Here’s what Cisco did to rethink, reposition, reinvent its business model

In a wide-ranging interview with ETCIO.COM, Daisy Chittilapilly Managing Director- Digital Transformation Office, Cisco discusses the company’s changing business model, its impact, and the promise of intent based networking, 5G, WiFi6

Sneha Jha
  • Published On May 8, 2019 at 08:23 AM IST
Read by: 100 Industry Professionals
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The singular focus of digital transformation efforts should be used in cases and outcomes. “Digital transformation should not become a science project where you tinker with technology to discover what will come out of it. Enterprises should start on the opposite end of the spectrum. Clarity of purpose is paramount for digital transformation,” opines Daisy Chittilapilly. She should know. Chittilapilly is the Managing Director for Digital Transformation Office at Cisco.

She heads a team that bridges the gap between tech and business domain focused on co-creating digital projects using technology as the primary lever. It is also a team that is chartered with recruiting ecosystems which help make that value creation more complete and comprehensive for Cisco customers. The operating model of this business unit is customer-centric, value-driven and experience focused.

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In a wide-ranging interview with ETCIO.COM, Daisy Chittilapilly Managing Director- Digital Transformation Office, Cisco discusses the company’s changing business model, its impact, and the promise of intent based networking, 5G, WiFi6


Cisco has revamped its strategy to become software and services focused. Can you drill down into what this really means for your business and for the company as a whole?

Cisco is transforming from a networking hardware company into a diversified business with an increased focus on software and services. We are creating a business model where customers could consume technology in line with their requirements rather than buy it all upfront. This is because the consumption models around our technology are changing.

Our revenue figures are a clear testimony of the success of this business model shift. Globally, we are posting 33 percent revenue from software. Earlier 50-52% of our software sales was perpetual software licensing and now it is moved to subscription-based licenses. We are on track to meet our growth projection of achieving 40% recurring revenue worldwide by 2020. Interestingly, India is ahead of the growth curve because we are already generating 40 percent revenue from software sales. That’s understandable. Software is a very understood subject in India.

This strategy has also brought about a big shift in our engagement model with customers. We were always a customer oriented company but the whole focus on customer experience as it relates to being engaged with the customer throughout the lifecycle of the deployment. This has reached a whole new level as Cisco.

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From an operating model perspective, the software selling motion is changing significantly for Cisco. Traditionally, we were always concerned with land motion which meant that we deployed hardware, got it installed but we had very little to do with the lifecycle of the usage of the product by our customer. Now our engagement with the customer will be more lifecycle oriented. We are deploying technology in consumption based bite-sized model-based way so it’s important to optimize the customer experience. They are demanding for newer consumption models. So we will now engage with the customers throughout the entire lifecycle of Land, Adopt, Expand and Renew (LAER).

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Internally, our organization is evolving to be a force that can handle all the four life stages of a customer journey.

Outside of change management, security is the biggest challenge to the adoption of digital. Typically, enterprises have legacy systems and getting a holistic cover for these old, disparate systems is a pain. A lot of big companies get breached because of the lack of integrated security. How Cisco is focusing on integrating security across the network, cloud, internet, email, and endpoints?

Integrated Security is a challenge that enterprises are now getting around to accepting. They know that having more security providers is not a foolproof strategy. There are companies in India that have 80+ security providers but are still not secure. So the approach of having one point solution for one used case in security is not going to work in the enterprises.

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Cisco was the first company to talk about the taboo subject that it’s not a question of “If” but it’s a question of “when”. So you should have a “before attack” strategy, a “during attack” strategy and an “after attack” strategy. Addressing the full attack continuum is something that we talked about first. But now all our competitors are talking about it.

We are conscious of the fact that the world is a heterogeneous place. Even when we have built new platforms we have always kept them backward integratable because even if we build newer ways of working whether it was intent based networking looking at an attack continuum as before, during and after, we know that customers can’t rip and replace.

So as the first approach we do an assessment of their security posture. That is something that we don’t do ourselves. It can be done by someone who is advising them on risk. We typically sit down with a client and see where we are today and then find a way to look at a holistic architecture and all the capabilities that they will need for cybersecurity going forward.

Besides, security is an area that faces skill drought. It’s challenging for many customers to find the skills to manage and control it on their own. We are working with our partners to alleviate this pain point for our clients.


Cisco is rethinking networks with intent based networking. What is the kind of uptake you are seeing for this offering?

The acceptance for intent-based networking is very high, worldwide. Globally, the first deployment of intent based networking was Wipro. The largest client for intent-based networking in the world is also an Indian customer. It is not referenceable because it is under deployment. We have around 150 customers in India so far and globally it’s over 4500.

All the top five IT/ ITES companies in the world have adopted intent based networking. That is a universal endorsement of how it helps them build, provision and manage networks. These top IT/ITES companies manage large complex networks and they realize that we are at an inflection point in the history of networking.

The device explosion, accelerated by internet bandwidth and a corresponding ability to connect more and more devices, pressure point movements like BYOD and IoT are driving the need for intent-based networking.

In addition to intent-based networking, we have also announced a new platform called Catalyst 9000. It is the fastest growing product in Cisco’s history. It is the fastest product to have reached the billion dollar mark. Currently, it has 700 customers.


A large part of the digital paradigm is collaboration and Cisco has a big play in the collaboration market. What are some of the future trends in enterprise video collaboration?

The top five IT companies in the world that use intent based networking are also the ones that benefit the most from our cross geography collaboration suite. Our webex platform which is our integrated voice video web capability is a single stop for collaboration. These top five IT companies are deploying 2.2 billion minutes of webex every year. The good news is that it has not stopped there. There are also mid-size companies that are starting to adopt. It’s further accelerated by the fact that we keep adding new features and capabilities. We have improved the level of intuitiveness and customer experience with it. For example, our new tools are integrated with a chatbot, voice recognition, and AI capabilities.

Collaboration is important for geographically dispersed large companies and the millennial workforce.

The work from anywhere culture will drive collaboration. In the future, it will get more personalized and individualized. Integration across platforms will be key to allow a frictionless experience across the various types of collaboration platforms

Immersive technology, user experience, and hyper-personalized channels will be the pivots on collaboration will be built, going forward. This will redefine your access to individuals and business opportunities.


5G and WiFi6 are still some time away in India. But as you look into the future what role will it play in enhancing experiences? What implications will it have for the mobile workers and IoT adoption in the enterprise? How should enterprises prepare for the transition?


5G and WiFi6 are already a part of the narrative when we talk to our customers. You can never wait for a technology to attain mainstream status because you lose time that way. But the best way is to build something that can move over seamlessly in the 5G and the WiFi6 world. That is the advice we give customers and that is a consideration when we build blueprints for clients for any services they are working with us on.

The advice would be to continue on your path but always future proof of your organization. So backward compatibility and forward integratable have always been our way of working.

5G and WiFi6 will be particularly exciting for the IoT space. There will be a positive impact on mobile and remote access with 5G. The boundaries on connectivity will get pushed further with 5G and that is simply because of the enhanced bandwidth.

The ability of remote and mobile access to connect will be at its best once 5G is available. But the single biggest benefit will be for IoT devices to connect easily to the networks which previously was not this easy.
  • Published On May 8, 2019 at 08:23 AM IST
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