This episode features a deep dive with Cisco Sanchez, CIO at Qualcomm. They explore the transformative potential of generative AI and machine learning, Qualcomm's approach to multi-cloud environments, the pivotal role of technology in enhancing employee and customer experiences, and much more.
This episode features a deep dive with Cisco Sanchez, CIO at Qualcomm. Cisco shares his remarkable career trajectory, leading Qualcomm, and unveils the strategic vision driving them towards a hyperconnected ecosystem. He shares his unique approach to balancing service provision and fostering strategic partnerships within IT, setting the stage for innovation and growth. They also explore the transformative potential of generative AI and machine learning, Qualcomm's approach to multi-cloud environments, and the pivotal role of technology in enhancing employee and customer experiences. Throughout, Cisco emphasizes the importance of seamless connectivity and the exciting possibilities ahead in leveraging AI to solve practical problems and to future-proof your workflows.
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Guest Bio:
Cisco Sanchez is the CIO at Qualcomm. In this role, he oversees a wide array of functions, including data security, network infrastructure, and support services, ensuring the seamless operation of critical systems across the company. Before joining Qualcomm, Cisco spent twenty-five years with FedEx, holding various IT leadership positions and playing a pivotal role in driving innovation and efficiency. Recognized for his adeptness in turning challenges into opportunities, Cisco champions adaptability and creativity in leveraging emerging technologies, particularly AI, to drive business growth.
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Guest Quote:
“ If you've been into the business longer than three years, you have a legacy somewhere. Qualcomm has been around for about 38 years and, of course there's legacy, and it's been there for a long time. So it's almost like a taking root and so you almost have to like dig it out and try to get it out of there. And some of it's super hard because it wants to grow back or you don't see the business case. I think a lot of the things that we're transforming and doing is saying, ‘How do we ensure that we don't just forget about the legacy, we bring it forward with us and figure out how to migrate it into the next stuff we're doing?” But you got to find those synergies and values so as we're building this, how do you remove this? And when you're building this, how do you remove this? And so it's not like, “well, it’s someone else's problem.” No, no. In the IT world, it's your problem. It's because you inherited it or you created it, or you have to remediate it. So it's kind of a fun journey. But I think that the balance is how do you take what you're doing for the future and ensure that you're pulling out some of the legacy that you have done in the past, so it's better future-proof.”
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Timestamps:
*(00:00) Episode Start
*(01:28) Cisco's career journey
*(05:35) Role of connectivity at Qualcomm
*(08:15) Strategic vision for a hyperconnected enterprise environment
*(10:35) How to balance strategy and innovation
*(16:00) Creating a digital fabric for agility and scalability
*(20:00) Building a strong digital foundation for emerging technologies
*(26:47) Identifying priority projects for rapid implementation
*(32:36) Qualcomm's multi-cloud strategy approach
*(34:03) Network infrastructure impact on multi-cloud
*(37:43) Advice on multi-cloud optimization
*(44:55) Looking ahead at Qualcomm's digital ecosystem strategy
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Links:
[00:00:00] Ian: In the ever evolving world of business, a revolution is underway. Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys, where the future of success begins, right now. I'm your host, Ian Faison, and I'm joined by my co-host and industry leader, Raj Purkayastha, to guide you through the intricacies of network transformation.
We're here to be your compass in the realm of network transformation. In a world that's customer-centric and interconnected, join us on unleashing the Power of Hyperconnectivity. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. I am joined by my amazing co-host, Raj, how are you?
[00:00:38] Raj: Good. How are you doing, Ian?
[00:00:40] Ian: Excited to chat with our new pal, Cisco. How are you?
[00:00:46] Cisco: I'm great, guys. Nice to be part of the panel.
[00:00:50] Ian: Yeah. Excited to have you on the show today. Obviously, we're going to get into building a hyperconnected enterprise, all the cool stuff that you're doing at Qualcomm, what it means to be a CIO today, and everything in between. So starting off, tell us a little bit about the scope of your role as global CIO of Qualcomm.
[00:01:06] Cisco: Sure. So, well, hi everybody. So my name is Cisco Sanchez. I, I am the global Qualcomm and my role has lots of different pieces and parts. And so bear with me just for a second, but the CISO reports into me. So of course I care about cyber, but that is just one facet.
I have all of the infrastructure things. So think servers, networks, storage, all of the different data centers, all different cloud providers, all lines of business, so sales, marketing, accounting, finance. Legal. All of those applications reported to me. I run all of the grid, uh, so the engineering tool sets that help build the next great silicon for the amazing phones, automobiles, IoT devices that we create.
