Ross Delacour: 0:02
It’s evolving pretty rapidly. That’s what makes it exciting. We wake up tomorrow and there’s a net new use case that someone’s come up with. Part of that will be hopefully we can complement with Cisco architecture. Other parts we will partner. But the end result is that we see the industry move forward.
Michael van Rooyen: 0:17
Today I’m sitting down and having a chat to Ross Delacour, the Regional Director for APJC at Cisco, around all things IoT. Welcome, ross. How are you? I’m very well. How are you? Yeah, really well, thank you, that’s good. That’s good. We just catch up. Here in Brisbane, today Looks like a pretty average day today. Outside it’s getting a bit cooler at that time of year. So before we kick things off, ross, for the listeners, do you mind just spending a little bit of time just telling us about your journey in the tech industry and what led you to your current role as the APJC leader for IoT, Cisco.
Ross Delacour: 0:49
Yeah, absolutely Nearly 17 years at Cisco now, so it’s been a great sort of journey so far. Started in various account management roles and about nearly five years ago had an opportunity to create and run and lead our APJC IoT route to market team across that region, and that was fantastic. And then about nine months ago, moved into leading the entire team over here Wow wow.
Michael van Rooyen: 1:12
So always being network security, all things that Cisco’s evolved over seven years. It’s a long time and a lot of change in industry, but the clear thing there is that many of the services that Cisco’s delivered, many of secure networking plumbing, has really bled into the IoT space. It’s a huge market right.
Ross Delacour: 1:27
Yeah, absolutely. Secure networking is the heart of what Cisco does, and no different in the industrial IoT team. It’s the core of what we do, and we’ve seen a lot of transitions in that space and I’m sure we’ll talk about those today. But yeah it’s been a great journey and a fantastic place to be inside Cisco.
Michael van Rooyen: 1:42
Yeah, great, because you spend so much time in the IoT space. I know that you travel around Asia quite a lot and you see a lot of regional contacts and speak to your counterparts in the US and Europe. How do you perceive the current state of IoT adoption both on a global and more in Asia Pacific region basis?
Ross Delacour: 1:57
Yeah, probably first and foremost, maybe just to set the scene as to what we see as IoT. IoT has been many things to many people over many, many years. At Cisco and the division I lead, we represent the industrial IoT place in the world. That for us, we want to be the secure connectivity of about four generally about four verticals across the world, and that’s manufacturing, energy, transportation and mining, oil and gas. So obviously we encompass critical infrastructure in those industries, you know, and there is relevance into other industries. But at the core of what we do is that’s where we play.
Ross Delacour: 2:30
So if you look at those industries across the world, there’s a lot going on, a lot of adoption in industrial IoT. Reference manufacturing for a second. You know how do we improve operations in those facilities, how do they move to more autonomous manufacturing. So there’s a lot of disruption going on in the manufacturing industry, which is exciting. There’s a lot of legacy architectures that exist in those businesses and they’ve done amazing things for many years but to get agility and to do smarter things and get a competitive advantage, et cetera things are changing.
Ross Delacour: 3:01
We just had Home Over Mesa and our team there pretty proud of our career team. We’ll probably go down as number one or number two most utilised at the stand in that space. So if you think about it, it’s a worldwide event, big representation from Korea.
Michael van Rooyen: 3:14
It’s a big region and, look, you do touch on a good point there, which is IoT means many things to many people. It’s a good clarification at the beginning. There, you know, there’s IoT. There’s IoT sensors, telemetry, et cetera. There’s OT just for context of this conversation which is really operational technology, manufacturing process plants, and there’s IoT, which is really industrialising IoT. So how do we take industrial scale? You talked about mining, manufacturing, automobile manufacturing how do we bring security architecture network to those industries is effectively the premise that Cisco is really driving.
Ross Delacour: 3:47
Yeah, Correct, correct and look. It’s a partnership. We work with a number of vendors in those spaces across the world. It has to be that way to enable the use cases that we feel we can support in the market. We have to partner, and Cisco has done a really good job of doing that across the world, especially in IoT, and will continue to do so.
Michael van Rooyen: 4:07
And from. If we look at the lens of IoT, new architectures, obviously a very big cyber component would be that the digitization of all things, IoT and OT. From that, how is IoT and the adoption of these new standards and digitisation really transforming industries? What are you seeing and what’s the driver behind those transformations?
