A little bit of a change of pace this week, as we talk about how big technology companies invest in other companies and what underpins their acquisition strategy. During Cisco Live we had the opportunity to sit down with Derek Idemoto, SVP of Corporate Development and Cisco Investments.
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The pace at which Cisco launches products and services in the past four to five years is quite stunning. Especially when compared to the rather pedestrian pace at which the company moved forward prior to 2020, the difference is striking.
Cisco’s strategy has never been to build everything from scratch, at least not in the past three of its four decades. It has done many acquisitions and also invests in a lot of companies. Sometimes Cisco investments turn into acquisitions after a while, sometimes the don’t.
In our chat with Idemoto, we talk about the rationale behind Cisco’s approach. We specifically touch on the billion-dollar AI Investment Fund it set up last year. We dive into how Cisco determines when to invest and when to buy, what that means for the rest of the organization, what are some interesting areas of investment at the moment, and much more.
The work that Idemoto and his team are doing is a crucial part of how Cisco operates. It is therefore a crucial part to understand if one is to understand Cisco properly. If only because it means that the statement by Cisco President and CPO Jeetu Patel that Cisco is “the world’s largest startup” actually holds water. It can move surprisingly quickly because of all of the investments and acquisitions, even though these also put a strain on the own organization.
Listen to this – in our humble opinion – interesting conversation now.
Techzine Talks on Tour: season two
We started Techzine Talks on Tour in May of 2024, with the goal of doing at least one episode every two weeks. After 25 episodes in 2024 we were close enough to that target for us to call the first season a good start. That’s what it is, a start, because we’re not done yet. We continue with a second season, with the goal of growing our reach even further.
A big thank you to the people who found us in 2024 already. We hope you continue to listen to Techzine Talks on Tour in 2025. If this is your first encounter with our podcast, there’s much more to come! We hope you enjoy this episode.
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Previous episodes of Techzine Talks on Tour:
- Agentic AI is about much more than “sprinkling LLM fairy dust”
- The Atlassian platform is a Lego box of collaboration tools
- How to balance cybersecurity and innovation at an acceptable risk?
- Rise of AI transforms CISO’s role: from technical to strategic input
- AI agents have an identity too: how do we secure them?
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We hope you like this new podcast series. If so, please let us know. If you have suggestions on how we can improve, we would like to hear those too. We’re also open to suggestions around specific topics, or specific people that want to appear in an episode of Techzine Talks on Tour. You can find both Coen van Eenbergen and Sander Almekinders on LinkedIn, or you can send an email to info@techzine.eu.