WEBVTT 00:00:13.739 --> 00:00:15.300 Hey, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, 00:00:15.339 --> 00:00:16.739 depending on where you are in the world. This 00:00:16.739 --> 00:00:19.559 is John Marchiando, and this is part of the Two 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:22.800 Guys in a PLC podcast. I am joined by my partner 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:26.039 in crime, Dave Gutshall. Good morning, good afternoon, 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:28.750 good evening. Yes. Welcome to another wonderful 00:00:28.750 --> 00:00:31.829 episode. Just a reminder for all of you out there, 00:00:31.929 --> 00:00:35.130 this is for entertainment purposes only, and 00:00:35.130 --> 00:00:38.250 all opinions expressed are our own. They're not 00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:40.649 reflective of our day jobs, our employers, our 00:00:40.649 --> 00:00:44.070 spouses, partners, old flames, just our own. 00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:49.770 Nicely done. Nicely done. Yeah, thank you. Man, 00:00:49.829 --> 00:00:51.890 we have an awesome guest today, don't we, John? 00:00:52.070 --> 00:00:54.020 My gosh. I can't actually believe he's here. 00:00:54.060 --> 00:00:56.259 Absolutely, man. I mean, when you suggested this, 00:00:56.340 --> 00:00:57.939 I'm thinking to myself, you think he'll actually 00:00:57.939 --> 00:01:00.759 say yes? Yeah. Well, you reached out to him, 00:01:00.780 --> 00:01:02.259 and sure enough, here we are. I'm telling you 00:01:02.259 --> 00:01:06.500 what. So, yeah. So let's introduce our guest, 00:01:06.859 --> 00:01:13.400 Mr. Albert Mitchell. Hello. Nice to be 00:01:13.400 --> 00:01:25.620 here. So freaking glad, Albert. I still get giddy 00:01:25.620 --> 00:01:29.159 when I think back to kind of my first days with 00:01:29.159 --> 00:01:32.859 the – which was like the first kind of device 00:01:32.859 --> 00:01:35.219 that I ever touched. I think it was a 2500, and 00:01:35.219 --> 00:01:40.060 it had a token ring side and a 10 -megabit Ethernet 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:43.439 side. And to be talking to someone with so much 00:01:43.439 --> 00:01:46.900 history, I'm just – I'm not even sure what to 00:01:46.900 --> 00:01:49.379 say. So we kick it off with a question, and that 00:01:49.379 --> 00:01:54.189 is – You've been on the industrial IoT side inside 00:01:54.189 --> 00:02:00.010 of Cisco for what, a decade or more? Yeah. About 00:02:00.010 --> 00:02:02.689 that? A little more. About that, yeah. But you've 00:02:02.689 --> 00:02:06.750 been around a lot longer. So maybe talk about 00:02:06.750 --> 00:02:09.849 kind of those early days a little bit and what 00:02:09.849 --> 00:02:14.090 that sort of journey was into the, you know, 00:02:14.090 --> 00:02:17.099 like what got us? Even thinking about going over 00:02:17.099 --> 00:02:19.099 to the ruggedized side, because I remember that 00:02:19.099 --> 00:02:23.120 2955, that was the first ruggedized piece of 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.439 gear that Cisco made that I ever touched. Yeah, 00:02:26.460 --> 00:02:28.199 what brought you to the dark side, I guess is 00:02:28.199 --> 00:02:32.900 the question, right? Yeah. Okay, I just want 00:02:32.900 --> 00:02:35.580 to say one thing, Dave, as far as my appearance 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:41.879 fee, that the check... I'm a little suspicious 00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:45.400 now. You're breaking up, hello? Yeah, there's 00:02:45.400 --> 00:02:51.919 signals breaking up. Yeah, so the 2955, last 00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:55.840 year we announced it hit its 20th anniversary 00:02:55.840 --> 00:02:59.360 of the 2955, which I think is Cisco's first foray 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:03.460 into the industrial world. So that was back in, 00:03:03.800 --> 00:03:06.319 so I was actually working as a software engineer 00:03:06.319 --> 00:03:10.780 in the business unit that developed what was 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:17.550 the... the Catalyst 2500 and the Catalyst 2400. 00:03:17.909 --> 00:03:23.469 And so one of our customers, one of our Catalyst 00:03:23.469 --> 00:03:27.789 desktop switching customers approached us and 00:03:27.789 --> 00:03:30.789 just said, hey, if you build it, we'll buy it. 00:03:30.889 --> 00:03:32.750 And that just sort of kicked it off. There was 00:03:32.750 --> 00:03:37.009 a market opportunity for us to expand the beyond 00:03:37.009 --> 00:03:41.120 sort of enterprise. type deployments where you 00:03:41.120 --> 00:03:44.060 have air conditioning into all right let's let's 00:03:44.060 --> 00:03:47.139 just take the same technology and build it so 00:03:47.139 --> 00:03:49.879 you don't need fans and so you can meet vibration 00:03:49.879 --> 00:03:51.979 specifications and temperature specifications 00:03:51.979 --> 00:03:56.479 and you go fanless and we'll sell it um and at 00:03:56.479 --> 00:03:59.719 that time there wasn't enough competition and 00:03:59.719 --> 00:04:02.939 so it actually did fairly well i mean it looks 00:04:02.939 --> 00:04:05.879 a lot different than what we have today in terms 00:04:05.879 --> 00:04:08.900 of you know din rail mounted ethernet switches 00:04:08.900 --> 00:04:11.800 but that's really just somebody approached us 00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:14.379 with the market opportunity and when we look 00:04:14.379 --> 00:04:16.519 at like what was the cost to develop it it was 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:18.660 like okay let's take the same technology that 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:22.339 we have in our enterprise you know 19 inch rack 00:04:22.339 --> 00:04:25.420 mount pizza box shrink it put it just the fundamental 00:04:25.420 --> 00:04:29.720 portions of it and put it into you know a cube 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:33.500 that doesn't need fans and can cool itself and 00:04:33.500 --> 00:04:36.779 that's just how it all started that's that's 00:04:36.779 --> 00:04:42.300 wild so I mean, we didn't have the we. So Cisco 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:44.879 doesn't have the didn't have the competencies 00:04:44.879 --> 00:04:48.660 yet, though. Right. Like meaning every piece 00:04:48.660 --> 00:04:51.220 of engineering that was being done was about, 00:04:51.420 --> 00:04:55.540 OK, that the thermals look different when I'm 00:04:55.540 --> 00:04:58.139 inside of an enclosure with moving air. I can 00:04:58.139 --> 00:05:01.720 pass air across these fins of these heat sinks. 00:05:02.180 --> 00:05:05.920 And, you know, my the ambient in the in the room 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:07.959 is probably going to be, you know. hopefully 00:05:07.959 --> 00:05:10.560 not over 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And you literally 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:12.939 were going to a new drawing board there, right? 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.920 There was no, there was no precedent for, Hey, 00:05:16.980 --> 00:05:18.759 we're going to throw this into a small enclosure 00:05:18.759 --> 00:05:22.279 and there's not going to be any fan at all. Yeah. 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:26.699 Yeah. So the whole, the whole figuring out how 00:05:26.699 --> 00:05:30.759 to do the thermals to me, it's, it's, that's 00:05:30.759 --> 00:05:34.279 an unspoken of strength or skill that you just 00:05:34.279 --> 00:05:37.300 have to have. in your hardware mechanical team. 00:05:37.420 --> 00:05:39.579 They just have to understand what the regulations 00:05:39.579 --> 00:05:43.279 are, how to cool things, and how to understand 00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:46.240 and meet thermodynamic requirements. And it's 00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:49.779 not trivial because you can get, I don't use 00:05:49.779 --> 00:05:52.480 the term lazy, you can get lazy and just make 00:05:52.480 --> 00:05:55.420 it big, right? If you increase surface area, 00:05:55.600 --> 00:05:59.120 you increase essentially the shell for which 00:05:59.120 --> 00:06:02.180 you can dissipate heat. And that's the sort of 00:06:02.180 --> 00:06:04.879 the lazy way out. of building something like 00:06:04.879 --> 00:06:09.500 this. So the key is make it as small as possible 00:06:09.500 --> 00:06:12.199 because the enclosures are not getting larger, 00:06:12.519 --> 00:06:14.360 right? They're getting smaller. If anything, 00:06:14.620 --> 00:06:16.860 they expect... And enclosure space is expensive, 00:06:17.019 --> 00:06:19.819 so... And if anything, they expect the size to 00:06:19.819 --> 00:06:22.120 at least remain the same as the technology advances, 00:06:22.519 --> 00:06:24.379 right? So we went from fast Ethernet to gigabit, 00:06:24.420 --> 00:06:28.480 but the size of the cube of the Ethernet switch 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:31.000 can't change, even though it's putting off more 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:36.360 heat. Yeah. So that's always been the cool thing. 