Ross Delacour: 4:29
I think the overarching driver we’re seeing is digitisation. Is there value in digitising these critical industries? And if the answer is yes and clearly the answer is yes, because these businesses across the planet how do they make smarter business decisions? How do they improve worker safety? How do they maybe lessen the amount of workers and the labour costs they need in those industries? So that overarching theme is digitisation. So then, if it’s a great idea to do, then the answer is then how do they go about it?
Ross Delacour: 4:58
And that’s where we see that it comes down to that secure connectivity of essentially everything that exists in those facilities. As you know, a lot of those facilities and the infrastructure in them has not been connected in the past. It’s been put in and run and left alone. To get the telemetry out of it, we need to connect it, and if we’re going to connect it, we have to do it securely. And then, once we get that telemetry, what are we going to do with that data? And I’m sure we’ll talk about that today in some of these edge use cases et cetera.
Ross Delacour: 5:24
But it’s a fascinating space because then, once you’ve got that data, you can really go and change your business model, potentially protect you from industry transitions that are coming down the line.
Michael van Rooyen: 5:34
Yeah, very interesting, so let’s just drill into that a little bit further. Are you saying that what people in the IoT space are doing is really getting a good understanding that if they pull data out of these devices, sensors, they get much better analytics to make sure operational efficiency, security, safety? Are those the real drivers, as opposed to just tech adoption, because sometimes people just adopt tech for tech’s sake, but the motivators are really. Now, these are aged infrastructure. We need to digitise them so we can get better information and make them more efficient. Are those the real drivers, or or other drivers that are associated?
Ross Delacour: 6:07
No, it’s certainly not tech for tech’s sake in this industry. You know, if you look at that infrastructure and maybe even the architecture, the network architecture that’s surrounding that, we would probably say it hasn’t had the IT lens, architectural lens, placed upon it. It’s, you know it was. Those solutions were built up over many years and they worked in isolation, and so then, if we’re going to build out this capability for digitization and connect everything, then there’s an opportunity to say, well, what do we have in this infrastructure, what we have today? Is it easily managed? Can it be managed by someone third party? Is it easily secured?
Ross Delacour: 6:41
It’s hard to do when there’s a what of a better term. There’s a Frankenstein architectures that exist in this space and look, that’s fair to the industry because it’s been in there for many, many years, and so we’re seeing that change. I’ll give you an example around manufacturing, we’re seeing AGVs or automated guided vehicles come into play in that space. The concept of a traditional conveyor belt line in a facility is evolving, you know, to a point where you’ve got an AGV where you can. You know, maybe a car is sitting on that as it goes through the facility but, it’s not in a straight line, it’s getting moved around the facility.
Ross Delacour: 7:20
Is that a good idea to do? Yes, it is because it gives them agility to change the production, change the models, change what they need to get out the door. So it gives them a lot more flexibility. And then that actually puts a lot of strain on the existing infrastructure in those facilities. So you can’t do one without the other.
Michael van Rooyen: 7:40
Yes, who are the real drivers? And when I say drivers, is it the board? Is it the new SISO? What are you seeing from customers? Who’s really driving the real drivers? And when I say drivers like, is it the board? Is it the new size? Like, what are you seeing from customers, Like, who’s really driving the digitisation?
Ross Delacour: 7:49
Multifaceted answer.
Michael van Rooyen: 7:51
That’s okay, you know, at a board level, sustainability is a significant driver Is that to get like energy reporting and really to work out, you know, how efficient they are from a governance point of view.
Ross Delacour: 8:03
Yeah, governance point of view. How is their supply chain looking? How does that rate across the world? We’re seeing a concept like IT-OT convergence come into that space. That’s a driver too. Can I do more with less across my organization? If I need to apply digital skills to my OT environment and if I need to apply, maybe, operational skills to my IT environment, is there an opportunity then to create a partnership there and look for efficiencies in both those worlds? So we’re seeing that as a driver. Growth is a driver as well. If we’re going to grow, is there a better way to do it? Can I go into different industries? Is there a better way to do that? It’s a pretty fascinating point of time in this industry. I might be a little bit biased but that’s what I see.
