TMF: Over the next five years, which companies do you think will be Cisco's largest rivals?
Listwin: In the recent weeks, you've seen some dramatic consolidation ongoing in the traditional data-com players being acquired by the telecom players. I think its very clear that the battle will center around the Internet. The players that will emerge in my mind are the ones that know how to develop around an open standards environment [and] solve the problem of wireline and wireless based Internet. So, in that regard, we certainly believe that Lucent (NYSE: LU) has the capabilities of emerging. We certainly believe a company like Nokia (NYSE: NOK.A) has the capabilities of emerging with its strong wireless position. And we certainly believe that we will be number one or number two five years from now.
TMF: Could you talk a little bit about what Lucent and Nortel (NYSE: NT) are doing in the IP telephony business and how that will affect Cisco going forward?
Listwin: I think Lucent has [been] very aggressive in their marketing in respect to their capabilities. They've acquired, I think, 19 companies in the last 28 months. So clearly, Bell Labs is not producing the types of technologies that their customers are demanding or they wouldn't be out doing this rapid set of acquisitions. My sense is that at this point they [do] not have a lot of software that makes this all work.
I think Nortel and Bay are executing along the voice/data/video playing field. They have a much stronger enterprise offering. We need to be wary of not listening to the marketing rhetoric of Lucent and missing the Nortel/Bay and/or Nokia/Ericcson (Nasdaq: ERICY) types of competitors.
TMF: What do you think Cisco will look like in five years? Are there emerging technologies out there that you feel will be become a larger part of the company's business than they are today?
Listwin: Five years from now, if we execute, we can be anywhere between two to four times the size we are today. That's a $30 billion to $50 billion company. That's not exactly a financial forecast per se. But if we execute well, the market certainly is there. By all measures, that is a different kind of company.
My vision for the Internet is that it is a highly personalized communications experience, where mobile, wireline, and multimedia communications will all become a reality, past [their depiction in] the great movies we watch, like Back to the Future. I actually believe that we've hit technology flashpoints that will make many of these things a reality.
From an internal business perspective, I think you'll see five years from now that we are very much in the transporter/transmission business for the service provider area, which we are just starting to get into with announcements last month. I also think we'll be participating in the networked Internet application area. Meaning, technologies that are very central to networking, such as messaging, will be technologies that will be in Cisco's portfolio.
In summary, you'll see us expand into all areas in the service provider area. We do not intend, incidentally, to be in the network and systems integration business. We expect our partners in the Internet ecosystem to grow and prosper in that environment.
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