Architecting The Future with Waris Sagheer, Chief Technology Officer at Cisco

(upbeat music) The future is bright, especially if we build for it. Welcome to "Architecting the Future," a podcast for the builders of tomorrow, all about people, process, and technology. We hope you enjoy the show. - Hey everybody, welcome back to "Architecting the Future." I am really excited to have Warris tag here, Chief Technology Officer at Cisco Warris. Thanks so much for joining our little podcast here. - Oh, pleasure of all my miles, and it's nice talking to you. - And yeah, I mean, not every day we get a senior leader at Cisco, so I'm very excited to dig in on both. Your take on 5G today and also some of how Cisco thinks about. So I thought just to start, maybe for anyone who doesn't know you or only knows a little bit about you, could just introduce yourself and a little bit about what you do at Cisco. - Thank you, Miles, as you'll introduce. My name is Warris Sagid. I lead the product and solutions development for 5G products. I work as a Chief Technology Officer. My role is very specific to service provider site. When I use a word service provider, I mean, you know, mobile companies and wireline companies around the world. So I look at globally. So my view is pretty much US, Middle East, Europe, Latin, Canada, Asia. So those are all the places where I work with all the customers around the world and help them and to build the next generation networks. - And it's pretty exciting stuff. So I want to start with a softball. What is 5G for anyone who doesn't really understand it? And why is this such exciting and transformative technology? - That's a very good question. So let me start with something that everybody can relate to. We, if you recall, prior to 2000, there was mostly a wireline world where at home people used to have wire to connect to computers, then the wireless came in. You may, and people, listeners may realize that how much freedom they got in the wireless side. They can basically move around. They can do all the stuff. And the wireless technology continues to improve. They get, now they can run 4K TV and Netflix and all those things on a wireless TV used to be wired before all the time. So what has happened is in a wireless world, we basically have this 4G, which is a full generation that we are using right now or 4G advanced that we call it. It has previous generation, 3G, third generation, second generation. So that was old times. Now, what 5G is bringing is all the benefits of wireless that we realize and at the same time, the power of immersive experience. So what does that mean? This is what it means. 4G was all about connectivity. Now in 4G, we have done, the industry has done a great job. You can have a meeting on WebEx and you can drive around the entire city, I live in Bay Area without a single call drop. You can do conversation, you can have, you can see the video outside. So you can have voice, video and data. Now with the immersive experience for augmented reality, virtual reality, gaming outside, high heavy bandwidth based applications or requiring low latency applications. Whenever the low latency means better experience. So you are not limited for technologies that you were limited by wire or limited for reliability. That okay, for these things, we cannot use wireless, we have to use wire. Now you are getting a freedom from them. So 5G is basically not just high speed. Obviously it's high speed. We are talking about very high bandwidth. So one example I can give you is, now you may be seeing the ad from mobile providers, hey, get a high speed internet from us, like we'll call it as fixed wireless access. So places where cable was not there or wired internet was not there. Now they have the option to get high speed internet over wireless. So there are a lot many applications, but the big promises industry revolution. Lot many things like factory flows, robots, utilities company, they can all utilize the power of 5G with the low latency and high bandwidth applications. So overall, for all of us, you will see very interesting things coming up as the 5G progress. By the way, we are moving towards 5G advance, which is the next phase of 5G coming up. And then we believe it or not, people are now also talking about 6G, which is a 6 generation. So lot many devices, lot many, extended reality stuff will be coming in. - Yeah, very cool. So in layman's terms, the idea would be right now, if I go on a web x meeting and I'm walking around on the city street, I could hit latency and I'd be fuzzy on your screen. - Oh, I'm sorry. - That's all you got. - Okay, with 5G, that's gonna go away. - It will go away, but now you can do more than that. You can even do this with 4G today, but I want if you want to have augmented reality applications outside, virtual reality applications outside, what if you want a very fast download speed outside, right? And you have many, many users using it at the same time, all those things are possible. If you're a single user or if you're a few users on web x, just that should be 4G should be able to do that. But if you want to do some more than that, and that's exactly with the whole metaverse and things that have been talked about, but if you are not want to go outside and enjoy the same benefit and there are applications will be coming in the future that may require too. So those things will be fine, you will be very beneficial. - Yeah, and so that stadium effect that happens right now will stop happening. For your own stadium and nothing works and you're like, well, I can't get my story. - Yeah, all those things will basically, you will have a much better, as I said, immersive experience with 5G. - Now what Cisco strategy? So you see this coming, you're obviously an expert at it, you're helping to build it. I mean, what how Cisco get to make money on this transformation? - So Cisco has been working on this for quite some time. We started looking at it around 2015 time frame that we started to infect, right? So that also, but we started to look at what 5G means to us. So Cisco is in the business of building mobile packet cores, which is one of the components of, when you're deploying a mobile network, there are three main elements. One, we call it a packet core, which is basically kind of the brains and it looks after everything. And then there is a, which is thing called packet transport, meaning connecting that mobile core to a thing called radio access network. These are the antennas you see outside, when you are driving by, you know, all these powers, that's a radio access network. So these are the three components. Cisco actually develops and builds mobile packet core and has deployed to many customers around the world, as well as there's