Rowan Trollope

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I have never shied away from talking about Cisco’s commitment to interoperability, and here we are in 2016 and we are still talking about it? Haven’t we learned anything from the mobile phone industry? I don’t ever hear Samsung and Apple talk about how their phones can call one another. That’s table stakes. No one […]

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Today, Cisco announced the close of our acquisition of Jasper, a leading IoT service platform provider that powers the IoT initiatives of more than 3,500 enterprises worldwide. With Jasper’s cloud-based platform, companies of all sizes – and in any industry – can rapidly and cost-effectively launch, manage and monetize IoT services on a global scale. […]

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I recently bought a new home and even before I’d signed the papers I was mentally making a punch-list of things I wanted to change and improve. The Cisco Spark team loves punch lists, too. From the beginning, two things have been at the top of our list: world-class security and incredible search. Just like […]

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It isn’t every day that I publicly disagree with a man who won the Turing Award and was on a first-name basis with Albert Einstein. But today I respectfully will. On January 24, an incredible man named Marvin Minsky died. He was one of the fathers of computer science in general and artificial intelligence in […]

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If you follow me on Twitter (@rowantrollope) you might have followed along this past Christmas as, home with the family, I started writing some code and building some hardware devices to connect more of the things around my house. After all, these days anything can be a smart device; from a toaster that delivers perfectly […]

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I’ve been eagerly awaiting the day when I could write that headline and post this news: We have completed the acquisition of Acano. Today, two winning teams with a common vision for the future of work become one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCiK8OwMzc Here are the top three things we’ll be delivering together: #1 Users Will Get More Choice […]

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If you’ve ever tried to dial in to a conference call from the school’s carpool lane after dropping off your kids and ended up with the other parents honking at you while you tried to join, you won’t recognize Hollywood’s version of collaboration. On TV shows, no one is ever searching for a conference dial-in […]

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This is the time of year for crystal-ball gazing when everyone starts talking about what the new year might bring. It’s no secret that I’m passionate about video. I can pinpoint when this passion was sparked: November 2012. It was my first month at Cisco. Excited to dig in and meet my far-flung new team, […]

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This is part of a blog series on the evolution of the Cisco Collaboration Cloud platform, which explores the technical and design principles behind its unique architecture. I came to Cisco with the idea that, in many ways, enterprise communications technology had fallen behind consumer technology. And that we could apply to enterprise communications much […]

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As we gear up for our biggest collaboration event of the year, Collaboration Summit, I thought it would be a great opportunity to kick off a blog series leading up to the announcements we’ll be making there this December about the evolution of our Collaboration Cloud Platform. At last year’s summit, we announced Project Squared, […]

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The future fascinates me. I grew up reading Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut. And watching every sci-fi movie that came out. Robots, aliens, utopia, dystopia – I loved it all. Today, imagining what the future looks like is a big part of my job. In June, I got to participate in a futurist […]

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This week I had a great opportunity to participate in the first ever Tech on Deck with Robert Scoble and Scott Jordan. Tech on Deck is being broadcast from SCOTTeVEST’s headquarters in Ketchum, Idaho, which happens to be a mile away from Sun Valley where the annual Allen & Co. Conference is taking place. This […]

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If you don’t know about the podcast series, This Week in Startups (TWiST), hosted by my friend Jason Calacanis, it’s worth checking out. Jason is a legendary investor and media mogul who has his fingers in every part of the tech industry. Each week, he brings CEOs, business founders, venture capitalists, angel investors, and tech […]

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One of my favorite designers, John Maeda, believes that the most successful tech companies of the future will really be design companies. When John’s somewhat bold prediction is put in the context of this quote from Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works” – […]

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Today’s companies must evolve or face extinction. If they stand still, they’ll die. Pretty dramatic, I know, but that’s the reality. Forty percent of Fortune 500 companies will no longer be around in 10 years[1]. Companies in every industry know they need to move faster and innovate quickly to survive. But transforming traditional businesses into […]

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When I watched the Grammy’s last month, I wasn’t only rooting for my favorite artists from my couch – I had Twitter open, engaging with my friends, following interesting hash-tags, and engaging in the event in a way that five years ago wasn’t even an option. Industry people call this the 2nd screen and it’s […]

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According to Cisco’s 2014 Connected World Technology Report, the future of work will be more flexible and collaborative than ever before. In this two-part blog series, Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, explores how the IT and business landscape is changing based on this new research and how […]

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I don’t use my laptop to run my business. It’s not that I don’t like my laptop. It’s just that I really love using my mobile device — for everything. My mobile is incredibly convenient, small, and functional. Let’s face it: we’re lucky to be in the era of the smartphone when one device can […]

3 min read

According to Cisco’s Connected World Technology Report, the future of work will be more flexible and collaborative than ever before. In this two-part blog series, Rowan Trollope, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, explores how the IT and business landscape is changing based on this new research and how organizations […]

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What kind of a world will you live in three years from now? How about five? Will your personal robot pour you a drink after your self-driving car delivers you home? That’s where we’re headed, and it’s a pretty quick trip: self-driving cars are already on public roads and you’ll soon be able to buy […]

On the eve of Microsoft’s first Lync User Conference, I think it’s a great time to start a frank and direct conversation about what’s changed in collaboration and, because of those changes, what’s really important for IT decision makers to consider as they evaluate collaboration vendors and solutions. This conversation, which I’m confident will spark […]