Nitin Kawale believes strongly in diversity.

Which is probably fitting, because as the newly appointed president and CEO of Cisco Canada, he oversees a firm that has diverse business operations and technologies.

"I'm actually quite passionate about the way (networking) technology can transform not only organizations, but individuals (and) communities," says Kawale.

"The power of Web 2.0 and what you're seeing in the consumer space - Facebook, YouTube and MySpace - that's really changing things, and the applicability of that inside of corporations is massive. It not only improves productivity, but also improves quality of life."

Brennan O'Connor, Business Edge
Nitin Kawale sees a world of possibilities in the technology sector, and believes TelePresence will be key to future corporate communications

1. How did life in your hometown prepare you for your current position?

"If you're talking about my time in India, not much. I came over as an eight-year-old, did not speak a word of English, so I had to get retrained for everything. In terms of growing up here in Toronto and looking at some of my educational background, one of the things I learned very quickly when I got into computers was the magic was not in the computer, but how the computers could leverage each other by communicating. I actually did my thesis and wrote a communications system using a couple of different computers. This was quite some time ago, well before the router and well before local area networks. That's always been a passion of mine, to drive communications that way. The other part is, and this really helped me when I did my international work, the diversity in this city (Toronto) really has an impact on you. It prepares you to work with different cultures and accept different attitudes. That really facilitated my international work. It drives you to become much more adaptable over time."

2. Did you play with gadgets when you were a kid?

"Unfortunately, there weren't that many gadgets. I was quite happy about working with computers and playing with the first set of video games that came out. I was quite excited when the cellphone first came out. I hate to say it, but that was the shoe phone. Those big bricks? I had one of those."

3. What was your boyhood dream?

"I had two dreams. Believe it or not, I wanted to be a professional soccer player. Didn't quite get there. I also wanted to be an aerospace engineer, so I picked the program that I did. Once I got into school, I realized that maybe six or seven people were going to work on the space shuttle, so I better find something where I can be good. This computer thing was a pretty good idea, in retrospect."

4. How far did you advance in soccer?

"I played for the University of Toronto and did very well there, and I played in the men's leagues. You would characterize them as pretty high-calibre. I played on one team that won the national championship. They were more like semi-pro leagues - the Toronto District Soccer League and the National Soccer League. But that was a long time ago. Now, I'm a happy soccer dad, sitting at the top of the stands and cheering my kids on. I still play in an old-timers league."

5. What was your first part-time or summer job?

"My first summer job after my first year in university was at an engineering company. They made huge fibreglass tanks. Basically, I analysed and tested the samples, and did quality control. You left the place smelling of fibreglass and resin."

Nitin Kawale

6. What started you on the path toward engineering?

"My father was an engineer. That was a big influence, and I naturally gravitated toward math and sciences. I always had a fascination with those things, so it seemed like a very natural thing to do."

7. How did you end up joining Cisco?

"I worked in high-tech business right out of university with various different companies, including Datacrown, and then with AT&T and NCR. I had product management responsibility, installing the networking products, at NCR. Naturally, I had exposure to Cisco. When there was an opening and I had a chance to apply, I was quite excited and jumped right on it, and I was fortunate enough to get a job here. It seemed a natural progression for me to end up at Cisco."

8. What challenges did the company face then, compared to now?

"It's dramatically different. Cisco has probably re-invented itself five times in the almost 13 years that I've been here. When I first joined, it was in 1995, and we had just gotten to our second product line. So we were a one-product company moving to a two-product company. We had some very specific competitors. We were relatively unknown - and what we did was relatively unknown, because local area networks and things along those lines were just coming into vogue. It was very much a technical sell. We had to find the right people and the right organizations and show them the power of collapsing these networks. It was a dogfight with ... all these companies that were around back then. Very different than what it is today, where we have a much more holistic business view and we have relevance in the executive suite. We're able to solve specific vertical problems with our technologies."

9. What do you see as some of the major technological breakthroughs in your time at Cisco?

"The router itself is a revolutionary product line, which enabled things like the internet to really expand. The other big piece we're seeing is the ability to collapse many different types of networks on internet protocol (IP) - which is what we do. At first, we had all these different protocols. There were data protocols that collapsed onto IP. Then voice. Then video. Now, mobility. And, now, all these different networks that run inside of buildings. IP makes a lot of things easier in terms of developing products, driving standard-based solutions and increasing productivity. Now, we have the exciting opportunity of driving applications that can really make a difference. The big thing now is collaboration - the ability to utilize collaboration in many different ways, whether it's through telephony, whether it's through messaging, whether it's through using video ... which really changed the way that we work. It's dramatically reduced travel time, increased quality of life, increased customer and partner interactions and, obviously, made us much more 'green.' We have a product called WebEx Connect that calculates, every time you have one of these meetings, how many CO2 emissions you might have saved because you did a meeting this way."

