Latest / Buzz Off / Episode 2: Joachim Mason, Cisco

Transcript

Episode 2: Joachim Mason, Cisco · Buzz Off

• 0:08
  Hello and welcome to Buzz Off.
• 0:10
  My name is Oliver Chapman.
• 0:11
  I am solution area director for networking and security for Computacenter UK.
• 0:16
  Look, I've got cue cards.
• 0:18
  I'm a proper presenter.
• 0:19
  The idea of this web series is that we are going to invite in different partners.
• 0:23
  It's designed for our customers, by our customers.
• 0:26
  We have pre-selected submitted by our customers
• 0:29
  three buzzwords that they hate.
• 0:32
  If our guest says one of the buzzwords,
• 0:35
  you will hear this noise.
• 0:39
  If they say all three of the buzzwords,
• 0:41
  they will be forcefully ejected from the studio.
• 0:44
  This week's buzzwords are - submitted by our customers -
• 0:48
  Zero trust, platformisation ,and single pane of glass.
• 0:52
  This time I am joined by Joachim Mason, Managing
• 0:55
  Director of Partnerships at Cisco.
• 0:58
  Wish him the best of luck. Right.
• 1:00
  Joachim Mason. Welcome to buzz off.
• 1:02
  How you feeling?
• 1:03
  I'm feeling very good.
• 1:04
  Excited. You look nervous.
• 1:06
  First question?
• 1:08
  If you could. Have you got the question? I have.
• 1:10
  Have you had them?
• 1:11
  No. Okay.
• 1:12
  What keeps you at Cisco?
• 1:15
  that's definitely a plus, it keeps evolving all the time.
• 1:16
  The whole time that I've been there.
• 1:17
  The opportunity has been, ahead of us.
• 1:20
  The headroom for growth and, you know, constantly
• 1:23
  innovating from the point of view of our customers’ challenges,
• 1:26
  our technology, and obviously how we work with the likes of yourselves.
• 1:30
  A perfect segue onto our next question.
• 1:32
  From a Cisco perspective, why Computacenter
• 1:36
  plus Cisco and what makes us unique for enterprise organisations?
• 1:41
  but actually it’s your breadth, depth, scale
• 1:45
  and all of the things that you do, both from the point of view of how
• 1:48
  how it aligns with us, but also how you then bring that to life for our customers.
• 1:52
  And that that relationship element, like that's that's really important to show
• 1:56
  that collectively to our customers as well. Right?
• 1:58
  I think they value that.
• 2:00
  What is a question every CIO should be asking their teams, right now?
• 2:05
  I, I'm not going to be arrogant enough
• 2:08
  to suggest that I know how to do a CIO’s job better than them.
• 2:11
  They have a really tough job.
• 2:13
  You're smiling, and we both know the truth of that.
• 2:15
  That being said, it's a question I think they should be asking.
• 2:19
  We ask ourselves, this is what is it that they should be doing differently?
• 2:23
  It's so fast paced.
• 2:24
  Everything's changing, there’s so much for them
• 2:27
  in particular that they carry in terms of responsibility on their shoulders,
• 2:29
  fast moving in terms of all the different,
• 2:31
  you know, you think about the noise that we generate, as Computacenter or
• 2:35
  Cisco and having that amplified across an entire enterprise IT environment,
• 2:40
  they've got to sift through that and they've got to think about it.
• 2:42
  That being said, they also have to think about doing things differently.
• 2:46
  And and that would be the question I'd be asking,
• 2:48
  what is it specifically that we need to do differently, bearing in mind
• 2:51
  the demands of today's environment?
• 2:53
  Love that.
• 2:54
  And you’re doing well so far, we've got through a few.
• 2:57
  So when you think about impressive outcomes that we've delivered
• 3:02
  as Computacenter and Cisco could be saving money, could be saving some time.
• 3:05
  What would be a particular use case that springs to mind for you?
• 3:10
  There's one of the things.
• 3:11
  I mean, I won't mention the name, but it's a customer of ours from my homeland,
• 3:17
  and generally speaking, my fellow country folk are hard to please.
• 3:22
  So whether that’s on the Cisco side or actually on the customer side,
• 3:25
  when you've done something well, you’ve really earned it.
• 3:28
  But this is a company or an organisation in Scotland.
• 3:28
  But this is a company or an organisation in Scotland.
• 3:31
  And so just from the point of view of reach
• 3:33
  and getting their scale reaching and if I can use this phrase,
• 3:37
  reaching the parts of our customers that other partners cannot
• 3:40
  do as a result of that.
• 3:42
  And as I see in the, in the, in the kind of interests of hard
• 3:46
  fought, hard earned praise from my fellow country folk,