Michael van Rooyen: 8:46
No, look, you’re absolutely right. You do touch on a very good topic of the convergence of IT and OT. So for those listening, that is your traditional enterprise IT folk who support your enterprise applications and your enterprise workforce. Then you have your operational technology folks who are orange, yellow shirts running a factory floor delivering a mine. Those are the two kind of camps that most organisers have in IT and OT and we’re seeing now that big convergence because of this digitisation and it is a big hot topic in the industry. Right, it for OT. Outside of the technical challenges, what are the biggest cultural and organisational hurdles that still need to be overcome?
Ross Delacour: 9:22
It’s people and process. The technology part I think we’ve solved for and there’s enough use cases and validation across the world that technology is not the problem here.
Ross Delacour: 9:34
It comes down to people and process and if you look at process, I think that part’s evolving. Generally, what we’ve seen with our focus is it comes down to people. People’s been the biggest challenge and some of these industries, for example. If you look at the challenges with some of our heavy industries and actually recruiting net new talent these days to those industries, especially with a lot of workers retiring, that’s a challenge. Do I want to finish university if I’ve got lots of options? Do I want to work in heavy industry?
Ross Delacour: 10:00
The rail industry actually has this issue in Australia and the National Transport Commission is an organisation or industry body across Australia and New Zealand that’s looking to help solve for that. It’s one of the bodies that’s helping to solve for that. So what we’ve done there is we’ve actually leveraged Cisco’s Net Academy and for those that don’t know Cisco’s Net Academy, it’s been around for about 25 years, I think. It’s trained nearly 20 million students across the planet, which is pretty amazing. It’s like higher education, giving them networking and digital skills. One of the ways we’re looking to assist is that we’ve provided access to our Net Academy learning system and actually looking to create content for that industry, to help upskill existing talent in the industry itself. And then also, you know, show that it’s a. The rail industry can be a pretty amazing digital place to work, an opportunity for a heap of data to do amazing things with in the industry. Then, you know, I think we can change some mindsets for our next generation.
Michael van Rooyen: 10:56
Yeah, it’s a bit like the aviation industry, right. You see planes and there’s lots of planes in the sky all the time, but the amount of data that the likes of Boeing and Airbus are consuming from those aircraft is staggering, right. What we just touched on there was really how we’re helping the IT and OT kind of convergence, so taking IT skills into OT. But is this Net Academy drive really in the curriculum now? Really that blend between security and network? Absolutely.
Ross Delacour: 11:20
It has to be that way we can’t do this in isolation. You know the digital skills we need to bake security into everything that we build here, from foundations up. Obviously, the advent of AI coming in here as well.
Michael van Rooyen: 11:31
And you touch on AI, which is so topical. Are you seeing or getting involved very much with this digital twinning where we can kind of predict optimisation, sustainability, you know, by simulating the build first?
Ross Delacour: 11:46
Yeah, we’re working with industry partners here on that. Here’s a use case. Where it’s starting to play out and it’s actually pretty exciting is we’re starting to see the virtualisation of the PLC, and for those that don’t know what a PLC is, it’s a programmable logic controller. But we’re working with Audi in Germany. They’ve got an innovation lab and they’re the ones really we found at the forefront of starting to drive this into their production environment.
Ross Delacour: 12:06
That’s a really interesting space, right, because it creates a lot of data. We get machine learning at the edge, it gives them a lot more agility and so, you know, then it really gives them the foundations of leveraging AI for the foundation to actually change how they produce vehicles in that infrastructure. We’re certainly seeing it at that space. If you talk about, maybe, some of the other themes as to why this is becoming super relevant for industrial IoT AI, and probably the other one is 5G those two are really forcing many organisations to consider what they have, how they run. What does Horizon 2, horizon 3 look like for them? You know. That, then leads us into this conversation that we’re having. If we’re going to change, what are we going to change and why would we change it?
Michael van Rooyen: 12:52
So it’s those two drivers we’re seeing across the planet, right right and you know a couple of other thoughts on the back of AI, machine learning and I’d like to talk about edge computing in a sec. But what is kind of those three big towers? You know AI, largely machine learning, and then the edge computing influencing kind of the IoT strategy that you’re involved with, you know, globally or locally for your business as well as for customers.