It's all those tool sets underneath. Even though we are a fabless organization, we have three fabs that have little RF filters. And so my team supports the, all of the fabs that are built out from the all shop floor to automation inside of the facility. We have A global development center in India that it rolls up into me.
I support all lines of business, so automotive and IOT are the new ones that we're creating. And so it's diverse M& A activity for integration. Typically IT is one of the first ones into the M& A scope. And so about 2, 500 people and about 800 contractors that roll up into my organization. It's, it's a great team.
And, uh, the beauty of the organization is not only you get to see things, but you get to interact with the best, all different business partners. And so that's kind of the joy of my life is I get to play with everybody and it's, it's very nice to see.
[00:02:43] Ian: Take us back. First job in IT.
[00:02:46] Cisco: Ah, first job in IT, yeah.
So I was an intern in IT. I was intern for FedEx developing software. So think of in the early days of, and it, it transformed to, to, you know, from Perl to Java to, to, you know, Python and so on and so on. And I've done all of them. I've coded in COBOL, I've coded in Perl, I've coded in Unix, Scribd, Java, C, C Python.
And so I was a software developer, early days, and became from architect, from, from developing to architecture. So, you know, drawn on the board, writing boxes and how a system should be built out and created and, and saying this is the best way design for future proof. And so I became an architect and love the role because you get to, to show here's what, The future could be.
And so that was cool. And then went into management and lived in Chile, Argentina, Brazil as part of FedEx. Moved to Belgium for four years. I moved to Memphis for four years. And then thinking FedEx's hub is Memphis. And so I was thinking that's home. And then it was off to Pittsburgh. I was at Seattle FedEx ground for four years.
And then this, this behemoth of a company that's creating great stuff, Qualcomm called and said, Hey, we got something that you might want to look at. And, and I've been here two, two and a half years and not no looking back and still great friends at FedEx, amazing people, but this is home. And I really love this place because we have influence on what the world could be like.
Going forward, and it's because of all the technology that's getting created, it's because of all the, the things that we are inventing that haven't been invented yet, that, that inspire me to be, uh, even more of a, uh, part of the technology landscape going forward. So it's, it's been super cool, but great journey. You know still friends, still mentors, and I, I, I love the role and I wouldn't trade it in.
[00:04:46] Ian: And how do you see Yeah, wow indeed. How do you see connectivity playing a role in supporting what, what Qualcomm is doing from a business objective standpoint?
[00:04:57] Cisco: You know connectivity is is everything we do. And so if you think about the early days of Qualcomm being invented and CDMA and Erwin Jacobs saying that we should create something that allows for connectivity and he boasts this ability for, as we know it as the mobile phone today, being able to connect and interact with people.
That's the genesis of who we are. And so if you think about the mobile phone and then say, well, If you can create a mobile phone and have connectivity, think about the cars and the IoT devices. Everything needs to be connected. It's not just one piece and part, it's everything needs to be connected in a way that allows for lives like ours to be super simple and easy, uh, and stay connected and be part of things, push more data back and forth.
And, uh, you know, I know you guys remember the days of the mobile phone, it was, or just the landline. where you had to, if you wanted to call your girlfriend, you'd have to like, try to take the line and pull the cord as far as you can so your parents didn't hear you. Remember that? Because I do. And then you get to a point where like, now we have a mobile phone.
I don't have to hide. I can just go into the room and see something. And then you wanted connectivity to you, the ability to send data back and forth, video data, like we are today. And I think it's, it's now more and more pervasive across, um, How you should be connected through everything. So you can call your parents, your children, just to stay connected because that's the relevancy of what the human nature is, I think.
You know, this podcast, The Hyperconnected, is what we do. It's like, we have to be hyperconnected. Because that's, that creates connections and alignment. And so I think Qualcomm is, is really a part of that, helping to drive that change, if it's 5G, if it's connected laptops, if it's connected mobile phones, or now, you know, the next generation of automobiles, it's, everything's connected. So super part of it, it's, it's, it's, it's a very exciting journey.
[00:06:54] Ian: My lights for the, for the podcast, they're connected to my phone. I turn them on and off with my phone. You know, wow.
[00:07:01] Cisco: And you go like this and make them probably blink and have like a little studio behind you.
[00:07:05] Ian: Oh, I could do, I could do also, I could change the colors.