• 3:50
  they were effusive about the way you guys showed up with us.
• 3:54
  So that is, you know, well, earned praise.
• 3:58
  Excellent. We've got a soundbite there.
• 3:59
  Cisco acquired Splunk.
• 4:02
  How important is security to Cisco right now?
• 4:06
  Now obviously they have a comprehensive observability
• 4:08
  portfolio specifically but really keen on the security element.
• 4:13
  It’s paramount.
• 4:13
  I mean, if you think about I mean, probably the two key,
• 4:16
  high priority items for our customers, cyber, AI, cyber
• 4:22
  is right up there.
• 4:23
  So it is of paramount importance to us.
• 4:26
  The acquisition of Splunk is all about data.
• 4:29
  So whether you're thinking about cyber or you're thinking about, AI,
• 4:33
  none of that functions without having the right
• 4:35
  data and insights and ability to generate insights from that data.
• 4:39
  And that fundamentally is what the Splunk acquisition is all about,
• 4:43
  not just in terms of the individual use cases that that you can get from the
• 4:48
  Splunk platform, but actually how that then links
• 4:50
  into each of the core elements of, of, let's say, our capability and the network
• 4:54
  in terms of security, in terms observability
• 4:57
  and also collaboration and crucially, how all of that comes together.
• 5:01
  And it's that data platform that brings it all together.
• 5:03
  And the integration is really it's really starting to ramp up.
• 5:06
  Not only from a product perspective, but also from a people standpoint.
• 5:10
  Completely yeah, I mean, we spent a long time,
• 5:12
  you know, making sure that we don't get this acquisition wrong,
• 5:16
  you know, so that bit about people portfolio and making the right decisions
• 5:20
  in the right sequence and not rushing it has been really important.
• 5:23
  Yeah.
• 5:24
  And look,
• 5:24
  just from a Computacenter standpoint, it's also worth noting that actually we have,
• 5:28
  a really strong partnership with both Cisco and Splunk as well.
• 5:31
  So helping you, helping our customers to kind of bring those two things together.
• 5:36
  It's a really good element of all capability and credibility as well.
• 5:39
  Well, this is what I said,
• 5:40
  the alignment in terms of the portfolio, both in terms of the core attributes
• 5:44
  and what we've since added, is absolutely there between Computacenter and Cisco.
• 5:48
  Great. Still tracking well.
• 5:49
  What excites you most about the Cisco portfolio right now?
• 5:54
  You've just come back from Cisco Live.
• 5:56
  You must have some portfolio roadmap
• 5:58
  items that you're looking at and going, this is genuinely quite exciting stuff.
• 6:02
  You know, and this is you might be surprised by this answer.
• 6:05
  Whilst we announced some new innovations at Cisco Live,
• 6:08
  what it wasn't was a sort of huge kind of pizzazz around the next big thing.
• 6:13
  It was an iteration of our existing portfolio strategy.
• 6:16
  So the thing that has excited me most, actually, over the last couple of years
• 6:21
  has been the sort of rate and pace and nature of the innovation
• 6:24
  within our portfolio.
• 6:26
  And we think about how we establish ourselves as providing
• 6:29
  critical infrastructure for AI and everything that hangs off of that.
• 6:33
  That's what we're seeing in terms of that and portfolio innovation.
• 6:36
  And that's what we can see as we as we stretch out.
• 6:39
  So yeah, absolutely. That's the thing that excites me most.
• 6:41
  Wonderful and look - final question,
• 6:44
  what is your most hated buzzword or phrase?
• 6:48
  You said earlier
• 6:50
  that apparently
• 6:51
  we were going to use this session to “extract the value”, Oli.
• 6:55
  So that has
• 6:56
  that's rocketed to the top of my hated buzzword and phrase league table.
• 7:00
  And on that rather disappointing and embarrassing note,
• 7:04
  Joachim Mason, thank you for joining. You've done a phenomenal job.
• 7:07
  You made it all the way through.
• 7:08
  You are top of the leaderboard.
• 7:10
  I'm proud.
• 7:12
  He made it all the way through.
• 7:14
  Really impressive. Just to reflect on the conversation.
• 7:16
  So it was great to hear him talk about the partnership that we have.
• 7:20
  The cultural alignment, our ability to do really complex projects at scale,
• 7:25
  across all of our portfolio areas, some really, really good alignment.
• 7:29
  Thank you for watching.
• 7:30
  We'll be back next time with a new partner, a new set of buzzwords.
• 7:34
  I'm Oliver Chapman. This has been Buzz off. See you later.