“Salary levels in India and China are rising fast, and I believe that they’ll soon be closer to Israeli levels. Besides, Israel has a range of technological, entrepreneurial and managerial skills, as well as experience, which is hard to find elsewhere in the world,” Cisco Systems senior VP Network Management Technology Group Clifford Meltzer told “Globes” on his latest visit to Israel.
“There are projects for which it won’t matter if tens of thousands of engineers work on it or if a group of 100 engineers with a range of talents do all the work. Israel has such groups. That is why cheap is relative.”
Meltzer’s responsibilities include Cisco Systems Inc.’s (Nasdaq:CSCO) R&D center in Israel, which employs 750 persons, including 100 hired in the past year. Meltzer says that the hiring isn't over. “We’ll hire every suitable person we find. The Israeli center’s growth is continuing.”
Meltzer makes sure to visit Israel every quarter. The latest visit included attending the ceremony for awarding Cisco Israel scholarships.
“Globes”: Why is Cisco expanding in Israel when you and other corporations are opening R&D centers throughout the world?
Meltzer: “Our activity in Israel is the company’s second greatest outside the US, after the center in Bangalore, India, which has grown rapidly in recent years. However, the Israeli center almost entirely works in development, whereas the Indian center also has sales and marketing staff. The activity in Israel is the result of nine acquisitions of start-ups in recent years. I think that we’ve succeeded in establishing one of the company’s most important business and technology forces.”
Meltzer says that both Cisco and its Israeli R&D center are trying to maintain their entrepreneurial and innovative spirit and avoid turning into a stolid and stultifying corporation. “We keep very close contact with customers and users of the future. We want to develop products that will enable the world of the future, products that will be essential in a few years, networks that can enhance the user experience and enable the flow of information, any information. We believe less in technology for itself. The purpose of technology is to serve the users. Part of this requires that our people listen and understand future needs and then try to fulfill them.”
What does the Israeli center concentrate on?
“There are a number of activities. One of them is the understanding of the information flow and applications on a network, the control and management of applications, and the enabling of real-time traffic management and to make it more accessible than ever. This is something that was thought impossible in real time. Our fields here are information security, switches, and all Cisco core businesses. You ought to remember that the quantity of information is growing exponentially, and we’re now not only talking about the transmission of documents, but also video. Think about the flow of a video conversation compared with a conversation via a mobile telephone, for example.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on July 4, 2007
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2007