I could do, you know, everything all level with my phone. It is all, it is all connected. And indeed, it's hyper connected, just like our first segment. Building a hyper connected enterprise. When you sat down, you know, coming into the role, and obviously that's evolved over the last couple of years, but what was your strategic vision for Qualcomm in achieving a hyper connected enterprise environment?
[00:07:28] Cisco: Yeah, so, at least for me, I, I know how to do the, there's two types of roles, by the way, for, for IT. There's a service provider, so like, Doing stuff to help make sure that the business is moving forward. And then there's a strategic partner. And we're both, by the way, it's not just, we're a service provider and we just hand out laptops and turn the network on.
It's, it's that, cause we, we should do that. But then it's also how do you strategically move the company into a direction that's required for the future and making it almost like future proof for the way that we want to build things and less duplicity. And so my vision coming in was first understand the environment.
Understand that the things that are going on in place, understand the vision from our CEO and the other executives, so we can ensure that whatever the IT does is not just an IT thing, it's in support of the business. And so we've done that for the last year. The next step has been that how do we ensure that we start to influence change to allow for a better, more holistic ecosystem.
And so if you think about like all the different adjacency businesses we're going after, automotive, IOT, A very amazing laptop PC called the XLE suits and be super cool and so all of these mobile AI and when you look at all of those areas, they all can look independently, like just fractions of capabilities, but the reality is, is They have synergies across all of them, you know, connectivity, interaction, data, that allows for more consistency experience.
And so my vision has been is like, how do you drive change across all of them? So you're striping like, like almost a horizontal stripe between all of them saying, here's the common capabilities that could be built out. And still have personality on top for each of those lines of business, but it's the commonality where you're going to get speed, agility, margins are better, security is easier, you can scale it.
And so that's been the vision and strategy we've been going after for the, for the last, you know, nine months to about a year. And it's been great.
[00:09:32] Raj: Cisco, if I can ask you a question here, specifically when you talked about being a service writer and also a forward thinker, you know, what percentage of time do you spend in each of them, and what would you like to spend?
Because this is something that I find very interesting about, you know, all the videos.
[00:09:49] Cisco: Yeah it's a really good question so the way that I looked at it was, think of it as a, almost like a pyramid, and at the bottom of the pyramid, we call it operational excellence. I know Raj, you're very familiar, operational excellence is really just do your job well.
Don't take Don't have outages and make sure your your KPIs are well and it's it's more of it's like the blocking and tackling to be super honest you know you can do that really well you satisfy part of the pyramid but if you don't do that well you can't do the other things and so the second thing that we've been focusing on is is I call it the inside game inside game means what are the things that we can do internally that allows for better alignment That means architecture disciplines, some data fabric, some cataloging, the way that you do structures, capabilities, commonality.
But we control that. So from an IT organization, I can do that. Um, and then the last top of that pyramid is the outside game. The outside game is the interaction with the business partners. And so for a lot of the first year was doing that baseline operational excellence really, really, really well. And then the next part has been, let's do the inside game and show how methodologies matter and let's change the way we do things internally.
And now we're going after. And so to answer the question, when I look at where most of my role is, because we do the other stuff pretty well, it's been spending on the outside game or interacting with being a strategic partner, it's probably more like 60 70 percent and 30%. And primarily because we baselined it and we made it solid.
Of course, there are Production issues and I dive in and check it out, make sure we're okay, but it's response time and we built that muster really, really well that allows us to go play in the other spaces, which I think is crucial for the way that the CIOs can roll out their role because I think we deserve it. But
[00:11:44] Raj: yeah, 100%.
[00:11:45] Cisco: Yeah, I mean, and I'd be curious what your thoughts are on, on, you know, I know, and I know it's a balance like this. Oh, yeah. I would love to do 100%, but that's not realistic. And so we're trying to balance appropriately based off of timing. But
[00:11:58] Raj: So, you know, typically when I speak to, you know, the other CIOs, what I hear back is they'd like to spend, you know, 50, 60 percent of their time in the strategy thinking, but they are not at this point of time because the operational issues bog them down, right?
They're spending around 60 percent or 70 percent of their time in the operational issues and 30, 40 percent time in the transformational, you know, journey that they want to build out. So, you know, you are a bit different out here. It's good to know that, you know, you've Kind of authored the baseline and that's where fundamentally, you know, the, the building blocks needs to be very strong, right?
