Chambers' magic touch

HONG KONG--Spend much time in John Chambers' presence and you begin to think you understand Cisco Systems' great success in the telecom space.

Of course, part of that is because Chambers himself will tell you all about that success. He isn't shy about saying that Cisco's vision for the future of the telecom network may have started with enterprise routers but always included plans to sell to service providers, as well as plans to get into the consumer market. At least he wasn't shy today in sharing those thoughts with assembled press and analysts at the ITU Telecom World 2006 show in Hong Kong.

Chambers also wasn't shy about pointing to Cisco's success in the market. In both his opening session speech and the press-analyst briefing, he included a slide that showed Cisco's market capitalization is up by $152 billion since January 1995 while its top competitors' market cap is down by $16 billion. The list of competitors has shifted--the early list includes a number of players such as Ascend, Bay Networks, Cabletron, Madge Networks and Newbridge, which don't exist today, while the current list is dominated by network gear makers such as Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel, Ciena, Redback and more.

But listening to Chambers talk and hearing the energy and passion he brings to what he is saying is contagious. It is hard for me to believe this is the same guy who once gave virtually identical (and very stiff) speeches at two different trade shows, a month apart, in the late '90s. I don't remember the exact shows but I do remember the stiff delivery and repetitive jokes from the CEO who already had the crowd in awe. Today, he is a ball of fire on stage, no matter the audience, walking up and down at floor level with his listeners and making the message a personal one, full of eye contact.

Some of what he says today about the network is fairly unremarkable. The network as the platform for advanced services, able to deliver content to multiple types of devices based on the intelligence to know how to do that, isn't unique to Cisco.

What is undeniably unique is Cisco's performance in this market and its ongoing ability to almost uncannily foresee where things are headed and get there quickly, often with a well-timed acquisition. John Chambers has earned the right to tout the success of his previous visions and the level of interest in what he now foresees.

E-mail me at CWilson3@telephonyonline.com.