Following on from my recent blog about “Is Manufacturing Coming Back to the US?” one of Morgan Stanley’s Investment guys, Ruchir Sharma, (Managing Director and the head of the Emerging Markets Equity team) has a book out called ‘Breakout Nations’ and in it he says:
“Every Investment idea is right for a while”
He was talking to Fareed Zakaria on his GPS program. Fareed cited that in the 1980’s investing in Japan made you a big winner until the 90’s came around. In the 1990’s it was all about Tech stocks. Then the Tech bubble burst. The Fad for the 2000’s was emerging markets.
And he asked are emerging markets submerging? I was interested mainly because the discussion lead to which countries invest most in R&D, and that is a leading indicator of success for economies worldwide. In fact, the numbers don’t lie. It looks like we may be entering a new phase with different leaders of growth, and it may be the US that becomes the new focus of manufacturing and innovation.
Yesterday at the Cisco Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China Partner-Led Network Conference that took place in Bangkok, we took the opportunity to announce the recipients of the Cisco Smart Service awards. The purpose of these awards is to recognise our partners and customers from the region who showed forward-thinking approaches in the delivery and integration of Cisco Smart Services. The winners were chosen for their innovation and expertise that enable “Smart Everywhere” for their end-users across the region.
The awards are divided up into three categories; partner awards -- for partners who used Smart Services to accelerate growth of their services business; vendor awards -- for vendors who have demonstrated innovation and operational excellence for Cisco Services; and customer awards -- for those customers that have used Smart Services to fuel their business performance, efficiency and productivity.
On June 11, Gary Moore, Cisco’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, announced the appointment of Edzard Overbeek to head the company’s Global Services Business. Today, I am delighted to announce that Jaime Vallés, currently senior vice president for Cisco’s Latin America theater, will be taking over from Edzard as the leader of our Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China (APJC) region. Jaime will assume the position with effect of August 1, 2012 and will be based in Singapore.
Asia Pacific, Japan and Greater China represent a huge opportunity for future growth and innovation for Cisco. We are pleased to have identified such a strong successor to Edzard Overbeek, and Jaime’s appointment from within Cisco is a testament to the strength of our leadership team across the world. Jaime’s broad understanding and success in driving growth in both developed and emerging markets combined with his passion and ability to build and lead high-performing teams, and create strong relationships based on trust and integrity, make him the ideal choice to lead Cisco’s APJC team in the region’s next phase of growth.
Naturally, Jaime will have the support of the world-class Cisco leadership team across the region, and will partner closely with Owen Chan, who will continue to lead our business in Greater China.
Since Jaime joined Cisco back in 2007, he has proven himself to be an outstanding leader with a successful track record of driving growth in emerging markets. Named one of the Top 50 Technology Executives in Latin America by the Hispanic IT Executive Council in 2011, Jaime has successfully led Cisco’s operations in Latin America, making it one of our highest growth regions. He brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in the IT industry, having previously served in senior leadership positions at Sun Microsystems and IBM.
Latin America continues to be an important growth driver in the Americas sales region. Accelerating our growth in emerging countries is one of the company’s top priorities for FY13 and we will soon be announcing a new leader for the LatAm theater.
In the meantime, I invite our customers, partners, and the entire Cisco community to join me in wishing Jaime well in his new role.
Many of us here on the Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) team are excited about upcoming news around Cisco’s virtualization solutions. And the Cisco VXI message gets amplified further at VMworld Copenhagen (Oct 18) and Citrix Synergy Barcelona (Oct 25).
Here is a quick video summary that my wife, Beth Dooley, helped me record a few hours after returning home (Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, California) from my VXI Experience Tour in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The video was shot from our backyard deck. The original was 10 mins in length but we cut it down to just the first 3 mins:
During this VXI tour in APAC, I delivered our message to 10 sessions, 3 countries (Singapore, Japan, Korea) with hundreds of customers, partners, and internal Cisco teams. Siva Mandalam (Director, Cisco Enterprise Architecture & Systems) delivered our message in India the week before. PJ Barber (Director, Cisco Desktop Virtualization) delivers our message in Australia this week.
Prior to this trip, the Cisco team was expecting the vast majority of its near-term revenue, partner activity and customer interest for VXI to be concentrated in North America and Europe. After this APAC tour, it’s obvious there are some big things happening in Asia. Many could argue that the most mature countries in the APAC region for desktop virtualization adoption would be Australia and India. However, we’re seeing early signs of positive growth in Korea, Japan, and parts of China and SouthEast Asia as well.
In Japan, the attendance and interest exceeded everyone’s expectation with sessions in the hundreds leaving standing room only. In Korea, the teams were not only enthusiastic but they could see beyond just hosted virtual desktops and how this architecture applied to their overall “cloud” initiatives. In recent years, Korea has taken an innovation leadership role in areas such as automobiles, home appliances, consumer electronics, Internet broadband delivery, mobile handsets, and a variety of Post-PC devices from companies like Samsung and LG. Also, Korea’s modern culture is a strikingly unique blend of old tradition and new innovation. You can see this blending of old and new not only in their technology landscape but it extends into their music, fashion, and films. Cisco VXI is in many ways a blending of old (Windows PCs and legacy applications) and new (virtual workspaces using collaborative networking and cloud-based computing).
In my opinion, Korea is a country to watch for the next 12-18 months in this area. I could see at least one or two of Korea’s leading industries emerge as a guiding light for how businesses can move into the Post-PC area, deliver unique collaboration services, and embrace cloud computing in a way that we have not seen before.
Overall: the APAC region leveraging Cisco VXI has all the ingredients to be a significant portion of “first-mover” Enterprises and Service Providers in the Post-PC era. The proliferation of next generation devices are well suited for VXI when combined with rich collaboration services using high-performance networks and clouds. We just need to help convert this beaming enthusiasm into action. Amazing new developments are sure to come out of Asia, yet again.
In David Lawrence’s and Glenn Anderson’s recent Manufacturing.net article on ‘The Fall and Rise of the American Manufacturer’, the authors are rather optimistic about the current state of U.S. manufacturing. Citing the Institute of Supply Management indicators of manufacturing activity expansion for 19+ consecutive months and their own observations from surviving their 125-year old employer, Cincinnati Milacron, filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and emerging one year later to thriving profitability and bolder investments in innovation, the authors believe manufacturing is now fueling a sustainable economic recovery from the global recession.
Many economists agree, and in the world of public opinion, a recent survey by Delloitte and The Manufacturing Institute showed that 78% of Americans believe that U.S. manufacturing is vitally important to our economic prosperity and 76% believe it is also important to our standard of living. The survey ranked manufacturing ahead of technology, financial services, health care, communications, and retail. My own optimism is checked by one key consideration required for long term success: Is it SUSTAINABLE?