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:38.240 And I think for me, I remember I was working 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:40.759 as a software engineer at the time in the business 00:06:40.759 --> 00:06:43.920 unit that developed it, but I actually didn't 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:47.199 work on it. The guy that was sitting in the cube 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:50.699 next to me was actually like the main software 00:06:50.699 --> 00:06:53.259 engineer. And he was looking at this thing and 00:06:53.259 --> 00:06:56.180 showing it to me. And I'm like, this is the funkiest 00:06:56.180 --> 00:06:59.379 piece of equipment I've ever seen. How do you 00:06:59.379 --> 00:07:01.639 power this thing? Where's the power cord go? 00:07:01.879 --> 00:07:05.180 And he was talking to me about DC power and things 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:12.379 like that. And this was back in 2004. And little 00:07:12.379 --> 00:07:15.879 did I know, 10 years later, so I'd actually be 00:07:15.879 --> 00:07:18.220 working in the business unit that's whose primary 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:21.459 goal is to sell those things. So a bit of a forecasting 00:07:21.459 --> 00:07:24.620 of my career in some respects. Right. Yeah. And 00:07:24.620 --> 00:07:26.420 you take me back to, you know, because I've been 00:07:26.420 --> 00:07:28.579 doing this for over 30 years. So that just tells 00:07:28.579 --> 00:07:32.339 you how long, you know, how old I am. And I won't 00:07:32.339 --> 00:07:34.240 reveal that here. But I told Albert before we 00:07:34.240 --> 00:07:36.199 started, you know, my age and what was going 00:07:36.199 --> 00:07:39.519 on with me. But, you know, I go back to the days 00:07:39.519 --> 00:07:43.100 when they were still using AC power in the panel 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:46.240 for PLCs and logic. And now they don't do any 00:07:46.240 --> 00:07:48.300 of that. I mean, it's all DC. It's all 24 volt. 00:07:48.379 --> 00:07:50.680 But I can remember back on the automotive plant 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:54.480 floors in the late 90s. Sorry, early 90s, where 00:07:54.480 --> 00:07:56.259 they were using AC in the panels. It was just 00:07:56.259 --> 00:08:02.279 crazy how unsafe that was. Yeah, what's funny 00:08:02.279 --> 00:08:09.779 is my memory of that 2955 was we were trying 00:08:09.779 --> 00:08:15.560 to extend Ethernet into a pump house, I think. 00:08:15.620 --> 00:08:19.569 Pump room, pump house. And the problem was, is 00:08:19.569 --> 00:08:24.230 that there was no place to land a new IDF. So 00:08:24.230 --> 00:08:28.670 there was just, you know, logistics wise, there 00:08:28.670 --> 00:08:31.629 was no floor space. There was no way to get up 00:08:31.629 --> 00:08:35.509 into the, you know, the building columns around 00:08:35.509 --> 00:08:38.090 the area. There was no nice, clean place to put 00:08:38.090 --> 00:08:42.809 it. And so we got this crazy idea to, OK, we'll 00:08:42.809 --> 00:08:46.470 just throw a. you know, throw an access switch 00:08:46.470 --> 00:08:49.389 somewhere, mount it, you know, give us another 00:08:49.389 --> 00:08:55.029 100 meters kind of thing. And it was like right 00:08:55.029 --> 00:08:57.269 about that time it was, I want to say it was 00:08:57.269 --> 00:09:00.529 released. We took one look at it and went, oh 00:09:00.529 --> 00:09:03.470 my gosh, this is actually designed to be out 00:09:03.470 --> 00:09:06.230 there, not inside an enclosure, not cool, because 00:09:06.230 --> 00:09:11.009 every other IDF we had at the time was, of course, 00:09:11.029 --> 00:09:14.269 HVAC controlled. And so part of this was, you 00:09:14.269 --> 00:09:16.070 know, I don't have room for a cabinet. I don't 00:09:16.070 --> 00:09:19.509 have room to mount something. And, man, yeah, 00:09:19.730 --> 00:09:25.210 it just – yeah, it was great. Well, Albert, there 00:09:25.210 --> 00:09:26.909 were still people doing – there were people doing 00:09:26.909 --> 00:09:29.230 industrial switches before Cisco got into the 00:09:29.230 --> 00:09:31.470 business, right? There were a lot of competitors 00:09:31.470 --> 00:09:33.490 out there. Talk a little bit about that and how 00:09:33.490 --> 00:09:37.070 we broke into the space and got to the position 00:09:37.070 --> 00:09:40.840 we're in now. You put me on the spot, John. I 00:09:40.840 --> 00:09:42.340 was actually in the software department back 00:09:42.340 --> 00:09:44.700 then. And since I wasn't on this project, I don't 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:48.039 have a ton of understanding about what the business 00:09:48.039 --> 00:09:50.500 case was or the business environment was for 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:53.279 industrial switching back then. So I can't really 00:09:53.279 --> 00:09:55.460 speak too much to what the competitors were doing. 00:09:55.559 --> 00:09:58.419 Sorry about that. No, somebody had to have seen 00:09:58.419 --> 00:10:00.399 an opportunity there, though, because if you 00:10:00.399 --> 00:10:02.860 make one business case, we put an entire group 00:10:02.860 --> 00:10:06.039 together, or at least we started in 2004, right? 00:10:06.100 --> 00:10:08.399 And it's grown to what it is today. That's pretty... 00:10:08.919 --> 00:10:11.440 Yeah, pretty compelling, apparently. But I think 00:10:11.440 --> 00:10:14.960 like anything, somebody came to us and basically 00:10:14.960 --> 00:10:18.580 a customer or maybe a group of customers could 00:10:18.580 --> 00:10:21.519 have been like water utilities or substation 00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:23.759 automation companies or something that says, 00:10:23.779 --> 00:10:25.620 look, if you build this, I'll buy it, right? 00:10:26.340 --> 00:10:30.799 We rarely take something like we're just, you 00:10:30.799 --> 00:10:33.360 have to realize back in 2004, just like it is 00:10:33.360 --> 00:10:37.639 today, Ethernet switching is a big business for 00:10:37.639 --> 00:10:41.100 Cisco. We're not just going to like willy -nilly 00:10:41.100 --> 00:10:44.139 just build something for which and say, let's 00:10:44.139 --> 00:10:46.360 build it and see if we can sell it. No, right? 00:10:46.460 --> 00:10:49.059 We're turning down so many business opportunities 00:10:49.059 --> 00:10:52.620 that we pretty much only build something if we 00:10:52.620 --> 00:10:54.720 know we're going to sell it because somebody's 00:10:54.720 --> 00:10:56.639 asking for it and they're willing to write a 00:10:56.639 --> 00:10:59.220 check to cover the cost of development. So we 00:10:59.220 --> 00:11:02.259 don't do something on speculation, right? So 00:11:02.259 --> 00:11:04.519 I suspect that there was a customer or a group 00:11:04.519 --> 00:11:07.559 of customers that had already been lined up. 00:11:07.789 --> 00:11:09.929 for us to do this so that we knew we were going 00:11:09.929 --> 00:11:12.129 to at least recover the cost of the development 00:11:12.129 --> 00:11:14.389 team and then get into profitability within a 00:11:14.389 --> 00:11:16.049 couple of years. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't 00:11:16.049 --> 00:11:20.169 have done it. So I want to say we could have 00:11:20.169 --> 00:11:22.389 been, maybe we were partnering with Rockwell 00:11:22.389 --> 00:11:24.649 at the time or somebody like that who really 00:11:24.649 --> 00:11:27.570 gave us a big, I'll say, we'll partner with you. 00:11:27.610 --> 00:11:30.570 If you build this, we'll resell it and some other 00:11:30.570 --> 00:11:32.690 opportunity. That's how it had to have happened. 