The US-based networking giant Cisco has placed a big bet on ‘Internet of Everything’ (IOE) to keep pace with the change in IT industry and to tap vast growth opportunities.

Addressing the nearly 25,000 participants at its annual event Cisco Live! held recently in San Francisco, Chief Executive Officer John Chambers said the world is changing rapidly in terms of technology.

Chambers, who has spent the last 19 years as Cisco’s CEO, also predicted a ‘brutal’ consolidation in technology industry in the coming years.

He said: “You are going to see brutal, brutal consolidation in the IT industry, where out of the top five players, only two or three of us will be meaningful in as quick as five years.

“You will see this disruption not so much in combination, but almost like musical chairs. And by the way, the same thing is going to happen in each of your industries in the private sector.”

Internet of Everything is the next technology transition when devices will allow us to sense and control the physical world.

$19-trillion opportunity Cisco sees a $19-trillion opportunity in terms of cost avoidance, revenue generation, healthcare and productivity in the public and private sectors in the next 10 years driven by the Internet of Everything. One of the largest drivers is the public sector ($4.4 trillion of the total), and smarter cities in particular.

Some of the first smart cities are beginning to show the rest of the world what is possible, including potential in India.

For example, the City of Barcelona in Spain has created $180 million in value (savings derived from better management of water, parking, lighting, buses etc.,) which equates to $112 in savings for each and every member of its 1.6 million population.

By connecting its city parking systems to the Internet, Barcelona has been able to conserve natural resources, reduce congestion and improve citizen services, including citizen safety. In the process, Barcelona has created 44,000 jobs and spawned 1,500 new start-ups that are building applications based on public city data.

Cisco estimates that about 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020.

Maciej Kranz, Vice-President and GM, Corporate Technology Group, Cisco, told Business Line that the company is seeing big opportunities for IOE in emerging markets, particularly in Asia. He further said: “When you think about biggest opportunities in IOE, they are in manufacturing, transportation, oil and gas and mining sectors.”

(The writer was in San Francisco at the invitation of Cisco)

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