MUMBAI, INDIA: John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, set the ball rolling at the 17th edition of NASSCOM India Leadership Forum (NILF) in Mumbai today by putting the spotlight on two questions - when will the economic upturn happen and what country sequence will we see in the recovery.

He complimented India and Germany that are emerging as optimistic standout in the current scenario.

“When I travel and talk to these people I myself ask, are they sure about the next year growth. But you won't be surprised when you see the plans ahead,” he said.

In John Chambers' personal view, he expects a show upturn around the corner, maybe towards the end of 2009 and he focused on the increase, and encouraging coordination, of central banks and governments in this global crisis.

“Credit is still an issue and it will probably get worse before it gets better,” he added. 

And so, Chambers is confident about the imminent upturn and he suggests tackling the market transition as a sure-shot strategy for emerging out successful.

“Handling the market transition is the only way that will determine the future of a company, or a country.”

Any enterprise or company irrespective of its size will need a strong vision, clear strategy and proper execution of the strategy along with approach towards market transitions, John Chambers said while sharing the company's experience and vision about overcoming the current global financial crisis.

"In past Cisco has experienced similar financial downturn back in 1993, 1997, 2001, 2003 and now in 2009. Cisco has implemented the V-S-E model (vision, strategy and execution) with collaborative efforts and setting up priorities,” he said.

“Using the model, Cisco has been successfully not only in expanding its business and customer but also with use of technologies of telepresence, web2.0, blogs, virtualization and networking has helped to reduced the expenses."

Talking about telepresence, he said the technology has helped the employees to attend 400 meetings in a week in a span of eight hours, which consumed about 96 hours earlier.

"Telepresence is a safer, greener and cost-effective tool to overcome distance and time while connecting to customers, offices and doing businesses," Chambers stressed.

Interestingly, he raised an important point during his briefing about whether organizations should consider innovation or business processing as an effective element in business development.

"Both innovation and business processing are integral part of business. And with the market transitions, using technology architecture enabled network as platforms, like web 2.0, blogs, youtube, discussion forums, telepresence and collaborative workspace, help to speed or scale up businesses," Chambers explained.

He concluded that collaboration and partnerships for business growth is significant in meeting challenges.

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