Ross Delacour: 13:14
So a couple part answer. I think what it’s actually doing is enables to look at all net new use cases that we haven’t really experienced before. I’ll give you an example. We worked with Transport for New South Wales and University of New South Wales Flora Salim’s team there. She’s the chair of AI and Transport for Cisco in University of New South Wales but they came up with a use case to have a pothole detection on buses in New South Wales and so, essentially, flora’s team she came up with it. They came up with the AI algorithm. Our team was able to assist and put that, leverage the code and actually put it into an application to run on the buses and then we’re giving you know, live feed of what the initial use case was 30 buses going throughout New South Wales and giving live feed of the I suppose, the degradation of the road, of certain parts of the road. Is that an amazing use case? Absolutely it is.
Michael van Rooyen: 14:06
Of course.
Ross Delacour: 14:06
And could it have been done in the past without this sort of machine learning and edge compute? No, it couldn’t have.
Michael van Rooyen: 14:11
Yes.
Ross Delacour: 14:12
But now it is, and so the scale of that is there’s 7,000 buses in New South Wales.
Michael van Rooyen: 14:16
So, rather than wait for the public to ring in and say there’s a pothole, or wait for a council person to detect it, or main roads or whatever, it may be that the buses are kind of being the sensor to work out the road condition and then reporting that through so that’s an amazing use case.
Ross Delacour: 14:29
And there was another one where and again, I suppose this is the power of Cisco and the platform that we have is that it’s essentially it’s a reusable architecture. And another use case was around passenger comfort that actually same team came up with a use case around can we take temperature, audio, particulate matter and correlate the data, live on a tram and on a train and then actually make a determination of what’s the experience for a customer on mass transit? A lot of these are already built and we’ve proven them. We’re just in that journey of actually helping these organisations scale these.
Michael van Rooyen: 15:04
Yeah, these, which comes back to architecture, connectivity, security, and let’s talk about edge computing, because it’s one that people are missing, right, and what I mean by that is certainly an enterprise IT, and I’m talking very traditional. I’m not saying it applies to everyone, but but most are quite holistically moving quite a few workloads to the cloud. Not saying the cloud doesn’t apply for OOT or IoT there’s a slice for that, of course but what we’re really seeing is edge compute grow at the edge, right, which people were thinking. Well, that’s a bit counterintuitive. We all need to move into cloud, we need to support these things.
Michael van Rooyen: 15:49
No-transcript. The way we’re able to even process that data at the edge never used to be a thing we could do, because you had to haul it back. Bigger networks, 5g wasn’t around, so it’s amazing. This evolution as 5G Lower-width satellite also plays a big role in that Edge computing. The power of edge computing and storage is relatively cheap. So can we just talk a little bit, then, about what you’re seeing in the edge compute space, because I think it’s important that people still see that as a viable way to deliver services.
Ross Delacour: 16:15
Yeah, absolutely, it’s viable. Cloud is not going to be the answer based on certain industries, based on geographies how do we actually access it? And I think the other, the part of this is that based on the use case, we’re actually getting more intense of the questions that we’re asking at the edge, and so the correlations in that train example of can we take the audio feed? Can we take particulate matter sensor? Can we take temperature? Can we, can we, can we?
Ross Delacour: 16:40
Our reasoning is actually evolving there. We’re looking for more and more to actually get to the heart of the matter. In that scenario there was three or four, but if we correlated 10, are we going to get a more accurate result? And if the answer is yes, and it makes sense for our business to do it, then we need to compute that at the edge, and so hence we need the infrastructure at the edge to be able to do that. So we’re certainly seeing that play out and, to your point, cisco’s been in that for a long time, but the technology’s evolved to a point where now it’s becoming super real, which is again a pretty exciting place, absolutely, if you think about then.
Michael van Rooyen: 17:18
You touched on 5G, right? So 5G it’s been around a little while. It was obviously very consumer focused first upgrading the networks, shutting down the 3g space. Obviously, 5g brings some inherent challenges because of the amount of base stations you need for, you know, signal and there’s many reasons more bandwidth, more towers, etc. Etc. And you can do a whole deep dive on 5g. But what are you seeing as influence on 5g for iot? Is it using public 5g or is it really the private LT space that’s really driving a lot of your space For those listening, private LT is really building your own kind of base stations, towers and supporting your own 5G connectivity at the edge, and do you think that there’s a huge opportunity or challenges that 5G brings for IoT deployments?