And you can build, you know, 50 stories on top of that. No problem.
[00:12:39] Cisco: Yeah. Well, that's the thing that we've been structuring it, you know, it's like the, the Maslow hierarchy. It was like, I got to solve my base needs first before I go after something that I really want. And I think the team has done a really good job of just doing that baseline and that everything can stack up really well.
Otherwise, if that, if you don't have that base and you're, you're going to be crushed, they like, yeah, skyscraper is a great example. The further down you dig and make sure it's right, the higher you can go.
[00:13:06] Raj: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:13:08] Ian: Yeah. I, I, um, I've always heard CIOs sort of talk about the shift from being a ticket taker to sort of being able to, to set the agenda and to set the technology objectives and, and like, you can't, you can't really ever escape the ticket taking piece of it, but if that's the only thing, if, if the only thing that you're doing is being reactive, or if that's the majority of your time, then clearly like you're not being proactive enough to step in and solve the things that, you know, need those tickets to be created in the first place.
[00:13:41] Cisco: Yeah, and Ian the reality is, is that I know that we do that. It's part of the role, and I'm okay with it. But if we just did that role, man, I might, I would go bananas. I might pull my hair out. It's just, I think, and the reason I say this is, is we see a lot of interaction, you know, in the In the CIO or IT space, we see things that are happening, either because we plug it in, we turn it on, we secure it, we scale it, or we build it, or one of the facets of that is it's our responsibility to also help drive efficiencies and synergies, and I don't want the next CIO to come in and say, man, what did Cisco do?
Why do we have 17 of these things? And I want to do it properly, and make sure it’s done right and clean the house ontantly not wait til spring season. Let’s clean today. It’s always.
[00:14:32] Raj: Absolutely
[00:14:36] Ian: Yeah Raj, I’m curious from a Tata Standpoint ya’ll introduced this hyperconnected ecosystem, you know, for interoperable connected business systems. So like I’m sure it’s just, how do you think about, you know, that digital fabric and, and building agile and scalable and resilient, that foundation that you were talking about?
[00:14:55] Raj: Sure. You know, when you think about hyperconnected ecosystem, right?
What does it entail? It, it is heavily technology dependent. And if you, Just go back to the first thing that Cisco mentioned in terms of, you know, he's doing 100 things at this point of time, right? He's managing the infrastructure, the applications, the servers, processes, in that some skill sets will also come in.
What all those things does is You know, he's doing this to deliver experience back to his users, right, to his partners, to his customers. Now, to do this, what Cisco will have to do is, you know, look at multiple disparate load solution segments, you know, for example, connectivity, collaboration, cloud, edge, IoT, security, etc.
And on top of that, one thing that Cisco didn't touch, and I'm sure it's, it's kind of a sore area for him is legacy and legacy processes, legacy servers, along with organization silos. You know, when you think about all those things, it's extremely complex, right? What we do is at Tata Communication, when you think about the digital fabric, it brings together all these platforms, all these tools, which is required to drive this, all the solutions.
including the expertise so that we can help CIOs to simplify this complexity. At the end of the day, you know, Cisco should be looking more at the, you know, the future rather than solving for that, you know, the base layer as you're talking about, correct? And believe me, base layer has more complexity. The use cases will be on the top.
So that's what digital fabric and hyper connected ecosystems do for enterprises. And that's what we're helping enterprises do and drive.
[00:16:48] Cisco: Yeah, and I actually agree with Raj. I think there's every, if you've been into the business longer than three years, you have a legacy somewhere. You know, Qualcomm has been around for about 38 years, and of course there's legacy.
And it's been there for a long time. So it's almost like taking root. And so you almost have to like dig it out and, and try to get it out of there. Um, in some, it's super hard because it wants to grow back or it's, or you don't see the business case. I think a lot of the things that we're transforming and doing is saying, how do we ensure that we don't just forget about.
The legacy, we bring it forward with us and figure out how to migrate it into the next stuff we're doing. You got to find those synergies and values. So as we're building this, how do you remove this? And how do you, when you're building this, how do you remove this? And so it's not like, well, it's, it's someone else's problem.
No, in the IT world, it's, it's your problem. It's because you're, you, you inherited it or you created it, or you, you have to, to remediate it. So it's, it's, it's, it's kind of a fun journey, but I think that the balance is, is how do you take what you're doing for the future and ensure that you're, you're pulling out of the, some of the legacy, maybe not all of it, some of the legacy that you have done in the past. So it's future, it's better future proof.