a large percentage of packet transport come from Cisco. So those are our two main assets there. Apart from that, there are other security and all the other stuff that we do also. So what Cisco wants to do is, Cisco wants to make sure that all these applications, which runs on top of it, or the packet transport is rock solid. Number one, we want to make sure that the packet core and the packet transport that you get, the best experience out of 5G. So your experience is as good as your network. So that's considered this part, right? For example, if you're using at home, your Wi-Fi and your Wi-Fi works great for 10 minutes and then the single drops, what will happen? You have a problem, right? Your TV or your home, or you're talking to someone that call drops. The main element in all these things is making sure that you have a very reliable trustworthy network at the same time with security and at the same time, you need to make sure that, you know, if there is a failure, it should be able to recover also. And you should have a good visibility and insight, right? That how I'm going to do is everything going okay. Do I need to do anything? Do you have a complete good visibility in the network? So that's what Cisco is trying to do. And that's the reason we have a large deployment in the world where people have realized that, you know, trust building of stable and a reliable network is the number one item to be done. And think about, again, there was a COVID and other things that happened. Basically, kinds of little bit was initially that deployment was slow. But now, if you look around the world, is there a big percentage in developed countries, 5G has already been deployed. Now the phase is basically underdeveloped countries are deploying 5G. So there's a lot happening in that era. And the developed countries are now looking at 5G advanced, which is the next thing coming up. In some remiles, what is the future of all of us? The future is you're bigger to us connectivity. Basically, what you want is you may be on a height, you may be driving somewhere nowhere, you still want to have the connectivity. Why? Because we depend on connectivity, emergency services, health, education, the main benefit of having the connectivity everywhere. Firstly, it removes the digital divide, which is extremely critical by not only in the US, outside the US globally. So when we have ubiquitous connectivity, meaning your wild, wild customers, a wireless connectivity and that wireless can be coming from your cell phone coverage or it may be coming from satellite event. So there's a lot of work going on if you have a star length, you know, you have seen the many videos on YouTube, people talk about, hey, I'm in the living in a desert and I'm using the internet connectivity there. So ubiquitous connectivity is the main goal here and at the same time better experience without having any barrier to run any application. That's what eventually, that's what Cisco is doing, enabling this whole infrastructure to be basically reliable, secured and be able to handle huge current application as well as future applications and at the same time, you know, helping to remove the digital divide in the world. Yeah, very cool. And now I'm curious when you look at the opportunity, it's obviously very clear that even me, you know, having more equality for access and opportunity and there's some amazing men, I'm sure, are very fulfilling to work on. What are the biggest, you know, if you had to pick two or three problems that stand in the way of that future, what are they as we sit today? There are the first thing you need to have a global view for this. There are, I'll start with a very basic, there are big parts of the world where people have not switched to 5G phone. They're still using phone, but it's cost money, by the way. So the, at the other day, for 5G to work, you need to have 5G network, you need to have 5G phone. Just like if you have Apple iPhone 11, you will never get 5G because you don't have the phone that supports 5G. So same goes for, you know, so globally, one thing is because you have to understand the cost is very different. So firstly, the 5G handsets needs to be used by people for the, for the, to use 5G. Secondly, the cost of the 0.5G is huge in many parts of the world. And even in US, there's a large amount of money people have spent on spectrum. Just US alone, $100 billion was spent on the spectrum, just the spectrum. So basically, when all these radios, which they can talk 5G there, will cost, how do you reduce the cost? Basically, operational efficiencies are there. Sustainability is a big part, we also want to reduce the power consumption and also, which is, that's another important part there. Another element to look at is openness of the solution. How open the solution? For example, the radio access network today are very close system. So when there's initiative and over which we call it as open run alliance, that has come up with some of the definitions. So here's the thing, people should be able to use best of the world. And the technology should be open. The more openness in the technology, the more innovation there. So that's something will happen there. Lastly, I'll mention this that we, there's also a big need for some use cases to basically make these operators very profitability needs to be there. As of now, many of the things in 5G that we are using today, from use case perspective are very much 4G, voice video and data. The big 5G use case has come up, which we call it as fixed wireless access. It's basically considered high speed internet connectivity for internet or for sites connectivity, a kind of a replacement for wired network. So we need more use cases. We need more streamlined use cases, which may be a new revenue streams for the operators. That will help them to be profitable. They are profitable. They're going to invest in the more infrastructure there. So that's overall some of the hurdles there in 5G. That by the way, there will be application. It's just a matter of time that has happened in the past because I've been in a time when I remember a time before 2007, 2006, if you, if people recall, mobile was not used for data that much because why would they use it? And here comes the iPhone and change the world. Now you can watch videos and all of a sudden everyone just cares about mobile now. So applications in the past were not there, but they do come up. Same will happen for the 5G. There will be application. We have fixed wireless access today. More applications will be coming up in the future. Yeah, very cool. And what makes you most personally excited to be working on this? You talked about a lot of applications. They're one that's most meaningful to you. For