Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2012/02/28/chambers_mobile_cloud/

Cisco CEO: Mobile cloud threat for service providers

Invest, preferably in Cisco

By Gavin Clarke

Posted in Networks, 28th February 2012 17:32 GMT

MWC 2012 Network pitchman John Chambers has cautioned service providers that they risk being stranded by the mobile cloud.

Chambers, chief executive of Cisco, is reported to have said that the mobile cloud has descended and will change the service provider industry forever.

Telcos who don’t adapt risk getting left behind, he told the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday.

Presumably, Chambers' solution is for service providers to buy more of his company's switches, routers and cells to manage bandwidth and more connections and to increase network coverage rather than to invest in data-centre technology such as virtualisation.

“Cloud and mobile will change the service provider industry,” Chambers is reported to have told MWC attendees during a keynote. “Mobile cloud is already here and any [operators] who don’t join with the trend will be left behind."

He continued:

We’re moving from a connected to a hyper-connected world. Two-fifths of cloud loads will be off a mobile environment, and video will be the killer app – the primary way to do mobile cloud, and not just how we communicate.

Chambers’ company has been re-structuring, cutting 10 per cent of the workforce and retreating from businesses such as Flip video, which are outside its core telco operation. ®