The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: So you mentioned continued development in networking and on hardware, et cetera. Historically, Cisco's been well known for doing a lot of custom
ASIC development for its hardware, et cetera. But in this environment we're talking about, with increased security and adaptability and automated
response, does that model still fit, or does it start to make more sense to take advantage of either the silicon solutions that are available in the
market, or even go to other, increased usage of FPTAs, et cetera? What happens on the core part of the (inaudible)?
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: Interesting. Now, another important thing that we've seen over the least year to year and a half, and since Chuck became CEO and you started to
assume your incremental responsibilities, is it seems like the pace of acquisitions has quickened a bit, as you've particularly tried to build this
platform approach to what you're doing in security and for networking generally. Many of these have been smaller acquisitions. Virtually all of
them, I think maybe all of them, have been private. But some of them have been larger. How are you looking at the acquisition strategy? What are
the pieces you're trying to put in place, and what's the framework that you apply when you're looking at an acquisition?
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: So the way I've heard you just describe it is you've described a lot of, as you said, technology, talent-driven, does it fit within the overall framework?
What seems to be lacking is -- a word at least that you didn't mention -- is what's their current business? Or can they really add leverage to our
business? And it seems like most of the acquisition you're doing, you're looking and saying, hey, what can we buy that we can apply our massive
reach and business leverage to already versus trying to use an acquisition to reorient the business. Is that fair?
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: Once again, any questions from the audience in the last couple of minutes while we finish up here?
So looking forward now, the rest of this year and 2018 and beyond, what's your biggest opportunities and challenges?
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: So in terms of pursuing that new network architecture and delivering that to the market, I think the reorientation of, at least the way Cisco talks
about its opportunity and its business under Chuck has been very rapid. So are we now at a point that the pivoting is basically coming to an end
and now it's straight ahead and execute it? Or is there still more pivot that we should anticipate? I'm just trying to conceptualize where we are in
the development process for Cisco.
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: So perhaps the perception and the public-facing part of it, we're going to see some acceleration in the roadmap change over the next 12 to 18
months? But this has been a long time in process, et cetera.
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: Got it. So in the last minute, Dave, what's the thing that you think that investors in particular miss or misunderstand most often about Cisco that
you think is important that we take away today?
Question: James Faucette - Morgan Stanley - Analyst
: Great. David, thank you very much. Thank you to Marilyn and Justin for accompanying. We'll look forward to chatting more in the future.
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