[00:18:02] Ian: And so when you're thinking about like. Integrating emerging technologies, you know, like Gen AI or, or machine learning or things like that. And how do you make sure that, you know, you can do that and, and you can, you can be agile. You know, I, I love the idea of sort of the, the giant, the giant, you know, oil tanker, the cruise ship or whatever it is versus the speedboat analogy of like, you know, just turning one degree, getting this thing to turn one degree is hard enough. Uh, but when you're trying to bolt on new technologies, it can be pretty challenging.
[00:18:32] Cisco: Yeah, I was waiting when we get to Gen AI, because that's like almost the first topic on everybody's mind these days, you know, when I when I look at these future things that are out there like a Gen AI or large language models, it is how do you take The synergies that are close to it, so if you take like LLMs or GenAI, it has a root or genesis of a lot of the AI ML that we were doing in the past.
It's different, I know, it's using a large language model. It's, it's, the approach is different on either how you train it or how you use it in inference. But the way that you're, you're, we should be approaching it is looking at it from essence of what we've done in the past. And, you know, AI ML or ML. Uh, traditional ML.
There's a lot of great synergies on how you take things and reuse it. It's also, if you particularly in Gen AI, if you want to use, make it useful for data, you need to ensure that you have the right data elements so you can build your vector database and have your receiver augmented generation or RAG as it's referred to, to be able to start to be able to feed it into.
And so there's a lot of like great disciplines that we understand from an IT world that. Take, take advantage of it. To answer your question directly. It's like, how do you take the, the big boat that you have and launch speed boats to understand discovery. And so you could say, we're going to go this way because there's a, there's a great island that we want to go dock to.
Um, this one, we don't want to go to. And so we do have a lot of, And so we Innovation thought process just inherit of who Qualcomm is, but we launched these boats to say, go check this out, validate, and let's figure out how to take the boat to a different direction because it has synergies, values, speed, efficiencies, or so on.
And in JNI Space, we have a lot of great use cases that, that I'm sure we'll talk about in a bit. It's, it's, it's here. It's not fake. It's it's useful. I think the question will be for all of us is how fast can we start to leverage it in everything we do?
[00:20:32] Raj: Absolutely.
[00:20:33] Ian: And Raj, what do you, what are you seeing as you're, as you're talking to other CIOs, you know, and being a provider of, of IT infrastructure, you know, getting, getting in front of clients and as they're trying to integrate Gen AI and things like that into, into their foundation?
[00:20:47] Raj: You know, I'll, I'll start with what Cisco ended, right? He said use cases. At the end of the day, you know, when, when we go and speak to our clients, other CIOs, what becomes interesting is what is the use case and can it be implemented today? Not five years down the line, right? If you think about what AI can do at the, you know, if you start from the baseline, what Every dollar that you spend on AI, it can give you a return of around four and a half dollars.
That's a huge return, right? So therefore, everybody is interested in that. However, you know, can there be a use case which makes sense? So for example, if I go and speak to Cisco and say, this is what JNI can do. First question he's going to ask me is, can you do it today, right? And, and make it happen right now.
I'll give you an example out here. So for example, one of our customers came back and said, You know what? I have a problem. There are a lot of my employees who lose time when they go into a meeting room. And how do they lose it? Is where if the Wi Fi goes down, you know, they have to shift the rooms, right?
Now, Gen A, I can always say that, hey, you know, the Wi Fi has gone down here. So, in the, in the calendar itself, the meeting room should shift from, say, meeting room A to meeting room B. Brilliant use case. Can it be done? Yes, theoretically, it can be done, right? Now, It's not only the meeting room, which is, which is of interest out here, right?
There are a whole lot of connected pieces, which, which will be there. Starting from, you know, how your LAN is working, how your WAN is working, and at the end of the day, maybe, you know, how the cloud interconnect is working. If the entire thing is not programmed in the right manner, just by saying that, hey, I can identify the room, It's not operable at this point of time, it's not giving any sense or any value to anybody, right?
If I go and tell Cisco, hey, I can do it, he'll say, fine, but, you know, what are you doing at the end of the day? Just giving me information doesn't make sense. Make it something which is executable and then give me a result, right? So, long story short, what I'm saying out here, Ian, is that, you know, if JNAI is very, very interesting, but then it needs to be implemented, and it needs to be implemented in a manner which then has impact into revenue, productivity, something, right?
I have to show that to Cisco, and that's where he'll get excited and say, I want it today.
