A conversation with Cisco’s Padmasree Warrior
Despite two decades of increasing connectivity between people and devices over high-tech networks, only 1 percent of what could be connected in the world actually is, argues Padmasree Warrior, Cisco Systems’ chief technology and strategy officer. As the level of connection swells over mobile and other platforms during the next decade, she expects sweeping changes in how consumers shop, businesses handle data, and individuals grapple with the data available about themselves.
Today only 1 percent of what can be connected in the world is actually connected. As an industry, it took about 20 years to connect 1 percent of the world. “And in the next ten years, we believe that number will go up dramatically. We’ll make significant progress in connecting the 99 percent that’s still unconnected“.
That will be people, that will be devices, and that will be a lot more information on the network.
So when we say “the Internet of Everything,” we mean an intelligent way to connect processes with data and things. Not just the Internet of Things, not just connecting the devices onto the network, but how can you use the information that’s being collected to drive better processes, better decision making for businesses, and better lifestyles for users and consumers? “And we mean more efficient ways to analyze that data through analytics from the network—which is our expertise—to make every single vertical (manufacturing, retail, transportation) significantly different than what it is today”.
Cisco’s chief technology and strategy officer describes how the exponential growth of connectivity between people and devices, both mobile and network, will change commerce, business systems, and individual behavior.
IT in the future will really be a different IT industry than it has been in the past.
The first differential is what I call the experience differential, and that’s actually being driven by consumers. It’s the consumer experience that you want in the enterprise.
The second differential is a velocity differential, and that’s actually driving the shift to cloud computing. Businesses now demand a much faster way to bring up IT infrastructure applications to be delivered, for capacity to be provisioned.
The third differential is a data differential. And that goes to the fact that there will be more and more things getting connected, and so we have to deal with the question of “What do we do with this data?” It’s not just enough to store all the data; we have to use the data. People talk about this in the context of big data, but it’s the analytics. It’s not just the analytics, actually, but how do you apply the analytics to make the business process a better process? That is the third problem that the IT company of the future has to solve.
Opting in, opting out
The scale of change, even in the next five years, will be dramatic. And I think everyone has to get ready for it, and I think we as users have to get ready for it. I’m a technologist, and I have to get ready for it because a lot of things will happen that we don’t even anticipate today.
Data. Usage of data. Do we opt in? There’s a lot of discussion about, let’s say, the data that is available about you. Today you don’t even know what data is about you.
So far, we’ve focused around data on, “Do you opt in or opt out?” In the future, there’s going to be a lot more work that has to be done that gives me a choice on, “When do I opt in, when do I opt out?” And I may want to change my mind. I may opt in at the beginning but as I find what that data is being used for, I may opt out. So all of this requires very sophisticated analytics—a different way to present that data. “Again, up until now, it has not been the problem most creative people have been handling”.
There’s going to be lots of shifts in the way we deal with technology in the next three to five years.