00:11:32.830 --> 00:11:34.490 But I wasn't on the project, so I don't have 00:11:34.490 --> 00:11:37.529 the details for the original 2955. I was thinking 00:11:37.529 --> 00:11:40.970 back to the year and the sequence, is that it's 00:11:40.970 --> 00:11:43.710 interesting that that came out in 2004, and then 00:11:43.710 --> 00:11:48.629 the first version of any kind of validated design 00:11:48.629 --> 00:11:52.750 or similar for industry was about, what, three 00:11:52.750 --> 00:11:57.190 years later? Maybe four? Wasn't Ethernet to the 00:11:57.190 --> 00:12:01.649 factory floor? Wasn't that 07, 08, Albert? Yeah, 00:12:01.690 --> 00:12:03.690 but there was a joint venture before that with 00:12:03.690 --> 00:12:08.710 GE and Cisco, right? Before the Rockwell thing. 00:12:09.970 --> 00:12:13.549 Ooh, you got me. I don't know. Yeah, I believe 00:12:13.549 --> 00:12:15.690 there was. So I spent some time at GE Fanuc, 00:12:15.710 --> 00:12:17.870 and I have some guys that moved on because GE 00:12:17.870 --> 00:12:21.049 Fanuc no longer exists. And there was a joint 00:12:21.049 --> 00:12:24.049 venture between Cisco and GE at one point to 00:12:24.049 --> 00:12:26.649 take this into the factory floor, but I don't 00:12:26.649 --> 00:12:28.049 think it went anywhere. Obviously, it didn't 00:12:28.049 --> 00:12:30.070 go anywhere because we're now doing things with 00:12:30.070 --> 00:12:32.509 Rockwell. Yeah, there was something there. Man, 00:12:32.549 --> 00:12:34.250 I want to dig up the history of that at some 00:12:34.250 --> 00:12:37.190 point, John. That'd be great, too. That's a hole 00:12:37.190 --> 00:12:42.029 in my historical record, so to speak. Yeah, and 00:12:42.029 --> 00:12:44.669 don't ask me how I pulled that out of my memory 00:12:44.669 --> 00:12:50.659 back there. No, that's great. Albert, when you 00:12:50.659 --> 00:12:54.279 were, so got it, you kind of got exposed early 00:12:54.279 --> 00:12:58.059 on the software team, right, 2955. You saw this 00:12:58.059 --> 00:13:02.159 sort of sales ramp, you know, the, again, CVD, 00:13:02.220 --> 00:13:04.159 then along came the kind of partnership with 00:13:04.159 --> 00:13:07.220 Rockwell. At some point here in the, you know, 00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:09.940 five years later, roughly, you actually joined 00:13:09.940 --> 00:13:13.039 that business unit. But what, what did the, like, 00:13:13.059 --> 00:13:14.679 what were you working on in between there that 00:13:14.679 --> 00:13:19.139 kind of got you to moving over to that? the industrial 00:13:19.139 --> 00:13:23.059 business unit at the time. So in between the 00:13:23.059 --> 00:13:26.580 launch of the 2955, I stayed on as a software 00:13:26.580 --> 00:13:29.639 engineer. And then for my personal career, I 00:13:29.639 --> 00:13:32.940 moved, I did one year of customer escalation. 00:13:33.100 --> 00:13:35.940 So when customers had a problem, you have to 00:13:35.940 --> 00:13:38.580 recreate it and figure out if there's a software 00:13:38.580 --> 00:13:41.460 solution or if it's an issue, actual hardware 00:13:41.460 --> 00:13:43.960 issue or software issue, then you sort of take 00:13:43.960 --> 00:13:46.639 it back to the development team. And you explain 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:49.000 to them what it is. So it's like things escalate 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:51.679 past the technical support that you would normally 00:13:51.679 --> 00:13:55.620 get up to the business unit. So I was doing that 00:13:55.620 --> 00:13:58.960 for a year. And then I moved over to become a 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:00.720 technical marketing engineer. So then I went 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:04.080 over to the Catalyst product management team. 00:14:04.139 --> 00:14:10.539 So now it's the 3750, about to become 3850 team 00:14:10.539 --> 00:14:14.240 where we're starting to do stacking. of 3750s 00:14:14.240 --> 00:14:17.360 3560s and now i joined as a technical marketing 00:14:17.360 --> 00:14:20.240 engineer there so i got out of software development 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:22.799 it's like this is like internal Cisco stuff um 00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:25.940 i got out of the software team and i joined a 00:14:25.940 --> 00:14:28.120 different team i migrated over to product management 00:14:28.120 --> 00:14:31.000 and that was about yeah i don't know about 2008 00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:35.159 or 2009 or so so i moved over to product management 00:14:35.159 --> 00:14:37.000 i've sort of never looked back i've been in product 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:41.919 management TME (Technical Marketing Engineer) ever since for catalyst so I did 00:14:41.919 --> 00:14:45.460 sort of the same. So then I got sort of disconnected 00:14:45.460 --> 00:14:47.639 from the industrial switch for a little bit. 00:14:47.700 --> 00:14:49.960 But otherwise, but now the industrial switch, 00:14:49.960 --> 00:14:52.279 now I see the industrial switch. Now it's the 00:14:52.279 --> 00:14:55.220 IE 3000, right? So they made another version 00:14:55.220 --> 00:14:57.399 of it to sort of address customer needs, the 00:14:57.399 --> 00:14:59.779 IE 3000. And now I'm seeing it as a technical 00:14:59.779 --> 00:15:03.240 marketing engineer that, you know, we have, it's 00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:04.860 now in the product management group and we're 00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:06.919 trying to now position that and sell it with 00:15:06.919 --> 00:15:11.529 the sales teams. So this is. going towards 2009, 00:15:12.009 --> 00:15:17.409 2010 or so. And what I see is the partnership 00:15:17.409 --> 00:15:21.690 with Rockwell is now starting. And I think that's 00:15:21.690 --> 00:15:27.769 what really drove, the IE switching really took 00:15:27.769 --> 00:15:30.250 it up a notch. Once we had Rockwell on board 00:15:30.250 --> 00:15:33.299 and we were... We had like the Ethernet to the 00:15:33.299 --> 00:15:35.179 factory, like you mentioned earlier, that validated 00:15:35.179 --> 00:15:37.519 design we worked on with Rockwell. We put Ethernet 00:15:37.519 --> 00:15:39.700 switching in there and the partnership with Rockwell 00:15:39.700 --> 00:15:41.779 that really took the business up a notch. That's 00:15:41.779 --> 00:15:44.600 really what sort of catapulted it, I think, to 00:15:44.600 --> 00:15:46.600 making it a really a big business for Cisco and 00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:48.279 something that we wanted to continue to invest 00:15:48.279 --> 00:15:51.419 in. Did you have to make a lot of changes to 00:15:51.419 --> 00:15:53.080 the product when you started having that relationship 00:15:53.080 --> 00:15:56.080 with Rockwell or was there a pretty easy transition? 00:15:56.580 --> 00:15:59.559 So, well, Rockwell took what we had, but they 00:15:59.559 --> 00:16:04.259 said, this is great, but. What we need is more 00:16:04.259 --> 00:16:09.340 fiber. We need smaller. We need bigger. So remember 00:16:09.340 --> 00:16:15.840 the IE 2000, I think this is all for entertainment 00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:20.309 purposes. Yes, that's right. The whole list of 00:16:20.309 --> 00:16:22.629 all the product IDs that you could get for the 00:16:22.629 --> 00:16:24.389 IE 2000, because remember, I think they're like 00:16:24.389 --> 00:16:27.669 10 to 15 different product IDs, different sizes. 00:16:27.909 --> 00:16:29.990 They did different things. That was Rockwell 00:16:29.990 --> 00:16:32.669 saying, we need this many SKUs. We'd have all 00:16:32.669 --> 00:16:34.509 these different little market segments that we 00:16:34.509 --> 00:16:36.429 want to sell into for our customers that have 00:16:36.429 --> 00:16:39.509 all these minute detailed requirements that you 00:16:39.509 --> 00:16:43.409 can't have with just one big switch. So that 00:16:43.409 --> 00:16:47.350 was the sort of the SKU proliferation was Rockwell 00:16:47.350 --> 00:16:52.159 driving. the PRD for the next version of industrial 00:16:52.159 --> 00:16:55.759 switch after the IE 3000. So that became the 00:16:55.759 --> 00:16:59.320 IE 2000. And for Rockwell, it became the Stratix 00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:07.440 5700, I want to say. 5700, 5800. Anyway, that's 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:10.420 Rockwell really. So you want to talk about the 00:17:10.420 --> 00:17:12.220 business and the relationship that we have with 00:17:12.220 --> 00:17:15.000 Rockwell is they literally, I mean, they pretty 00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:17.900 much wrote the PRD for the third generation. 