[00:23:11] Cisco: Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, I think, I think, yeah, and I agree. I, Raj, I think, uh, when I look at the, Tons of use cases and you can go chase after all of them. I mean, you, you can't cause it's quickly. Everybody wants something in the GNI space because of, of an ability or speed or efficiency.
The question though, that, that a large organization should have and challenges is what are the areas of the best opportunity for the mass? And then do that one and then do the next one and do the next one. I think if we do a shotgun approach, it dilutes your resources to be super honest. And it doesn't give us.
That's the, all the ability of efficiencies. And so at least at the, in Qualcomm space, we've been looking at what are the big use cases that we go after? And then we violently attack them. Uh, I don't know if we should say the word violently, but violently attacking to ensure that it's being done properly and built out right.
And not wait. And we know it's going to be wrong. Of course it will be wrong, but it's going to be, it'll be less wrong the more you try. And so we need to identify how we can build it and then go and incrementally start to change it. Uh, but we can't just wait because I think this is, these are enablers that help us drive change.
Taking Raj's example, I was thinking you're going to go with like transcripts. We don't have wifi issues here at Qualcomm.
Kind of invented some of that wifi stuff.
[00:24:36] Ian: Well, so, but, you know, you mentioned, you mentioned some of those, some of those things that you're vitally going after. I was in the Army, so I think it's definitely a lot.
[00:24:44] Cisco: Oh, yeah. West Point, right?
[00:24:45] Ian: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
[00:24:47] Cisco: Yeah. Congratulations.
[00:24:48] Ian: Thanks. But so, so I'm curious, like, what, what are some of those projects that you, that you used, that you identified early on and said, Hey, this is something we, we really want to go after and try to get to a use case quickly?
[00:24:58] Cisco: So we have about 50, 000 people here at Qualcomm. We broke it into segments of saying, where can we have the biggest impact? And so we broke it into two segments. One is knowledge workers to think of like interacting with documentation, Q& A. And then we also identified software developers because we have a lot of them.
And how do you make both those populations super effective and efficient and drive change for them? There's lots of other areas that we can go do, but those are the two primary areas that we're focused on. When the early days of when chat GPT came out, everybody wanted to gravitate towards that. And so the, the.
Within Qualcomm, we identified, well, we probably shouldn't just use that one, we should identify how we can do things smart because of a lot of things that are going on early on. And so we built our own models. We took permissible LLMs out there that, and started to build a framework, an architecture framework to say, Let's solve the knowledge workers, let's solve the developers.
We had a code word that we leveraged called imagine, but it's called inference as a service now, but it was a code word that we were building, imagine what you could do with AI. And so we, but now it's inference as a service. And so in this platform, we're identifying, how do we ensure that we allow for developers to create software fast and have a, an AI that allows for them to see the code and then start to build out appropriately.
We know that there's third party products out there. The reason why we wanted to build our own was, one, to try out the hardware, because we have inference cards called Qualcomm Cloud AI 100. And I wanted to try that out and be customer zero. And so try it out to see how it works. But I also wanted to make our software developers efficient.
And so we built this engine, it's API called, you can call it for your IDE or a browser. Doesn't really matter. And as you write software, you tab and it starts to build the code for you. And it's, it's been very useful to allow for that uptick in productivity. So that was one use case. And we were solving, you know, thousands of developers.
The second one was in the Q and A, we wanted people to interact with their own documentation, not just with the world documentation, but our own internal to allow for efficiencies in either audit or in finance or in our customer engineering team. And so we built another Model using Gregg, Vector Database, feeding our documentation into it.
So we can control the entitlements, security scale, try out our inference card. And so we were doing all of this and we have about a thousand people that are using that as a framework. And it's been super useful to see efficiencies because that, that makes, and Raj, you probably like this too. That makes me happy.
I'm sure any IT person makes them happy because you're seeing people use a tool set. But you're also seeing efficiencies and happiness more in their day to day activity versus like, I wish I could find my, I wish, you know, it's, it's some more efficiencies you get out of it. And so it's been a delight to see.
Uh, along that we built some other ones, but Those are the primary two use cases that, uh, are helping us to drive change and then try out our, our cool, you know, AI 100 cards that are available.
[00:28:06] Raj: You know, Ian, as Cisco was giving the example, I, I recall one of the customer, you know, interactions that I had not so long back, where they are now developing the vaccination.