Ross Delacour: 18:00
Certainly both. There’s a very large opportunity in the market. It is challenging. It then comes down to again what are we trying to achieve If we can connect it? Are we connecting these devices, these sensors? Are we connecting them cost-effectively, based on, maybe, what the environment is?
Ross Delacour: 18:15
Today We’ve seen manufacturing look to those industries, look to 5G for certain parts of their facilities and potentially not use 5G and look to other technologies.
Ross Delacour: 18:26
And one of the ways that Cisco has looked to help address multiple use cases in that space is we’ve essentially turned up with a multi-access technology solution where we don’t mind if it’s 5G, we don’t mind if it’s Wi-Fi 6. We’ve also got a technology called ultra-reliable wireless backhaul, otherwise known as CURB, which helps us address use cases in that space. So 5G is leading to, as I said earlier, lots of organisations looking if we’re going to change our infrastructure and connect the unconnected. How do we go about it? And it just comes down to is it a cost-effective mechanism or is it actually going to achieve the use case we need? Hence why one of the major things we’ve seen across Asia Pacific at the moment is around our ultra-reliable wireless backhaul product. Lots of ports are looking to that and it’s effectively we don’t want to talk about sales or anything like that, but it’s a mesh technology that gives us the ability to backhaul and almost zero latency and very high speed throughput.
Michael van Rooyen: 19:20
Yeah, what was it previously known, previously known as fluid mesh Fluid’s?
Michael van Rooyen: 19:24
one yeah, it is very, very interesting technology and I can see why that was acquired for those use cases. You touch on an interesting point, I know I know. Then there’s the outlier called laura wan very low bandwidth, you know, long distance and and people can read up about laura wan if necessary. Won’t need to spend too much time on that. But I’m interested in your point, or your opinion at least. I have different discussions with people at different times to talk about 5G versus Wi-Fi. Where do you see that landing? Some people say 5G is going to replace everything and that’s all you’ll ever need. Some people say well, you still need Wi-Fi and we’re doing Wi-Fi 6, wi-fi 7. Where do you land on this? And that’s only an opinion, right?
Ross Delacour: 19:59
In my opinion. Again, I think it just comes down to where the organisation is at. If they’re at a point in time where they’re going to change the infrastructure, they probably don’t want to touch it again for maybe the next five to seven years. If it makes sense to do, you know, road A versus road B at that time, I think they’ll do that. Then they’ll come back around and you know, obviously, if we’re talking five years down the track, we’re probably talking, you know 6G and clearly Wi-Fi 7 will be prevalent. So this is one of those things that Cisco has tried to be as flexible as possible to our customers and ultimately they’ll make the decision that’s best for them at the time. So you think it’s a complementary to each other?
Michael van Rooyen: 20:35
Absolutely it’s interesting to see. Some people at camps are saying 5G is going to kill it. My opinion is it will definitely always be complementary. As you said, cost is one big consideration. Being able to build a footprint of LTE is always a challenging cost of building that infrastructure. It’s never cheap. It’s carrier-type services. Everyone’s got kind of Wi-Fi capabilities in it and I’m seeing, on the enterprise side at least, very much a drive around Wi-Fi first as a strategy, Definitely in an IoT or OT environments. We’re seeing a lot more industrial wireless, not 5G yet. So it’s a blend. It’s just interesting.
Michael van Rooyen: 21:07
I was just giving an opinion there that also then leads on to really, are you seeing any particular industries where the convergence of 5G and also add low-orbit satellite to that as well that is really helping be impactful for IoT environments or customers?
Ross Delacour: 21:22
I wouldn’t say it’s just one industry. My opinion would be that our customers are starting to look at their toolkit and look at some of the challenges that they’ve got. If we’re going to securely connect a device, a pipeline, in this geographic location, we’re going to have to make a determination on what that technology essentially will be To your point what’s available, what’s cost effective, what do we have skills in and what can we? You know, maybe we can test it out in certain areas and then learn for our organisation. So I think that’s kind of generally what we’re seeing and that’s transferable across many industries. I could say the same thing you know for that on mining, whether it’s in the Pilbara or whether it’s an oil and gas line or whether it’s a, you know, significant manufacturing facilities throughout Asia. It’s a very similar answer.