00:17:18.279 --> 00:17:20.180 industrial switch which for Cisco was the IE 00:17:20.180 --> 00:17:24.000 yeah okay got it it's interesting that so the 00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:28.039 first version of that Stratix that i had gotten 00:17:28.039 --> 00:17:31.700 my grubby mitts on at the time was the 8000 which 00:17:31.700 --> 00:17:35.099 was the 3k for to your point the IE 3000 it was 00:17:35.099 --> 00:17:37.940 that actually was i probably would never have 00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:40.720 come to Cisco if it weren't for the 3000 to the 00:17:40.720 --> 00:17:43.720 ie3k because we were in the You know, this is 00:17:43.720 --> 00:17:45.880 like, again, entertainment purposes only. We 00:17:45.880 --> 00:17:48.380 were in the early days of discussing factory 00:17:48.380 --> 00:17:52.880 transformation. And I'll never forget, I walked 00:17:52.880 --> 00:17:55.700 into kind of this, I think it was called the 00:17:55.700 --> 00:17:59.099 automated controls best practice circle, if I 00:17:59.099 --> 00:18:03.160 remember right. Sounds like a big name. Yeah, 00:18:03.160 --> 00:18:05.680 it was kind of crazy, right? Too many acronyms. 00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:08.380 See, not just Cisco, those crazy acronyms. And, 00:18:08.380 --> 00:18:13.589 you know, you've got this room full of... maintenance 00:18:13.589 --> 00:18:16.529 folks and controls folks and everybody but IT. 00:18:16.890 --> 00:18:20.750 And here I am, I'll say the wet behind the ears 00:18:20.750 --> 00:18:24.589 IT guy, walking into the room with a switch, 00:18:24.670 --> 00:18:27.930 but thankfully it didn't look like an IT switch. 00:18:28.329 --> 00:18:32.390 It looked like, wait, the color matches the controllers 00:18:32.390 --> 00:18:36.009 that we've got. And suddenly that defanged the 00:18:36.009 --> 00:18:40.190 naysayers. The fact that it looked and was colored. 00:18:41.059 --> 00:18:45.500 like a Rockwell controller. All of their dander 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:46.779 went down. They're like, oh, that's interesting. 00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:49.920 Oh, look at that. It's right beside the PLC. 00:18:49.940 --> 00:18:52.579 Look at that. It's the right size. Yeah. It was 00:18:52.579 --> 00:18:55.759 crazy how all of the, I mean, look, there were 00:18:55.759 --> 00:19:01.480 certainly naysayers, but it defanged and de -risked 00:19:01.480 --> 00:19:05.059 and de -escalated. If I would have brought the 00:19:05.059 --> 00:19:07.960 IE3K into that room, the exact same product, 00:19:08.019 --> 00:19:10.660 it was colored like all of the... IT switches, 00:19:10.859 --> 00:19:13.940 they would have run me out of the room. They 00:19:13.940 --> 00:19:16.140 literally were judging the switch by its color. 00:19:16.380 --> 00:19:19.180 Yep. Yep. They literally were judging the switch 00:19:19.180 --> 00:19:21.900 by its color. And size to some extent, I'm sure, 00:19:21.940 --> 00:19:25.339 right? Sure. Yeah. To your point, John, it fit 00:19:25.339 --> 00:19:27.359 right. Like they could look at it and tell that 00:19:27.359 --> 00:19:29.420 it fit nicely right next to that controller. 00:19:29.619 --> 00:19:32.740 Yeah. Look like a SLC 500, except maybe smaller, 00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:35.900 right? Yeah. Nobody's looking at technical specifications. 00:19:36.259 --> 00:19:38.559 No. Yeah, there you go. No, that's exactly it. 00:19:38.599 --> 00:19:41.740 Not at that point, right? So, yeah, I think the 00:19:41.740 --> 00:19:43.160 other thing that's interesting when you talk 00:19:43.160 --> 00:19:46.140 about the timeline is that it feels like it happened 00:19:46.140 --> 00:19:51.559 maybe later than I was thinking. Because I was 00:19:51.559 --> 00:19:57.059 thinking internally from a Cisco lens that the 00:19:57.059 --> 00:20:01.069 business unit really took off. Between 04 and 00:20:01.069 --> 00:20:04.549 07. And it almost sounds like it really took 00:20:04.549 --> 00:20:10.009 off between 07 and 10. Yeah. So you have to realize, 00:20:10.130 --> 00:20:13.750 but in between, so when the IE 3000 came out 00:20:13.750 --> 00:20:19.230 and the IE 2000 came out, there was also, there 00:20:19.230 --> 00:20:22.170 was two business opportunities. One was to keep 00:20:22.170 --> 00:20:24.529 building, like from Cisco's perspective, when 00:20:24.529 --> 00:20:26.569 we're looking at the business, you can keep building 00:20:26.569 --> 00:20:30.880 switches for. manufacturing, but you needed a 00:20:30.880 --> 00:20:33.299 different switch with different requirements, 00:20:33.539 --> 00:20:36.539 quote unquote, for the utility sector. So we 00:20:36.539 --> 00:20:40.319 actually split the businesses. There was a smart 00:20:40.319 --> 00:20:43.000 grid business unit that we created for a while 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:47.460 and they built their own products. So for a while, 00:20:47.500 --> 00:20:52.880 we had the IE 2000, which was for Cisco's purposes 00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:55.720 intended for manufacturing. And then we had the 00:20:55.720 --> 00:21:00.019 IE 2000U. which said for utilities, that was 00:21:00.019 --> 00:21:02.640 built by Smart Grid, a different business unit 00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:07.220 working for utilities. And we also had the CGS, 00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:11.779 the Connected Grid Switch 2500, which was a 19 00:21:11.779 --> 00:21:13.759 -inch rack mount, still fanless, but 19 -inch 00:21:13.759 --> 00:21:16.680 rack mount, and the Industrial Ethernet 3010, 00:21:16.980 --> 00:21:21.039 which was also now a 19 -inch rack mount, fanless, 00:21:21.039 --> 00:21:26.009 industrial switch. The hardware... was very similar, 00:21:26.049 --> 00:21:29.769 but the software was different. So the business 00:21:29.769 --> 00:21:31.950 units actually shared like a hardware engineering 00:21:31.950 --> 00:21:35.150 team, built two different products sort of based 00:21:35.150 --> 00:21:37.710 off very similar hardware architectures, and 00:21:37.710 --> 00:21:39.650 then put different software on them and had different 00:21:39.650 --> 00:21:42.089 software teams. Yeah. I did not know that. I 00:21:42.089 --> 00:21:45.869 did not know that. Yes. That's wild. But they 00:21:45.869 --> 00:21:49.190 were still all traditional IOS at the time though, 00:21:49.210 --> 00:21:52.009 right? Yeah. It was still running iOS, but they 00:21:52.009 --> 00:21:55.720 had different teams. building the hardware and 00:21:55.720 --> 00:21:57.839 the software and the support and product management 00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:00.400 and the whole thing. We were completely different. 00:22:00.440 --> 00:22:05.259 They had the smart grid business unit. And yeah, 00:22:05.359 --> 00:22:07.380 I remember when that happened. So I want to say 00:22:07.380 --> 00:22:10.039 that was, somebody's going to listen to this 00:22:10.039 --> 00:22:11.799 and get the dates and say, yeah, you got the 00:22:11.799 --> 00:22:14.240 dates all wrong. But I want to say 2010, 2011 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:19.359 maybe. Okay. That's when that split off. And 00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:26.490 then I think right about 2013, They, 2014 timeframe, 00:22:26.730 --> 00:22:30.210 they came back together. This point now, the 00:22:30.210 --> 00:22:32.630 industrial team had split off. So I think there 00:22:32.630 --> 00:22:35.750 was a, for a long time, the industrial switch, 00:22:35.789 --> 00:22:38.410 like especially when this IE3000 was all part 00:22:38.410 --> 00:22:44.230 of Catalyst, from an engineering, marketing, 00:22:44.349 --> 00:22:48.630 product management domain organization. It was 00:22:48.630 --> 00:22:52.950 just one more product within all of the Catalysts. 