With the help of AI and GPUs and so on and so forth. You know, earlier what used to happen is that you do that lab test, right? Now that lab test is being done on an inference model, as Cisco was saying. So the time taken To build a vaccine has drastically reduced, you know, earlier it used to take, you know, 36 months to 48 months.
It can be done in 12 months at this point of time, wherein it can actually go for approval. So that's the kind of, you know, uh, you know, as I say, you know, 1 to 4. 5. This is a clear example of it. And I'm sure Cisco will have clear example of when he was talking about, you know, software development, what is the time it takes now vis a vis what it used to take earlier.
So they had a lot of advantages.
[00:29:04] Cisco: Yeah, which I think is super cool like in your vaccine example when it's like saving lives, it's preventing a lot of, it's so that's super impactful and I think that the reality is we have a lot of these documentations, we have a lot of these studies, we have a lot of these cases and what's interesting about the LMs is that when you start to feed it the content, wow, the power that you have on it and being able to see things is super important and it can help drive things.
To be more efficient or just to run the case study faster. And so like in that example, we, we're doing a lot of, we feed a lot of the documentation about Qualcomm's content. And so our CE engineers are faster on responding to customers, which gives, you know, the CE engineer a better experience. But also the end customer experience, because there's like faster response and not having to wait, but you know, it's, so I, I think there's this, there's so much more that we haven't tapped into yet that I think will help us drive efficiencies and allow us to be just a better, just a better world and, you know, hopefully better hyper connected.
[00:30:10] Ian: All right, let's get to our next segment, digital ecosystem strategy. Um, Cisco, I'm curious, what is Qualcomm's approach to multi cloud?
[00:30:18] Cisco: Great question. You know, I like them all and the reason I'm going to say I like them all is because I use them all. At Qualcomm, we have a ton of on prem in Colo, but then I use all the three major cloud providers and the reason is, is The type of data, type of capabilities that they offer, it's also to ensure that I have the opportunity for leverage the others as appropriate.
And in certain, and as you know, we're a global company, in certain regions, it's more preferred for certain cloud providers. The products that we're offering also have to run on multiple clouds. They can't just be on one anymore because at the end of the day, the customer gets choice. You know, if they want to run it on Azure or AWS or GCP, They should be able to.
And so what, what that does though, is requires the way you build your applications to be different. And so it's, it's, it's making sure that the architecture is right. So you have the ability to move as appropriately, but I like them all. I think they're all great. We're, we're partners in crime with all of them.
So I think the relationships are strong and I like it. Keep it that way.
[00:31:25] Ian: You know, Obviously every single, you know, CIO is in their own version of, of multi cloud and they're in their journey and all that sort of stuff. Have there been instances where your network infrastructure has held you back in evolving the multi cloud journey?
Or, or, or even maybe not necessarily you, but, but friends that, that you know that, where they've had similar sort of things happen?
[00:31:47] Cisco: Yeah, it's a good question. I, I think in general, um, uh, especially now with GEN AI, there's, uh, this big push for more compute, uh, more network gear or GPUs. And so I think conscious, you have to be, have a conscious effort on knowing what those timelines are, you know, network gears, I think, 50 some weeks, it's, it's, it's out there.
So you have to plan differently than you would in the past. And so because we have a lot of on prem and I'll talk a little bit on the cloud, but because we have a lot on prem and the reason we have a lot on prem is I need physical servers for the lot of design we do, creating the silicon. We have to ensure that we plan better, like plan more efficiently to understand.
I don't have to wait 52 weeks for network gear. I don't have to have what. Wait 35 for GPUs. I don't have to wait 18, 18 weeks for servers. And so we plan, we plan a lot, ensuring that we understand how we can, to start to pull things in because when the business looking for some new capabilities, we don't want to say, Hey man, I'm sorry, 53 weeks can't deliver it this year.
That may not make me last too long here. So we plan very, very, very efficiently and we start to identify. We also, when we working with the cloud providers. Uh, we do a lot of, uh, uh, forecasting out, planning with M2. So they understand what it may need to be reserved, and what may need to be as just temporary workload that we need for burst.
And so there's a lot of planning. I think this is what's interesting. The Gen AI It's causing more and more of the cloud providers to go and look at additional space because even in the colo space that we have, we buy a lot of power and it's, it's coming at harder and harder to find because people want all the power they can because of the, the gen AI.
