IBD. Start-Up Guru [Estrin] Sets Up Shop At Giant Cisco
Date: 9/8/98
Author: Michele Hostetler
Silicon Valley entrepreneur Judy Estrin
brings insight to her job as Cisco Systems
Inc.'s chief technology officer.
The biggest seller of networking gear in April
named Estrin its top technologist.
Estrin has guided nascent technology to
maturation. At Stanford University, she
worked with Internet pioneer Vint Cerf on
the TCP/IP protocols that laid the
groundwork for the Internet.
She co-founded one of the first networking
companies, Bridge Communications, and
sold it to 3Com Corp. in '87. She also
co-founded Network Computing Devices
Inc., which makes X terminals. That product
helped lead to today's thin clients. These
low-cost, limited-feature machines are aimed
at networks that use servers to store most
programs and data.
More recently, she co-founded multimedia
software company Precept Software, which
brings video to networks. Cisco bought
Precept in April.
With annual revenue topping $8 billion,
Cisco is no start-up. But it's heading into
turbulent waters as a maker of products for
''converged networks.'' Such systems will
put phone calls, Internet access and all
data-voice-video communications on the
same networks.
Estrin recently spoke with IBD about her
job at Cisco.
IBD:
How does your vision of multimedia
software complement Cisco's networking
strategy?
Estrin:
Clearly, Cisco has been very focused on the
aspects of convergence - data, voice and
video. But I like to think of it in two phases.
The first phase is really an infrastructure
issue, where you are merging the networks
but many of the applications are separate.
So you still are interconnecting (phones) on
one hand and computer systems on the
other.
The second phase of that becomes more of
a software play, where you are integrating
applications. You're looking at how to do
on-the-job training with video. How do you
build the next generation of call centers?
How do you really integrate messaging
systems so you have universal messaging?
IBD:
At what stage are converged networks?
Estrin:
On a scale of one to 10, we're at three and
picking up momentum. We're past the
talking stage. We're into the doing stage.
IBD:
What needs to happen before converged
networks become commonplace?
Estrin:
Some of that has to do with just the
maturation of the voice- over-IP (Internet
protocol) world. We have all the
architectures and some of the products.
You'll see more products coming in the next
year or two. There is a big area in
manageability.
To be able to tell someone to move from the
old world - which is circuit based and
centralized - to this new world - which is
very distributed and packet based - you
have to make sure you give them the tools to
provide service in the same way they did in
the past. It's one thing to move the
information around a network. It's another
thing to have all the tools to provide all these
services on top of (the network).
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IBD:
Are companies nervous about handing over
voice networks to a data company, since
voice has always been more reliable?
Estrin:
It's more of a marketing illusion than a
reality. If you look at our customers today,
many are running their business on our
products because data has become much
more strategic (than voice). It's not the case
of: We just woke up one morning and said,
''Hey, we've done data. Let's move into the
voice business.'' There's a new market out
there, which is this new world of converged
data, voice and video together.
We are certainly as well prepared or better
prepared to serve that market as our
competitors are. Here's this new paradigm:
Who do I feel more comfortable with taking
me into that new world? We're not going to
customers and saying, ''Turn off your
telephones; this is what you put in there
instead.'' We are leading our customers to
this new infrastructure, which looks more
like a data infrastructure today than it does a
telephony infrastructure.
IBD:
How could the merger between Northern
Telecom Ltd. and Bay Networks Inc. affect
Cisco?
Estrin:
I think that merger is a clear sign that Nortel
is recognizing that this new world is about
data. It is going to be challenging for them to
really integrate their solutions into a vision of
what this new world is. We at Cisco have to
assume it will work, even though we don't
think it will. We view them as a formidable
competitor for this new world. We just plan
to get there first and be better.
(C) Copyright 1998 Investors Business
Daily, Inc.
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