00:22:53.180 --> 00:22:57.299 So the industrial switching, the IoT group within 00:22:57.299 --> 00:23:01.480 Cisco had split off. And then that's when it 00:23:01.480 --> 00:23:04.019 joined with the connected grid. So the connected 00:23:04.019 --> 00:23:08.400 grid and the industrial switching team rejoined 00:23:08.400 --> 00:23:11.440 and formed their own business unit again. Was 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.099 that when Vikas was involved? Yes. So Vikas comes 00:23:15.099 --> 00:23:18.720 in. So Vikas is now like a VP, but he was the 00:23:18.720 --> 00:23:22.470 director at that point. And he joined shortly 00:23:22.470 --> 00:23:26.170 after the organizations had re -come back together 00:23:26.170 --> 00:23:28.329 again in their own business unit to form IoT. 00:23:30.849 --> 00:23:33.690 Gotcha. So for a while there, we had like, so 00:23:33.690 --> 00:23:35.410 we were managing, we had product management. 00:23:35.410 --> 00:23:37.109 So now product management, I'm in the product 00:23:37.109 --> 00:23:39.509 management group. So I'm speaking mostly from 00:23:39.509 --> 00:23:41.849 that perspective. So now product management, 00:23:41.869 --> 00:23:45.230 we're managing, you know, the 2000 and the 2000U. 00:23:47.109 --> 00:23:49.759 And that's... Interesting because unless you 00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:52.279 look really close, they're the exact same hardware, 00:23:52.400 --> 00:23:55.440 the same color, same hardware. You got to look 00:23:55.440 --> 00:23:57.140 in the top right corner to see, oh, this one 00:23:57.140 --> 00:24:02.819 has the U. That's why you can't use the SD card 00:24:02.819 --> 00:24:04.740 on it because it's, you know, you can't take 00:24:04.740 --> 00:24:06.940 the SD card out of the U and plug it into your 00:24:06.940 --> 00:24:11.099 laptop and look at 32 because that's a different. 00:24:11.500 --> 00:24:14.559 file system on the 2000U for your SD card. Things 00:24:14.559 --> 00:24:16.980 like that were popping up all the time. If you 00:24:16.980 --> 00:24:19.539 look really closely, you wouldn't notice the 00:24:19.539 --> 00:24:22.319 difference between a 2000 and 2000U because they 00:24:22.319 --> 00:24:26.339 had the same hardware team. So this was one for 00:24:26.339 --> 00:24:28.980 smart grid, one for other industrial. Is that 00:24:28.980 --> 00:24:32.660 what you're saying? Correct. Exactly. Okay. Yeah, 00:24:32.700 --> 00:24:36.519 that's some wild history there. I had no – somehow, 00:24:36.740 --> 00:24:39.059 right, you learn a lot when you're inside the 00:24:39.059 --> 00:24:41.799 four walls, but the history lessons just didn't 00:24:41.799 --> 00:24:44.400 – you didn't hear a lot of that. So that fills 00:24:44.400 --> 00:24:49.200 in some huge gaps. What – when the joining kind 00:24:49.200 --> 00:24:51.660 of the – right, it sounds like they were together 00:24:51.660 --> 00:24:54.740 and then they split and then they came back together 00:24:54.740 --> 00:24:58.339 again. In each one of those cases, that was no 00:24:58.339 --> 00:25:02.210 – those entities were no longer part. of the 00:25:02.210 --> 00:25:05.049 traditional cat business unit at that point right 00:25:05.049 --> 00:25:07.490 they were their own essentially their own entities 00:25:07.490 --> 00:25:10.890 is that right yeah their their own business exactly 00:25:10.890 --> 00:25:13.430 yeah right own business so as we think of like 00:25:13.430 --> 00:25:15.750 an architecture it was its own architecture essentially 00:25:15.750 --> 00:25:19.609 inside yeah it's on pnl yeah yeah it's pnl exactly 00:25:19.609 --> 00:25:21.809 its own pnl if you want to talk about from a 00:25:21.809 --> 00:25:23.730 business perspective right yeah so yeah well 00:25:23.730 --> 00:25:28.119 put yeah just like Webex is separate from Cisco, 00:25:28.359 --> 00:25:31.160 I mean, it's got its own business unit. The firewall 00:25:31.160 --> 00:25:34.180 team has their own business unit. Security does. 00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:37.400 And so industrial switching was its own business. 00:25:37.940 --> 00:25:43.500 Or industrial networking. So, Albert, what challenges 00:25:43.500 --> 00:25:46.140 did you guys run into when you were trying to, 00:25:46.200 --> 00:25:48.319 and you may not be able to talk directly to this, 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:51.299 but you had to develop a whole new channel and 00:25:51.299 --> 00:25:53.500 route the market for this whole thing. What kind 00:25:53.500 --> 00:25:58.529 of challenges did you run into? The biggest challenge 00:25:58.529 --> 00:26:02.730 was getting the Cisco sales team to focus on 00:26:02.730 --> 00:26:05.069 this and look for the opportunities. At this 00:26:05.069 --> 00:26:06.589 point, the biggest challenge we had originally 00:26:06.589 --> 00:26:10.029 was just the generalist sales teams were just 00:26:10.029 --> 00:26:15.170 selling their data center, enterprise switching, 00:26:15.349 --> 00:26:19.150 data center, security, wireless. They were selling 00:26:19.150 --> 00:26:21.349 their normal stuff. And so to get them to also 00:26:21.349 --> 00:26:24.309 sell and look for opportunities for industrial 00:26:24.309 --> 00:26:29.240 was tough. Yeah, we had a few of the big customers, 00:26:29.339 --> 00:26:31.319 like you can think like the Fortune 500 companies 00:26:31.319 --> 00:26:33.900 that are sort of centered on manufacturing. Yeah, 00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:36.279 they were buying it, but we were having a hard 00:26:36.279 --> 00:26:39.880 time getting that next tier down. And we were 00:26:39.880 --> 00:26:42.819 trying to get partners on board. We were trying 00:26:42.819 --> 00:26:46.559 really hard to get another partner from Rockwell 00:26:46.559 --> 00:26:51.019 or to get resellers to sign up and stop selling 00:26:51.019 --> 00:26:55.150 the competition. sort of Hirschman and Moxa and 00:26:55.150 --> 00:26:59.150 Siemens and start selling Cisco. That was the 00:26:59.150 --> 00:27:01.609 struggle that I don't think we ever really got 00:27:01.609 --> 00:27:03.869 very far with that. So that was really the big 00:27:03.869 --> 00:27:06.410 struggle was getting Cisco sales teams to focus 00:27:06.410 --> 00:27:09.849 on it and getting partners to come on board and 00:27:09.849 --> 00:27:12.049 sort of break their relationships that they had 00:27:12.049 --> 00:27:15.109 with the existing or the Cisco's competitors 00:27:15.109 --> 00:27:18.829 like Hirschman, Siemens, Moxa and start on the 00:27:18.829 --> 00:27:23.210 price list. So that was the big challenge. Yeah, 00:27:23.250 --> 00:27:26.970 I mean, this is a classic challenge with the 00:27:26.970 --> 00:27:30.150 internal teams, right? Because generally speaking, 00:27:30.470 --> 00:27:33.230 their buying centers, their customers, the folks 00:27:33.230 --> 00:27:35.930 they're talking to, they kind of look the same 00:27:35.930 --> 00:27:39.390 from one customer to the other, just generally 00:27:39.390 --> 00:27:42.049 speaking, almost regardless of vertical. Well, 00:27:42.049 --> 00:27:44.230 purchasing, it all goes up through the same purchasing 00:27:44.230 --> 00:27:46.940 department, typically. Right. Whereas as soon 00:27:46.940 --> 00:27:48.980 as you flip to the industrial side, well, now 00:27:48.980 --> 00:27:51.880 you're talking to lines of business. You're talking 00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:53.920 to folks that, you know, they look potentially 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:56.680 they look drastically different between verticals. 00:27:57.059 --> 00:28:00.319 And number one, the account team isn't necessarily 00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:03.160 used to talking to them. Number two, to your 00:28:03.160 --> 00:28:05.819 point, the path of least resistance is let me 00:28:05.819 --> 00:28:07.599 keep doing the motion that I know and that I'm 00:28:07.599 --> 00:28:10.980 comfortable with. And I argue that problem still 00:28:10.980 --> 00:28:14.900 exists for some places. Well, in some cases, 00:28:14.920 --> 00:28:16.779 it is the same purchasing organization. No matter 00:28:16.779 --> 00:28:19.519 if you're talking IT or you're talking the OT, 00:28:19.660 --> 00:28:22.440 the plant floor, it may go up to the same procurement 00:28:22.440 --> 00:28:26.859 group. Yeah, for sure. Albert, I want to pivot 00:28:26.859 --> 00:28:30.700 a little bit to maybe some other historical topics 00:28:30.700 --> 00:28:34.700 and just get an understanding of maybe what you 00:28:34.700 --> 00:28:38.099 knew or know or what have you. When I first joined 00:28:38.099 --> 00:28:41.400 Cisco, I had talked to a gentleman by the name 00:28:41.400 --> 00:28:44.619 of Roy Osterberg, and my recollection was that 00:28:44.619 --> 00:28:48.299 he was on the original engineering team that 00:28:48.299 --> 00:28:50.859 actually had started with, I think, the 5000, 00:28:51.180 --> 00:28:55.740 like the first large chassis -based CAT. Okay. 00:28:55.779 --> 00:29:00.339 How much overlap, if any, were there between 00:29:00.339 --> 00:29:04.380 kind of those original CAT engineering teams 00:29:04.380 --> 00:29:07.700 and the... those original ruggedization engineering 00:29:07.700 --> 00:29:11.980 teams, it feels like like if it weren't for some 00:29:11.980 --> 00:29:15.539 of those historical folks inside of those original 00:29:15.539 --> 00:29:18.039 legacy business unit, like a lot of the products 00:29:18.039 --> 00:29:19.519 that we have today just wouldn't have happened. 