Networking giant Cisco has its eye on future acquisitions in a bid to cement its position at the center of the internet of things (IoT), new CEO Chuck Robbins has revealed.
The Silicon Valley stalwart has just announced a great set of financials, closing its financial year with record revenues of $49.2bn. For the quarter it recorded takings of $12.8bn, a 4% year-on-year increase.
In an interview with CNBC, Robbins claimed the IoT would require the network to become “a sensor as it relates to security.”
“We think that security is a tremendous play for us and we’ll use all our levers for innovation to actually build out that architecture,” he revealed. “We’ll innovate and drive our own internal R&D. We’ll acquire where necessary. We’ll partner. We’ll look at strategic investments and we’ll do co-innovation and co-development with customers where it makes sense as well.”
Cisco, of course, already has a string of cybersecurity acquisitions to its name, dating back to firewall vendor Internet Junction back in 1995.
Most recently it bought advanced threat protection firm Sourcefire in 2013 for a massive $2.7bn.
During the interview, Robbins was also at pains to point out that China remains a key market, despite comprising just 3% of the firm’s business.
He said that, although Cisco’s “exposure is very limited” in China, it has been there for 20 years and “really understands what’s going on.”
This follows news in June that the US giant will invest $10bn in the Middle Kingdom over the next few years in a bid to stay relevant in the world’s second largest economy.
Things don’t look good long term, however, given the strength of local incumbents Huawei and ZTE and the desire among senior party members to create a nation self-sufficient in technology.
Those long-term plans have been accelerated of late thanks to revelations from documents leaked by Edward Snowden of NSA spying abroad and the infiltration of US-made hardware bound for export.