Michael van Rooyen: 22:03
Right, right. So the low-orbit satellite blueprint, particularly in Australia. Now Australia is completely covered and I know there’s multiple players in that, but I’ll just take Starlink, because everyone thinks of Starlink. First is complete coverage of Australia and also quite a lot of part of the ocean. So you’re seeing some of your customers really adopt that as one of the mechanisms to back all you know. Now we can take that large data, because part of the problem was you could use satellite but it was lowish kind of data. Now we’re seeing video analytics. We’re seeing opportunities for customers to really use low orbit satellite as a third way of getting this data to then make analytic decisions.
Ross Delacour: 22:34
And if you think of the advent of the, just how do you move the whole industry forward?
Michael van Rooyen: 22:37
Yes.
Ross Delacour: 22:37
They weren’t able to do that in the past, of course. So now that that they do, they have that technology and essentially, can you know, use video analytics. Smarter business decisions can be made at that point in time. So I think it’s evolving pretty rapidly. That’s what makes it exciting. You know, we wake up tomorrow. There’s a net new use case that someone’s come up with. Part of that will be hopefully we can complement with Cisco architecture. Other parts we will. We’ll partner, but the end result is that we see the industry move forward yeah, yeah, it’s interesting.
Michael van Rooyen: 23:04
I had a chat to a, an organisation I won’t mention the exact organisation, but that they do emergency medical flights, and they were. They were talking a lot about how the slow with satellite isn’t giving them the ability to now land an emergency situation and be able to, you know, within a minute, in minutes, bring up a substantial connectivity and be able to do you know high definition medical video calls and substantial connectivity and being able to do you know high-definition medical video calls and then make a better determination what they should do with the patient, which reduces costs and then, more importantly, that the person’s life is better cared for and treated. As you said, every morning, there’s new use cases, right, new use cases.
Ross Delacour: 23:34
It’s crazy. I mean, how great is that? You know like you’ve got the heart of thing by the patient, but then if you work back from that, that technology is essentially enabling a smarter decision on fuel use of that plane, the hospital utilisation that’s just fascinating and we’re going to see more and more and more of that.
Michael van Rooyen: 23:56
Ones you won’t even think about or haven’t even considered.
Ross Delacour: 23:58
yes, we actually have this bit of a joke inside industrial IoT. We sort of like the Discovery Channel. We wake up tomorrow and there’s something completely new never seen it before and so transferable to other organisations, maybe in those industries or others across the planet.
Michael van Rooyen: 24:15
It’s really blue sky thinking, isn’t it? I mean, there’s no limitation, there’s no glass ceiling. It’s come up with something. The technology probably exists.
Ross Delacour: 24:22
And that’s why I think Cisco’s vision here to play at the secure connectivity layer is a powerful one, because if we get that at scale right, then it doesn’t matter what the use case is. Yes, we’ll complement any use case. We can evolve to a use case.
Michael van Rooyen: 24:36
So, as we near the end of our discussion, I just wanted to dive into a couple of other little quick topics. Ross, you, particularly, after 17 years at Cisco, now leading IoT for APJC and as a thought leader in your business what excites you most about the future of IoT and OT? I know they’re kind of the same thing, but what excites you about that whole industry?
Ross Delacour: 24:56
I think every part of this excites me. To be fair, I think it’s not often you get to work at a critical I hate to use the word inflection point, but essentially this is the next industrial revolution that’s happening here. There’s a lot of opportunity to make an impact for the betterment of people and our carbon usage on the planet, and so this industry is essentially at the forefront of that, which is a pretty amazing place to be. So that’s what gets me out of bed every day is to lead a team that is passionate about helping customers. In that regard. That’s a pretty amazing thing to have in your career at year 17.
Michael van Rooyen: 25:29
Nice, nice, Well done, mate. It’s still pretty early in your career to be honest, there’s a few grey hairs.
Ross Delacour: 25:34
Sure, there’s a few grey hairs.