00:29:20.579 --> 00:29:24.019 Oh yeah. Roy Osterberg. That's a name. That's 00:29:24.019 --> 00:29:27.900 a blast in the past. Roy was quite the character. 00:29:28.579 --> 00:29:34.210 I remember I got, I met Roy a lot. when I was 00:29:34.210 --> 00:29:36.630 working as a TME in the product management group 00:29:36.630 --> 00:29:42.210 for the Catalyst 3750, 3850 families. And Roy 00:29:42.210 --> 00:29:45.690 at the time was running the solution engineering 00:29:45.690 --> 00:29:51.289 team for enterprise deployment. So not just switching, 00:29:51.410 --> 00:29:53.829 but routing, switching wireless for enterprise 00:29:53.829 --> 00:29:57.309 deployments. And whenever you went to talk to 00:29:57.309 --> 00:30:00.170 Roy and you had a question or you wanted to see 00:30:00.170 --> 00:30:02.509 something or he was testing some sort of solution. 00:30:03.150 --> 00:30:05.410 You had to make sure that you had an hour because 00:30:05.410 --> 00:30:08.490 Roy was going to talk to you about everything. 00:30:08.549 --> 00:30:11.230 Roy just liked to talk and tell stories. I mean, 00:30:11.250 --> 00:30:14.170 he was quite knowledgeable. He had a huge history 00:30:14.170 --> 00:30:16.569 about how things were done and why we got to 00:30:16.569 --> 00:30:20.750 where we got. But anyway, the funny thing is 00:30:20.750 --> 00:30:22.450 I remember like, oh man, if you go talk to Roy, 00:30:22.509 --> 00:30:25.440 you got to make sure you have an hour. I love 00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:26.920 people like that, though, because you learn so 00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:29.259 much about what's going on or has gone on at 00:30:29.259 --> 00:30:31.539 the company. Yeah, it's just one of those things. 00:30:31.619 --> 00:30:33.799 Without fail, unless Roy was really, really busy, 00:30:33.880 --> 00:30:36.460 which, I mean, he was, but he always had time 00:30:36.460 --> 00:30:38.420 to sit down and tell stories. Yeah, so Roy was 00:30:38.420 --> 00:30:41.759 on the, so he came in. So there were, now we're 00:30:41.759 --> 00:30:44.940 going to go way back, Cisco's engineering acquisitions. 00:30:45.079 --> 00:30:50.000 So Cisco essentially bought, acquired three Ethernet 00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:52.180 switching companies. I forget the names of all 00:30:52.180 --> 00:30:54.099 of them, but one of them essentially. It turned 00:30:54.099 --> 00:30:57.380 out to be what was the large chassis, which is 00:30:57.380 --> 00:31:00.220 the 5000, eventually became the 6000, the 6500, 00:31:00.420 --> 00:31:03.079 which was sort of Cisco's frontline Ethernet 00:31:03.079 --> 00:31:05.599 switch. That was the big switch. Then there was 00:31:05.599 --> 00:31:08.180 a medium -sized one that we had that was more 00:31:08.180 --> 00:31:12.519 focused on large -scale wiring closet, which 00:31:12.519 --> 00:31:15.279 was the Catalyst 4000, then became the Catalyst 00:31:15.279 --> 00:31:17.779 4500. Again, this is a chassis mount system. 00:31:18.619 --> 00:31:21.420 And then the third one they bought became... 00:31:21.839 --> 00:31:27.440 The Catalyst 2950, 2940, 2950, then became the 00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:31.539 3750 and the 3850. It's now the Catalyst 9300, 00:31:31.839 --> 00:31:34.660 but it's the pizza box, right? It's the single, 00:31:34.759 --> 00:31:37.740 the one rack pizza box. So Cisco actually had 00:31:37.740 --> 00:31:41.299 three different switching companies. They were 00:31:41.299 --> 00:31:43.259 all running different operating systems at the 00:31:43.259 --> 00:31:45.160 time. Remember like Catalyst, I mean, originally 00:31:45.160 --> 00:31:50.359 the 6500 was running CatOS. And you can, when 00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:52.799 you search, for stuff you sometimes you still 00:31:52.799 --> 00:31:55.640 get CatOS comes up i'm sure it's still running 00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:58.240 out there in a while replaces i mean it was a 00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:00.980 great product 7.6.6 was the most stable CatOS 00:32:00.980 --> 00:32:05.660 code i ever ran there you go you got me man nope 00:32:05.660 --> 00:32:08.359 right over my head there yeah right over my head 00:32:08.359 --> 00:32:13.240 i'm a controls guy i uh yeah i actually i remember 00:32:13.240 --> 00:32:17.910 those days i i resisted the switch i wanted For 00:32:17.910 --> 00:32:19.690 the longest time, I wanted nothing to do with 00:32:19.690 --> 00:32:25.509 unified IOS across the 65s. We tried it a couple 00:32:25.509 --> 00:32:28.450 times in the lab, and it just was not stability, 00:32:28.630 --> 00:32:33.890 if I remember right away. And so we ran one version 00:32:33.890 --> 00:32:36.890 of iOS on the MSFC and another version of CAT 00:32:36.890 --> 00:32:41.589 for all the Layer 2 stuff for a long time. Dude, 00:32:41.630 --> 00:32:43.710 anytime you say the word unified, it means it's 00:32:43.710 --> 00:32:47.059 not. I mean, unfortunately, that's like air gap. 00:32:47.119 --> 00:32:49.180 When you say air gap. Yeah, right. It's really 00:32:49.180 --> 00:32:52.960 not air gap. I'm sorry. I interluded there with 00:32:52.960 --> 00:32:58.420 the Cat OS version. No, you got Roy Osterberg. 00:32:58.460 --> 00:33:01.660 So Roy worked. So he came in either he came in 00:33:01.660 --> 00:33:03.559 on the acquisition of the big of the company 00:33:03.559 --> 00:33:06.509 that. was building the catalyst 65 what became 00:33:06.509 --> 00:33:09.309 the catalyst 6500 and so he was always sort of 00:33:09.309 --> 00:33:12.829 oriented towards big deployments data centers 00:33:12.829 --> 00:33:14.990 and those kinds of things whether you put the 00:33:14.990 --> 00:33:19.990 catalyst 6500 um yeah i don't know why why did 00:33:19.990 --> 00:33:22.470 we you asked me about Roy Osterberg and i went 00:33:22.470 --> 00:33:26.650 off on like the history of uh Cisco's no so No, 00:33:26.690 --> 00:33:29.930 this is great. No, that was great. Yeah, I just 00:33:29.930 --> 00:33:32.890 – it's funny for two reasons. One, because I 00:33:32.890 --> 00:33:35.170 remember him the same way, is that he had such 00:33:35.170 --> 00:33:37.289 a character, and any time you'd ask him a question, 00:33:37.450 --> 00:33:40.490 he would just download so much data. Like, I 00:33:40.490 --> 00:33:42.190 wish I could – I wish I would have had a recorder 00:33:42.190 --> 00:33:44.230 along. I could play those suckers back, right? 