10. What's the difference between Cisco's TelePresence product and teleconferencing?

"Teleconferencing is something that we're doing now. (A phone conversation.) TelePresence is a name that we've given something that recreates the in-person meeting. It's all based on high-definition video ... which allows you to simulate an in-person meeting, because 70 per cent of all communication is non-verbal and you're going to miss that on the telephone. We challenged our engineers to create that in-person experience. They scoured the marketplace and the technologies. They really couldn't find any OEM (original equipment manufacturer)-type products that were built in. So they developed everything from scratch. We have 25 new patents for TelePresence, everything from the actual video codecs to the way that the speakers are done. It's not like a little square thing on your computer screen ... It allows CEOs to redefine business processes. If you have a scarce human resource, trying to get people to travel around the world to do this is very difficult. But if you use this technology at both ends, you can now increase that productivity and that scarce resource dramatically. We're using this internally and we're seeing a greater than 22-per-cent increase in productivity just after one month."

11. How does TelePresence compare with videoconferencing?

"I travel the world with Cisco and I had a chance to do a lot of videoconferencing.

"I can tell you that the technical prowess that's required to make that happen was quite difficult. Utilization rates of four per cent are seen to be fantastic for videoconferencing. You just don't get that non-verbal communication. You don't have that high definition. You can't make the eye contact. You're seeing a picture that's sub-optimal in my mind. For the first time, video is really going to make a difference because of technologies like TelePresence and high-definition (video)."

12. How would you describe your vision for the company?

"Cisco Canada has been quite successful for some time. We're the fifth-largest revenue-producing company for Cisco worldwide. The team's had a great run, so I am really excited and exhilarated and fortunate to be given this opportunity. It's something I've wanted to do for a while. We want to make sure that we don't get complacent. We're going to continue to drive growth through innovation. Innovation will be the foundation of everything that we do going forward. Canada has a rich tradition of innovating. The other thing is, Canada is a big environment. It allows us to be faster and quicker than the U.S. and some of the other larger countries, to try new things and get creative. We're going to tap our whole ecosystem. All our employees. All our partners. All our customers."

13. What's your definition of innovation?

"When I talk about innovation, (I ask) how is it that we can transform companies? What are the game-changing things that we can do with our technology that's going to allow the companies to change their metrics? But, also, (innovation is about how) to change the way we work and drastically improve the quality of lives. To me, to unlock the potential of companies by utilizing our technologies is innovation."

14. How did Canada rise up to fifth place among Cisco's revenue producers?

"Part of it has been our ability to innovate, our ability to accept new products and solutions. We've also had tremendous relationships with our customers and partners over the years. If you do right by the customers and partners, you've earned the right to come back with new and creative ideas, which in turn fuel more productivity and solutions for the customers. This becomes a cycle that continues to repeat over and over again."

15. How does Cisco Canada try to set itself apart from other firms?

"This is something we think about on a day-to-day basis. How do we get better? How do we differentiate? If you look at the competitive landscape, we are in so many different businesses that we have different competitors in each of the different areas. The way that we would differentiate is to look at the big picture and see how we can utilize all of the different thoughts of our organization to drive transformation. If we're working out in emerging markets, how do we potentially drive country transformation? Or how do we look at transformation within vertical markets here in Canada? The ability to connect these different technologies, to have this broad product line that very few companies can match, and to look at how the networks become more intelligent, this really provides more opportunities for Cisco to really impact the way we live, work, play and learn."

16. Which industry sectors do you consider as growth opportunities?

"One of the biggest ones, that most people wouldn't attribute to Cisco, is the small-to-medium business space. We now have purpose-built products for this marketplace. This particular market is growing at greater than 30 per cent year-over-year for us. Also, as we look at the economics of Canada and the resource sector, the oil and gas market is going to be very exciting for us. As I talked about earlier, different networks are collapsing onto IP. That makes real estate very exciting for us. If we look on the product side of things, this whole unified communication and collaboration, especially end-to-end video, also utilizing in the service-provider space, is going to be very big. This whole concept of a data centre, both large and small, is changing dramatically. IT virtualization starts to occur. It doesn't really matter where these things exist, be they storage or networks or security. This whole virtualization of the data centre is going to be a very large market for us."