me, personally, with the CID, I see the potential. I think the way the world is connected, the way it has basically opened doors for education, finance, health, especially health is a huge thing. Now, there are, there are experiments, let's say, you know, the work is going on in parts of the world where people cannot get good health. For example, I'll tell you a location where they told me one of the thing they were testing is for, you know, for they want to have a mobile van, which with 4k videos connectivity and an assurgent sitting somewhere else can look at the patient and basic analyze because it's going to get a much better results from that kind of connectivity there. And then to me, health, education, overall connectivity, which people are getting, the new applications coming up that will make the things for kids and for others to, you know, for better learning opportunities. Those are things which excites me about the, because infrastructure, the better infrastructure we have to think about all the freeways we have and how much people can travel around and then, you know, when they were built on sure somebody must have asked this question that, hey, who is using all those freeways because there's so much investment being done. But now look at this, they look from innovations of car and the travel industry. So there are not many opportunities there, especially. And as we go along in this journey, what we need to realize is having a ubiquitous connectivity will also help for many, many industries to develop in the future. Yeah, so it's exciting to see like you said, as the network becomes more of a certainty, the applications will likely follow up. And every year also, it's not just my, I shouldn't be fact, you know, if you are, if you're driving down to not somewhere where you don't get mobile coverage, you should not be limited. And if your car breaks down or if you want to listen or look at the map, very basic stuff, then all of a sudden you lose that connectivity that we don't want. We want that wherever you are going and the US is a big country. So what we want is that you can be in either in US, outside the US, you are traveling, you are sitting in a plane, you should be connected because if you have seen some of the news, they're very high speed internet connectivity is coming to the planes now. So regardless of where you are, you should have the access to the good internet connection, good connectivity that you can do what you would like to do. Yeah. And as someone who's a little bit of a, you know, I don't know, futurist, but you're certainly a visionary thinker in technology and you know, risen to the ranks of a large company. I'm curious what books you might recommend to those, maybe in my shoes that are earlier on in a technology career. Like what books have been most influential? Is it now? Is it podcasts and you know, TikTok reels? I might be changing. And you're asking from technology or leadership or either maybe even both. Yeah. So I'll tell you one of my, so if from technology perspective, Cisco has a site where Cisco has this conference called Cisco Live. We put everything there on the website, all the videos of training. This is Cisco Live to go to such Cisco Live in Google and you will find a Cisco Live where you can find all sort of technology stuff there. That's number one. YouTube is good, but at the same time, you have to find the reliable people. Just want to make sure that whatever information you are getting, you are getting reliably from technology. And then there are many, many, many great sites like Coursera, EDX and there are many sites where you can go and learn those. So from technology perspective, that would be the go-to place. From leadership perspective, and again, Ted Talk or there's always been my favorite. There's a very forward-looking thinking. At the same time, listening to some of the industry leaders and one of the books, by the way, I love this book. This is such a small book called "Emotional Why Emotional Intelligence." Daniel Goldman is a guy who actually is one of the top leader in this area. And "Emotional Intelligence" is extremely important to understand because IQ and EQ, which is "Emotional Intelligence" that's something is very important for us to be successful. And the other day, we are all human and success just doesn't come from any smart people. Success comes from a culture, from how we collaborate, how we build together. One other thing I love about my group by the way in Cisco is the teamwork. How we build and I work with many, many smart people. And you just appreciate the idea and from a different point of view. And eventually, we come out with something so great. It just feels good. That, hey, this is a great experience working together and building together. And that's what EQ pays off very good role in addition to IQ. And it's interesting you say that as, and in one of the most cutting-edge technology sectors that our country has, you still see EQ as critical to getting these IQ technology puzzles done. And it's just a really interesting commentary. It's not like Thank you. marketing leader where it's all soft stuff. This is really the hard core technology. - Absolutely. - In our country. Yeah. - How can you, how can you have the, basically, how can you grow when you have a problem in the culture? Nobody can grow in the toxic culture. Yes, maybe short time, but you know the day, you will not be there for a long, long time. If you look at Cisco history, we have, it has been around for some time and we keep on innovating. We keep on hearing new stuff. There's a lot, the entire world is now looking at AIML right now, which has many, many different applications by the way. And this is going to be the next front in the industry. And Cisco is really working in that area. My point is this, where I see, again, again, I've seen different cycles going up and down in the industry. The one thing that has kept the company and any success to happen is the culture. And cultures come from people and EQ is definitely important. Yes, it's a really, really good point. Now, someone wanted to connect with you, whether to partner with Cisco on the 5G front or hear your advice or anything that follow you is linked and okay, or where are the main platforms you hang out on? LinkedIn would be perfect. In fact, reach out to me, I always respond. If people are reaching out and they want to connect, I would chat absolutely, just depends on the availability, but LinkedIn would be perfect. Yeah, awesome. Well, we're saying so much for taking the time to come on the show. We wish you all the best to keep Billy at Cisco and look forward to having you back out again in the future. Thank you, Miles. It was a pleasure talking to you. Absolutely.