00:33:44.430 --> 00:33:48.890 But the history of when he had started touching 00:33:48.890 --> 00:33:53.410 that original 5000 chassis dawned on me that 00:33:53.410 --> 00:33:59.130 there was a lot of – early engineering help that 00:33:59.130 --> 00:34:03.309 were probably key to eventually breaking off 00:34:03.309 --> 00:34:06.769 and, again, developing those initial business 00:34:06.769 --> 00:34:09.889 units, both for utilities and, would you say, 00:34:09.909 --> 00:34:12.050 smart grid? I think it was smart grid you said. 00:34:13.510 --> 00:34:18.610 I mean, yeah. Okay. I was thinking, at the same 00:34:18.610 --> 00:34:24.659 time, to your point, Albert earlier about here's 00:34:24.659 --> 00:34:28.119 a market. You see some competitors in it. They're 00:34:28.119 --> 00:34:31.639 doing something that potentially Cisco could 00:34:31.639 --> 00:34:36.860 get a piece of the pie of. But we know engineering 00:34:36.860 --> 00:34:41.940 from a standpoint of traditional IT spaces, IT 00:34:41.940 --> 00:34:45.699 protocols, IT capabilities. It just feels like 00:34:45.699 --> 00:34:50.159 such a pivot to suddenly being able to do all 00:34:50.159 --> 00:34:53.440 of these other things that You know, even today, 00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:56.119 there are scenarios when we release a new product 00:34:56.119 --> 00:34:59.460 where, you know, you throw it in a larger manufacturing 00:34:59.460 --> 00:35:02.179 plant or similar, and you've got a whole bunch 00:35:02.179 --> 00:35:05.039 of corner case legacy devices that suddenly don't 00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:09.059 behave on the sucker because, you know, even 00:35:09.059 --> 00:35:14.000 our well -documented, well -traveled testing 00:35:14.000 --> 00:35:18.130 procedures aren't catching it. Again, they're 00:35:18.130 --> 00:35:21.429 corner cases. So I can just imagine the hill 00:35:21.429 --> 00:35:24.789 to climb at that point was just so big back then 00:35:24.789 --> 00:35:28.610 when we made those decisions. Yeah, and for me, 00:35:28.630 --> 00:35:31.210 I'm five years in with Cisco as part of the fluid 00:35:31.210 --> 00:35:33.989 mesh acquisition. So I'm still wet behind the 00:35:33.989 --> 00:35:36.530 ears as far as the internal Cisco stuff goes. 00:35:36.650 --> 00:35:38.590 So I love these conversations because I learn 00:35:38.590 --> 00:35:41.670 a lot. Every time we do one of these little more 00:35:41.670 --> 00:35:44.719 focused podcasts on Cisco, I really... really 00:35:44.719 --> 00:35:47.820 enjoy and learn, learn a lot. But the question 00:35:47.820 --> 00:35:50.400 I was going to ask was, how did you two get to 00:35:50.400 --> 00:35:52.800 know each other? Where did you first meet up? 00:35:54.920 --> 00:35:59.820 Oh my goodness. That's a great question. It seems 00:35:59.820 --> 00:36:01.420 like we've been working together a long time. 00:36:01.659 --> 00:36:04.199 Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to remember. I'm so bad 00:36:04.199 --> 00:36:07.119 with like the initial, I mean, Albert, I was, 00:36:07.159 --> 00:36:09.340 I'll give you my first couple of your history 00:36:09.340 --> 00:36:11.619 and maybe that'll explain where we crossed paths 00:36:11.619 --> 00:36:16.750 first. I came in under Brian Tantzen at the time 00:36:16.750 --> 00:36:21.050 in IVSG. So I was in the business unit as a BDM 00:36:21.050 --> 00:36:24.849 focusing on solutions, taking something from 00:36:24.849 --> 00:36:27.329 Cisco, something from a partner, smooshing it 00:36:27.329 --> 00:36:29.909 together, testing it at a customer, and then 00:36:29.909 --> 00:36:33.289 seeing whether or not we can productize it. I 00:36:33.289 --> 00:36:39.170 didn't move to sales until after, like, 16. And 00:36:39.170 --> 00:36:42.369 then I was part of the... digital transformation 00:36:42.369 --> 00:36:45.929 team as a practice advisor for a bit until that 00:36:45.929 --> 00:36:49.989 blew up. And then I went over to, at the time, 00:36:50.010 --> 00:36:53.030 it was our industrial, I'm sorry, it was our 00:36:53.030 --> 00:36:57.849 IoT software team, software only, with the term 00:36:57.849 --> 00:37:00.250 that must not be named that started with a K. 00:37:01.789 --> 00:37:03.710 I actually know what that is. I'll share that. 00:37:03.730 --> 00:37:06.730 Oh, my gosh. That's a podcast in and of itself. 00:37:08.510 --> 00:37:11.469 But, Albert, I'm thinking it was. While I was 00:37:11.469 --> 00:37:15.869 on Brian's team in either 15 or 16 that we first 00:37:15.869 --> 00:37:18.949 crossed paths. Okay. That could very well be 00:37:18.949 --> 00:37:22.789 because I was full on as the product TME then 00:37:22.789 --> 00:37:26.030 for industrial switches at that point. And I 00:37:26.030 --> 00:37:27.989 was just starting to get into all the solutions 00:37:27.989 --> 00:37:32.690 that we had for anytime we're putting an Ethernet 00:37:32.690 --> 00:37:34.710 switch in a solution, which should be every solution. 00:37:35.019 --> 00:37:37.960 Yeah, yep, absolutely. And now, as I'm thinking 00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:43.039 and memories jogging, it was probably at one 00:37:43.039 --> 00:37:47.260 of the first. So we used to have in -person Rockwell, 00:37:47.380 --> 00:37:51.559 Cisco, CVD discussions where we basically meet 00:37:51.559 --> 00:37:54.699 around a table. Somebody would own the tracking 00:37:54.699 --> 00:37:56.980 document as to what's coming up and being changed, 00:37:57.099 --> 00:37:59.179 what's coming down the docket next. I want to 00:37:59.179 --> 00:38:01.599 say you were probably in one of those rooms with 00:38:01.599 --> 00:38:05.030 Paul Didier the first time I met you. Could very 00:38:05.030 --> 00:38:07.190 well be. I bet that's the case. And if for some 00:38:07.190 --> 00:38:09.530 reason it wasn't those, then it was at some point 00:38:09.530 --> 00:38:12.929 when I probably did a presentation in San Jose 00:38:12.929 --> 00:38:15.530 and you were one of the distinguished speakers. 00:38:18.170 --> 00:38:20.969 Yeah, there's not going to be probably an exact 00:38:20.969 --> 00:38:22.550 moment. It probably was going to be one of those 00:38:22.550 --> 00:38:24.909 like larger meetings. There was lots of people 00:38:24.909 --> 00:38:27.510 there, lots of new faces, both for me at the 00:38:27.510 --> 00:38:31.159 time. For Cisco and Rockwell or sales organizations. 00:38:31.519 --> 00:38:33.159 But it's sort of slowly but surely. But I think 00:38:33.159 --> 00:38:34.840 what we really started working together is I 00:38:34.840 --> 00:38:37.019 think once you went over to sales, I think that's 00:38:37.019 --> 00:38:39.320 when we really started collaborating a lot more 00:38:39.320 --> 00:38:43.559 on customer problems and products and how are 00:38:43.559 --> 00:38:45.780 we getting it out there. And I think that's when 00:38:45.780 --> 00:38:49.250 we realized when it comes to manufacturing. gut 00:38:49.250 --> 00:38:51.670 shawl really knows what's going on you can tell 00:38:51.670 --> 00:38:54.010 that all this experience i'm like okay he's going 00:38:54.010 --> 00:38:57.230 to be an asset that i can use here when we need 00:38:57.230 --> 00:38:59.510 to start you know having questions related to 00:38:59.510 --> 00:39:01.269 manufacturing and i need to get somebody's opinion 00:39:01.269 --> 00:39:05.030 so we may have met but i was once you made the 00:39:05.030 --> 00:39:06.670 move to sales and you were kind of focused you 00:39:06.670 --> 00:39:09.289 did a lot of focusing on manufacturing okay gut 00:39:09.289 --> 00:39:12.050 shawl really understands what's going on i think 00:39:12.050 --> 00:39:17.119 it doesn't have any opinion yeah No, no, no, 00:39:17.260 --> 00:39:22.320 no. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, sometimes my opinion 00:39:22.320 --> 00:39:25.079 gets ahead of me. That's for sure as heck. Good, 00:39:25.119 --> 00:39:27.059 bad, or ugly, right? Thank you for the compliments, 00:39:27.219 --> 00:39:31.780 Albert. There's nine minutes left here, and I 00:39:31.780 --> 00:39:34.059 was going to turn it back on you and say that, 00:39:34.059 --> 00:39:37.440 you know, you're on this sort of... you know, 00:39:37.460 --> 00:39:39.539 potential off -ramp or whatever you want to call 00:39:39.539 --> 00:39:42.880 it. And, you know, as you can imagine, all I 00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:45.380 see is all this history walking out the door 00:39:45.380 --> 00:39:50.760 and the competency. And, you know, look, you 00:39:50.760 --> 00:39:55.880 can teach a lot of people a lot of things. And 00:39:55.880 --> 00:39:58.800 people can learn skills and learn techniques 00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:02.139 and get good at something, get great at something. 