all economic activity. Whether a consumer is choosing from a broad selection of products and services, an engineer is working on a new product, or a CEO is responding to an urgent customer situation, the accuracy and timeliness of available information can have a huge impact on the results. During the past few years, improvements in the capacity and functionality of the Internet and other communications networks have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and speed of information flow.

Inventory status has moved from an infrequent, offline activity to a continual flow of updates from barcode readers, point-of-sale terminals, and RFID tags. Financial markets around the world report activity with minimal delay. Leading firms can close their books in a day or less. Travelers can find out the location of an inbound plane, plan the best route to the airport to avoid traffic, and choose from the available seats.

However, no person or machine has infinite capacity. Managing this wealth of information is a key step to making transactions and interactions more effective, and our people and organizations more productive. Improving transactional productivity is typically focused on reducing costs, removing or consolidating processes, and automating within a discrete range of conditions and rules. This often involves silos of information, usually restricted to one firm or department. Since many transactions likely fall within a narrow boundary, this approach satisfies the early demands for faster response.

Unfortunately, giving people faster transactions doesn’t satisfy the demand, it raises their expectations. And they bring these expectations to bear as customers, suppliers, and employees. If a customer or supplier can do a few transactions with your organization quickly and easily, they expect to be able to do all of them that way. What’s more, they bring these expectations to their interactions as well. If banking customers can have up-to-date information on their home computers, why should a meeting with a loan officer or investment advisor involve reams of paper and questions that have already been answered?

Thought Leadership

Having accurate, timely information makes complex interactions more productive, adding value and growth potential to the organization. In this issue, several Cisco executives explore this concept of information flow, the opportunities we see, and how it is affecting the areas of network security, data storage, and home networking.

Charles Giancarlo, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer, begins with an outline of the issues and opportunities of operating in a real-time environment.

Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president, Data Center, Switching and Security, describes how network and information security systems can interact to manage security issues and respond to threats as they occur.

Tom Edsall, vice president and general manager, Internet Systems Business Unit, discusses how innovations in storage networking are facilitating timely access to data for dynamic business applications.

Janie Tsao, senior vice president, Worldwide Sales and Business Development of Cisco’s Linksys Division, explores the possibilities that real-time interactions bring to the home environment.

Douglas Frosst, executive editor of this newsletter, shares his impressions of the rising expectations created by real-time interactions.

I hope you enjoy this issue of the Executive Thought Leadership Quarterly .