Ken Boal, VP, A/NZ Cisco
Cisco’s vice president, ANZ, Ken Boal said that the company has been making great gains through its government contracts, especially under the new prime minister’s innovation agenda.
“We’ve done an overhaul of our project innovation and R&D, that’s now delivering better top line and bottom line results both globally and in ANZ,” he said.
“Innovation is front and centre on the government’s and the new Prime Minister’s charter – it is getting deeper and deeper into every business process.”
Boal said that the company had seen “exceptionally better” growth in 2015, up from 2014 and 2013.
“So in the last three years we’ve been on a very strong trajectory.”
Cisco does not break out its A/NZ figures.
The public sector in particular has seen big growth, with some big government contract wins, he said.
“Public sector in particular has been going gangbusters. Especially in education and healthcare, as well as administrative government," he said.
"It's well over $500m just in the public sector for us.”
The company has also been working closely with universities on collaboration centres, and has some 22,000 students in its networking academy programmes across schools and TAFEs. It is also working with CSIRO to place its staff in schools lecturing about the industry, already 10 per cent of the Cisco workforce has volunteered to help push STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) in schools.
“We’re already seeing results as a result of our collaborations with universities on a number of fronts,” he said.
Boal bimself is a member of the Prime Minister’s commonwealth science council, which the new PM is pushing even harder.
“That’s an honour to be one of just five IT industry players, alongside the likes of Catherine Livingstone, Michael Chaney, Brian Schmidt and Ian Frazer, incredibly smart scientists, along with Pyne, the PM, and other senior cabinet ministers,” he said.
“So that’s informing the innovation, and the science and research agenda, which is informing this about to be launched innovation statement, due out next week.”