17. What does Web 2.0 mean to your company?

"One of the things that we do very well is that we go out and utilize all of our technology before we go out and market it. It's always a neat place to work because you've always got neat things going on. If you were sitting here right now, you'd see a camera that's right in front of my computer. I use TelePresence on a daily basis. If you look at Web 2.0, one of the things we did quite some time ago was to look at how the user - the consumer - is transforming the internet with MySpace and YouTube and what's happening with search engines ... We created a concept called Systems 2.0 and we took these technologies in house. We're using these same kinds of tools (and asking): How do we use them inside enterprise to drive productivity and do the things that a corporation needs to do?" 18. What do you see as an emerging technology that will change not just your company, but the entire tech sector in the next few years?

"The No.1 thing that we have to put the focus on is video. Video is changing the world. If you think about bandwidth that YouTube is using today, remember that these properties didn't exist a little while ago. The great majority of all the traffic on the internet is driven by properties or applications that didn't even exist. Video changes communication. It changes collaboration. It changes the way we work. If you look at video as an adjunct to the collaboration that's already occurring, it'll be the biggest thing in the next little while."

19. Why did you want to join the board of the Women's Executive Network (WXN)?

"Diversity is something that I'm very passionate about. I grew up in an environment where I understand what it's like to be different. I understand what it takes sometimes to succeed in these environments. It's a personal hot button for me. Diversity is going to be a major pillar for Cisco Canada going forward. I would like Cisco Canada to be a place where people want to work, regardless of which background you have. To have the opportunity to join the board of WXN, I thought it was great. It can only make our company better. We're utilizing the programs of WXN, including the mentoring programs. We're going to get our top women engaged heavily and get them out in the marketplace, so it seemed like an absolute natural for me to do. It's not just about diversity at the end of the day. Organizations have to reflect society. It just makes good business sense. That's the bottom line."

20. If you weren't running Cisco Canada anymore, what would you do?

"On the assumption that this is an exciting marketplace - and for me it's not an assumption, it's a fact - I'd be very much involved in a technology market somewhere, trying to figure out solutions and trying to find a better way to drive productivity and innovation in this marketplace. If I was a better soccer player, I'd play pro soccer, too."

Nitin Kawale

* Title: President, CEO, Cisco Canada * Born/raised/age: Pune (also known as Poona), India/Pune and Toronto/48.

* Education: Engineering degree from the University of Toronto.

* Family: Married, three sons aged eight, 12 and 14.

* Career: After graduating from the U of T, Kawale held various positions with Datacrown/Crowntek from 1983 to 1986 and NCR/AT&T from 1986 to 1995. Since joining Cisco in 1995, he has co-ordinated the Toronto financial region, Canadian enterprise operations, global sales strategy and planning, mobile vertical team and enterprise and public-sector operations. He was appointed president and CEO on May 15, 2008, replacing Terry Walsh.

* Moonlighting: Kawale was recently appointed to the board of the Women's Executive Network (WXN). He also serves on the boards of Toronto's Bloorview Kids Foundation, Harbourfront Centre and oversees soccer teams with the U of T athletic program.

* Passions: Athletics, networking, community activities.

Cisco Canada

* Brass: Nitin Kawale, president and CEO; Ross Pellizzari, VP of channel operations; Gilles St. Hilaire, VP of national enterprise strategic accounts; Olaf Krahmer, VP of service provider operations; David Abreu, VP of commercial operations.

* Profile: Cisco Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc., operates offices across Canada. Like its global parent, Cisco Canada provides equipment, software, and support services that are designed to manage data, voice, and video network traffic. The firm offers a wide range of products based largely around internet protocol, including routers and switches, telephony equipment, network security software and wireless devices. Its customers include small businesses, large corporations, governments and educational institutions.

* Stats: According to Kawale, Cisco Canada's revenues rank fifth among the parent firm's global regions. The Canadian company's employees are among 65,000 worldwide. Last year, Cisco's parent company reported revenues of US$34.9 billion, an increase of 23 per cent over 2006. The firm reported that net income rose 22 per cent, or $1.17 per share, to US$7.3 billion from a year earlier.

* Recent stock price (Nasdaq:CSCO): US$26.70 (52-week range, $26.80-$34.24) * Website: www.cisco.com * HQ: 181 Bay Street, Suite 3500 Toronto, M5J 2T3 * Phone: (416) 306-7000.

(Monte Stewart can be reached at monte@businessedge.ca.)