Growing pains of the Cisco kid; Face value.(John Chambers, Cisco Systems Inc.)

Economist (US), The, November, 2004

Can John Chambers get Cisco out of its premature middle-age funk?

APPROACHING the 20th birthday of Cisco, the world's largest maker of networking equipment, and his own tenth anniversary as chief executive, John Chambers has lately been telling people, in his soft West Virginian drawl, that he is "having fun again". On November 9th, to prove it, he announced a good start to Cisco's 2005 financial year, with revenue up by 17% over the first quarter of fiscal 2004, and profits up by 29%.

But those who have watched him over the years know that if Mr Chambers (aged 54) is upbeat today, it is in that gratefully relieved way of somebody in middle age who finds that he can still get his numbers up at all. Just recall Mr Chambers during the first half of his...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.