00:40:03.980 --> 00:40:07.059 All of that training, all of that. technique, 00:40:07.119 --> 00:40:11.539 all of that knowledge. It doesn't also educate 00:40:11.539 --> 00:40:16.420 on the history, the why, what happened, why we 00:40:16.420 --> 00:40:19.579 do what we did back then. All of those kinds 00:40:19.579 --> 00:40:22.340 of things are going to walk out the door when 00:40:22.340 --> 00:40:25.019 you finally hang up your Ethernet cable. And 00:40:25.019 --> 00:40:28.599 we are going to be lesser because of it. And 00:40:28.599 --> 00:40:33.329 I'm hoping that your off ramp is short. Well, 00:40:33.369 --> 00:40:36.050 and any time I hear your name in conversation, 00:40:36.309 --> 00:40:40.230 Albert, and this is not a trivial thing at all, 00:40:40.369 --> 00:40:43.070 every time I hear your name, people are very 00:40:43.070 --> 00:40:44.710 complimentary of you. And I really don't know 00:40:44.710 --> 00:40:46.929 you very well at all. We've swapped messages 00:40:46.929 --> 00:40:50.949 on WebEx several times, but I haven't been involved 00:40:50.949 --> 00:40:53.190 with you like Dave has. But I hear nothing but 00:40:53.190 --> 00:40:55.670 just glowing things about you and your character 00:40:55.670 --> 00:40:59.300 and your knowledge of. not only Ethernet, but 00:40:59.300 --> 00:41:02.239 just of the business in general. So it's been 00:41:02.239 --> 00:41:04.619 great sharing some airtime with you. The man 00:41:04.619 --> 00:41:08.920 is an institution. All right. You guys are making 00:41:08.920 --> 00:41:12.480 me blush. Well, you never know when the video's 00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:17.340 off. Yeah, exactly. It's good stuff. I often 00:41:17.340 --> 00:41:19.659 heard that people always say that I have a great 00:41:19.659 --> 00:41:22.159 voice for, I have a great face for radio. Great 00:41:22.159 --> 00:41:26.969 face for radio? Yeah. Great that we're on or 00:41:26.969 --> 00:41:28.550 there's no video. People are going to find it 00:41:28.550 --> 00:41:30.610 much more enjoyable just to listen to us. They 00:41:30.610 --> 00:41:34.230 could be. Yeah, I'm with you. I want nothing 00:41:34.230 --> 00:41:36.269 to do with the video side of things. That may 00:41:36.269 --> 00:41:39.809 change one day when we do this, but it's definitely 00:41:39.809 --> 00:41:42.210 less stressful to not have to worry about. My 00:41:42.210 --> 00:41:44.590 voice is bad enough. I only want to couple my 00:41:44.590 --> 00:41:48.090 face with it. Harsh. So I got a question for 00:41:48.090 --> 00:41:50.949 you, Albert, as we kind of get closer to wrapping 00:41:50.949 --> 00:41:54.409 here. what kind of advice can you give us to 00:41:54.409 --> 00:41:59.110 make sure that we are, you know, successful and 00:41:59.110 --> 00:42:01.409 are able to move the ball forward? You know, 00:42:01.409 --> 00:42:03.690 not just within Cisco, but just, you know, from 00:42:03.690 --> 00:42:05.550 what you've learned in your time in industry, 00:42:05.750 --> 00:42:09.849 you know, what can you kind of leave us and people 00:42:09.849 --> 00:42:14.650 that will listen to reflect on and focus on to 00:42:14.650 --> 00:42:17.320 be successful? Sure. The first thing that sort 00:42:17.320 --> 00:42:20.059 of comes to mind is what I've been learning about 00:42:20.059 --> 00:42:22.920 product management and sales for a long time. 00:42:23.079 --> 00:42:25.400 And one of my old bosses talked to me about this 00:42:25.400 --> 00:42:27.760 and he called it blocking and tackling. It's 00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:31.840 like the fundamentals. So when we go out on sales 00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:34.880 and we come out with marketing, we always want 00:42:34.880 --> 00:42:38.519 to market and advertise the shiny new thing, 00:42:38.619 --> 00:42:43.099 some new feature, some technology. And that's 00:42:43.099 --> 00:42:46.519 great. We have to show the innovation. But if 00:42:46.519 --> 00:42:49.840 you don't understand the fundamentals, like if 00:42:49.840 --> 00:42:51.539 you're talking about using football as an analogy, 00:42:51.920 --> 00:42:55.099 you can have the shiny new quarterback, right? 00:42:55.260 --> 00:42:57.960 But if you can't block and tackle, you can't 00:42:57.960 --> 00:43:02.500 win any football games. So I always think it's 00:43:02.500 --> 00:43:04.820 always the fundamentals. You can't lose track 00:43:04.820 --> 00:43:08.539 of the fundamentals. Not everybody wants that 00:43:08.539 --> 00:43:11.340 shiny new thing, that new feature, that new technology. 00:43:11.659 --> 00:43:15.539 They still just need, you know. I still need 00:43:15.539 --> 00:43:18.820 100 megabits, right? Full duplex and make it 00:43:18.820 --> 00:43:20.440 work with spanning tree with these different 00:43:20.440 --> 00:43:23.519 vendors. And as an example, like they just need 00:43:23.519 --> 00:43:26.119 the fundamentals. And I think don't get too far 00:43:26.119 --> 00:43:29.880 away from understanding that most customers need 00:43:29.880 --> 00:43:34.400 the fundamentals to just sort of work. That's 00:43:34.400 --> 00:43:37.309 what I... find that I kept coming back to, you 00:43:37.309 --> 00:43:39.130 know, I had to participate in a lot of, we had 00:43:39.130 --> 00:43:41.369 to advertise and talk about the shiny new thing. 00:43:41.449 --> 00:43:44.230 And that's great. And I, I like doing that too. 00:43:44.329 --> 00:43:47.949 I like innovating and building new things, but 00:43:47.949 --> 00:43:51.550 from sustained success, the fundamentals just 00:43:51.550 --> 00:43:54.869 always have to be there. And that comes to like 00:43:54.869 --> 00:43:57.389 product quality, both hardware and software. 00:43:57.550 --> 00:44:00.210 So maintain product quality and hardware and 00:44:00.210 --> 00:44:03.079 software. as well as show the ability to innovate 00:44:03.079 --> 00:44:05.780 and push the needle forward so you can always 00:44:05.780 --> 00:44:08.639 see a value in working with Cisco and Cisco's 00:44:08.639 --> 00:44:10.880 products. I think that blocking and tackling 00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:14.800 is what I would remind everybody to just stay 00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:18.199 true to the fundamentals. Back to basics. Back 00:44:18.199 --> 00:44:22.820 to basics. Yeah, great advice. Yeah, thank you 00:44:22.820 --> 00:44:25.619 for that. I think that's the old, you know, sometimes 00:44:25.619 --> 00:44:29.070 we miss the... You know, that forest for the 00:44:29.070 --> 00:44:32.289 trees, right? We're so focused on where we're 00:44:32.289 --> 00:44:35.389 going and what the next step is and what customers 00:44:35.389 --> 00:44:37.909 are going to want three years from now. And so 00:44:37.909 --> 00:44:40.150 let's, you know, think about the next innovation 00:44:40.150 --> 00:44:43.690 that's going to get everybody excited when, you 00:44:43.690 --> 00:44:47.710 know, it's still fundamentally about a last mile 00:44:47.710 --> 00:44:51.670 connection that everybody knows that understands 00:44:51.670 --> 00:44:54.070 compatibility with everything that's out there 00:44:54.070 --> 00:44:59.389 at a. form factor and speed with security capabilities 00:44:59.389 --> 00:45:02.849 and layer two convergence capabilities that people 00:45:02.849 --> 00:45:09.130 can trust. That's it. Yeah. And we can't forget 00:45:09.130 --> 00:45:12.110 about that or get away from that. That always 00:45:12.110 --> 00:45:14.789 has to be part and parcel with whatever we're 00:45:14.789 --> 00:45:16.969 doing. Yeah. Yeah, we could stack something on 00:45:16.969 --> 00:45:19.489 top of it, but the basic level, it's got to be 00:45:19.489 --> 00:45:22.570 reliable layer two and layer three connectivity, 00:45:22.809 --> 00:45:27.119 right? Exactly. Yep. Resilient, reliable. Resilient. 00:45:27.219 --> 00:45:31.440 Yep. Yeah, 100%. In fact, I'm reminded of this 00:45:31.440 --> 00:45:35.519 when I'm in the process of switching home firewalls 00:45:35.519 --> 00:45:38.219 and all of the names withheld to protect the 00:45:38.219 --> 00:45:43.679 guilty. But I'm missing features and detail and 00:45:43.679 --> 00:45:47.820 the ability to get data to understand what's 00:45:47.820 --> 00:45:51.519 going on because everybody's obfuscating it, 00:45:51.539 --> 00:45:55.070 trying to make it easier to look at. and yet 00:45:55.070 --> 00:45:58.030 all i want is like somebody give me a freaking 00:45:58.030 --> 00:46:01.230 syslog of like all of the freak like i want to 00:46:01.230 --> 00:46:05.349 turn debug mode on yeah so yes definitely i love 00:46:05.349 --> 00:46:07.969 the advice you don't forget about the don't forget 00:46:07.969 --> 00:46:10.449 about the basics what it's really there for um 00:46:10.449 --> 00:46:15.230 yeah Albert we thank you so much enjoy your off 00:46:15.230 --> 00:46:18.090 ramp uh or enjoy your on -ramp or enjoy your 00:46:18.090 --> 00:46:20.409 yeah right because it's an on -ramp potentially 00:46:20.409 --> 00:46:22.070 there's something else right yeah there you go 00:46:22.619 --> 00:46:24.679 That's true, too. Thank you, sir. Appreciate 00:46:24.679 --> 00:46:28.340 your time. Albert, it's been a pleasure. It's 00:46:28.340 --> 00:46:30.639 been a lot of fun. This is the second podcast 00:46:30.639 --> 00:46:33.559 I've ever done, and it's nice. You guys make 00:46:33.559 --> 00:46:36.340 it easy, so congratulations. Right on.