Cisco’s Chambers Pushes ‘Collaboration’ Software for Govt.
As the Internet evolves, “partnership” technologies will drive new networks, Cisco CEO John Chambers said Wed. at the FOSE govt. vendor conference in D.C. The more seamless govt. communications are, the better agencies perform, he said. In the corporate world, emphasis is shifting from cutting costs to increasing productivity per dollar, Chambers said. He and a colleague demonstrated emerging Cisco technologies aimed at bringing networkwide standardization to govt. communications.
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Network interconnectedness has an 89% correlation with a nation’s global competitiveness, Chambers said. Productivity and security on a govt.-wide level demand true convergence, he said, in which “all forms of communications will go through the network” and users don’t care whether a message was originally written or spoken.
The Internet was designed for productivity, even in a nuclear war, Chambers said. In the 1990s, it was used to automate supply chains, making industrial and retail suppliers more efficient. This decade, it helps automate all manner of interactions from service calls to money transfers, trimming time and expense in steps deemed marginal; now, he said, savvy firms -- and agencies -- will use convergent networks to make telecommuting more efficient. As govt. trades “siloed” communications for all-purpose e-mail, voice, text and video interfaces like the Cisco software he demonstrated at FOSE, Chambers said, many agencies will put true telecommuting into action. Spurred by transportation costs and factors like fear of avian flu, agencies will be questioning whether they're really providing opportunities for workers to be productive in the home environment.
Money is the main bar to proper agency security, Chambers said, but 3-5-year plans installing single-framework solutions for all communications will free money and ease security management. Success will be elusive, he said, “without standards and a common framework in the industry.”
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Cable executives made little of the net neutrality debate at FOSE. David Bopst, management dir., Comcast National Communications Services, said network management is “not an issue” for Comcast, since its voice offering runs on an entirely separate network from other data, meaning rival VoIP providers can’t be managed out of existence. Michael Prendergast, vp-national sales, Time Warner Business Services, said Time Warner is at such an early state in its deployment -- still running small-scale trials -- it hasn’t formulated a true deployment timetable, let alone a network management plan. Jason White, vp-Cox Business Services, said it’s only natural for a network operator to develop applications that work efficiently at every level of the network architecture. He said “over-the-top” providers just have to deal with the frustrations arising from not having that built-in efficiency.