Michael van Rooyen: 25:36
I’ve got no hair, so that’s okay. One of the things that is probably interesting for the listeners and me as well is we know that technology is always evolving and changing rapidly and we actually see the CISCO acceleration even more now. Right, with AI and compute power and all these things. But looking forward, what directions or things that you’re allowed to talk about at least can we expect from Cisco in the near future for IoT and the whole OT space?
Ross Delacour: 26:00
Yeah, well from what I’m allowed to talk about, I think for me personally, I’m super interested in the Splunk acquisition and how that is going to impact critical industries across the planet. We have a lot of crossover customers in that space and we’ve got a lot more to talk to out in the industry. Together that’s a really powerful one. And I think how do we add business resilience and digital resilience to the OT market across the world? That resilience to the OT market across the world? That’s going to be pretty fascinating. To be honest, I think we’ve been in this industry for 20 years just over 20 years since we launched our first industrial networking switch and we will continue to be at the forefront of the architecture of these use cases and the partnerships across the planet. In fact, those partnerships are probably only going to get stronger as those industry partners look to change their business models as well. Whether it be a GE with wind turbines or a relationship with Rockwell and the evolution of that, it’s a pretty fascinating place to be.
Michael van Rooyen: 26:51
It’s a blast from the past. I remember, as a field engineer, installing the old IE 2955.
Ross Delacour: 26:57
Ah, 2955, you remember the model I do. I do Well done, well done.
Michael van Rooyen: 27:00
Pass the test. It was very interesting when you guys went into that space and I think even a 10-year warranty was something that many in the IT industry hadn’t heard of, right, but I think I had a customer running for about 12 years and only just recently decommissioned them. So you know good old engineering from Cisco, you know.
Ross Delacour: 27:15
One of our team actually just posted on LinkedIn the other day 29.55, still running. It was bulletproof. It was bulletproof.
Michael van Rooyen: 27:21
Correct. Last question for you and it’s not necessarily Cisco-specific, it’s more around you and your time Tell me the biggest technology change or shift that you’ve personally been involved with or have seen in our industry the biggest?
Ross Delacour: 27:34
Current or past, I think one that I came in on late, a little bit late when I joined Cisco is the whole IP communications play. You know, collapsing voice and data on the one hand.
Michael van Rooyen: 27:44
Avid, the old Avid design.
Ross Delacour: 27:46
Avid design and then you know, see that evolve to essentially collapsing video and how that’s evolved.
Ross Delacour: 27:51
And we had one of the first telepresence rooms in Brisbane here and you know that was very expensive technology, groundbreaking technology, but not inexpensive technology back in the day and to see where that’s evolved to is unbelievable yeah I was on a webex the other day and we had one of the customers saying that with we’ve gone and put babble labs ai into the back of webex and you know it can no longer detect you typing, you know, while you’re not on mute. You know, which is pretty fascinating. That’s cool, you know so. And again, it’s just just the little things to enhance user experience in that space. But I always love that sort of evolution.
Michael van Rooyen: 28:24
I think that’s a really good topic that you’re touching on from a transition point of view and it’s one that certainly, of all my guests I’ve chatted to, it hasn’t come up. But I think, fundamentally I’m a big digital plumber and I have been for a long time and I think you touch on that. I don’t think people the convergence of voice, video and data into a single platform, the ability just to always be connected and, as a technologist, knowing what actually has to happen underneath the skin to make all that work, people just use it and use it and look at.
Michael van Rooyen: 28:49
COVID, how we pivoted to everyone from using video and now everyone sits even in the office, side by side, even on the same call WebEx or Teams, even talking to the same people. It’s phenomenal and I agree with is actually. For me, there’s quite a beauty and art in the way networks work and people don’t appreciate, which is just normal, for technology it comes along, people get used to it and they move on. But it’s a very, very good point, right, that convergence.
Ross Delacour: 29:08
And we’re going to see that now with IT and OT right.
Michael van Rooyen: 29:10
Absolutely we will. Tdm moved to IP, video moved to IP delivered as a converged network, and this is going to continue to grow. Absolutely Fun times ahead, ross. Appreciate the time, fantastic chat. Have a good day.
Ross Delacour: 29:25
Thanks Michael, thanks everyone.
