Cisco Systems Inc at Bernstein Technology Innovation Summit Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Thanks a lot, Ish. Maybe before -- like as a very first question, you mentioned very briefly similarities between the value proposition of ACI and the value proposition you developed with UCS, your converter systems, and this idea of managing a service profile or application network profiles. I've always been very curious or intrigued to see that the team that came up with ACI is actually the team who developed UCS. And when of course I look back at all the commercial success of UCS, it makes me feel very good about the potential success of ACI.

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : You gained 25% market share, so if you gain some kind of market share in switching, that would be quite impressive. But could you -- I think it's very difficult to understand exactly what made UCS so incredibly successful in the server market. And of course, how do you translate that into ACI?

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : And maybe your perspective, if we look at this UCS converged system track record, it seems that most other competitors are actually coming up with converged systems as well but don't seem to have as much traction as you guys have. So, is there like something specific about Cisco or your position that made you like the best positioned player to do that?

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Okay. We've had like other representatives of your industry telling us about software defined networking in the last couple of days. There's one thing on which they all agree, which is that they are the only ones to be open and to have an open architecture. And very, very clearly, Cisco doesn't.

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : So let me try and frame the question help us understand what open means, what is open, what works, what doesn't work. So, if I very simply think about it from the perspective of an enterprise, open to me means I could buy actual switches like network equipment from Cisco and others, and then I can choose what kind of environment I use for my like overall layer, like the virtual layer, which hypervisors and etc., etc., and I should be able to connect all these things together at will. So maybe you should start from, first, your underlay, so how much open is it? Then if we could overlay the controller, what kind of requirements do you have? What works only with Cisco? What works with other -- the contribution of other vendors, that would be very helpful.

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Okay. So maybe one getting a bit more specific. How does like ACI and the 9000 coexist and collaborate and get integrated in a VMware and FX environment?

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Okay. And so in terms of other trends of this new technology, so I would assume 9000 studies is a very, very tiny fraction of your sales. You've mentioned I think 200 customers, maybe 2,000 ACI (technical difficulty) REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 17, 2014 / 1:30PM, CSCO.OQ - Cisco Systems Inc at Bernstein Technology Innovation Summit

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Okay. So who are they? Who are like your early adopters? Are they like mostly Web 2.0 kind of people?

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Maybe just a quick check, if there are any questions from the room --? I have a lot and probably more than the time we have left. So, you mentioned like the ongoing migration from a 1 gig server port kind of data center architecture to 10 gig and the increase configuration there to 40 gig. How do you position the Nexus 7000 and the Nexus 9000 (multiple speakers) the Nexus 2000 and 3000 portfolios in that migration?

Question: Pierre Ferragu - Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc. - Analyst : Okay. Maybe one last question as we are running out of time. For 2015, what drives data center demand? Is that mostly like the 10 gig migration? Is it the need for SDN? And is like all this new technology getting into the market likely to trigger the higher level of replacement activity like the clients will take the opportunity to actually upgrade their infrastructure?