I guess January revolution that's going on. And so, but we plan, and we, and I think we have to thoughtfully plan, but without the planning, I think you, we would all be in a little bit of trouble, at least here at Qualcom. And I andraj, I'm, I'm sure you're seeing something very similar on your space of Oh yes.
Super hard to find power right now. Uh oh. Yes. We, we, we gobble up what we can.
[00:34:03] Raj: Exactly the point. Yeah, similar, similar thoughts. I'm also hearing from a lot of other customers specifically because, you know, one thing which, which I'm sure you're grappling with is that, you know, last year this happened, is, is it going to be the same this year or is it going to be double?
You know, that's, that's, that's where the, let me at least do 1. 5, right? So, so at this point of time, that's, that's the, you know, main issue here, which a lot of enterprises are kind of grappling with.
[00:34:34] Cisco: Yeah.
[00:34:35] Ian: Obviously, we can talk multi cloud forever, but Raj, any other, any other sort of thoughts on, you know, supporting folks and thinking about cost efficiency?
I mean, obviously, this is like. The, the time where everyone is, especially in, you know, big startup world where, you know, scale efficiently rather than, you know, sort of scale at all costs, you know, growth mode. So people do have to think about their money a little bit differently than they used to. I'm just curious what you're seeing there.
[00:35:01] Raj: So you know, when you think about clouds, right, many times I've seen startups saying that, Oh, I'm a single cloud, right? And then they're using, for example, Salesforce, or they're using, you know, any other, you You know, application of the service, right? So, if you're using any other application of the service, by default, from a network perspective, you are multi cloud, right?
Just because you are on one hyperscaler, And you've taken some application and service doesn't mean that you're not, you know, multi cloud. So that's the first thing. And when I go to a few enterprises who are like very established enterprises, they'll say, Oh, you know what? I'm only on one hyperscaler and I have my own colo.
So, I am, you know, I, I'm not multi cloud. Again, not true because, you know, your colo is actually a, you know, part of the cloud. Now, yeah, think about it. When, when you speak to Cisco or, or, you know, others DXOs, one of the big challenges that they have is, you know, cloud means internet, right? Cloud doesn't mean that you're going to connect it with the earlier.
Uh, you know, level of, say, for example, 100G or whatever, right? It's, it's all internet right now. It's not point to point any longer. Internet is something that is open for everybody, right? And, and, and internet follows A simple rule, which is least cost routing, which means that Cisco's main application, when it is going from their data center to one of the hyperscalers, it's actually going on a least cost routing, which is the most important packet for Cisco, right?
And, and I'm sure he's worried about it. So that's one of the worry, that You know, how do you ensure that this internet I can manage, I can control? That's point number one. Point number two is visibility. Now, with the management, he's extremely concerned about visibility. And the third thing, which CXOs are very, very concerned about when it comes to multi cloud, specifically, you know, In, in Cisco's shoes where he says he's, he loves all the three clouds, for example, hyperscalers.
I mean, he has, you know, his own colos and I'm sure he has multitude of infra, you know, application of service, right? Which means there's a complex, very, very complex middle layer, right? So how do you simplify that middle layer? If you ask me, the biggest complexity that I've heard is simplifying this complex.
Then on top of it, how do I build. Something which can show me the visibility and I can control this, right? So, these are three things which, which occurs. If you do not do these three things well, you'll have cost, you know, implications because, you know, if you do not manage the cloud well, then cost implications will go through the roof for you.
Second is, you know, you, you talked about complexity and simplicity, right? If you do not know what you have, obviously, it is extremely complex. Something which is a black box is complex for all of us, right? But if you know what it is, it's simple for you. And therefore, you can plan for it better, right? So that's, that's what we see from, you know, our discussions and all the CXO friends that I have there.
And I'm, I'm betting that Cisco agrees to all that I've said just now.
[00:38:21] Cisco: Yeah, fully agree. And the only thing I'd probably add is, is it has to be seamless. So the end user, the customer, internal, they don't really care. Like, does it go to Google, or does it go to AWS, or Azure, or Opco, or, you know, Adobe, or, because we're not giving them the network path.
So it almost has to be super seamless on how they bounce back and forth to anything. And it's just connected. And so as the end user, Uh, in a conference room or in an, in an office in Singapore, it's just the same and everything, all that complexity underneath is what is established and well done and, and monitored and alerted and processed super efficiently to ensure that.
I don't, I don't know. It just works and, and that's what I think the end, the end customer result we want to have is they should never know. We got it. And the complexity, let's abstract it all out and know that it's monitored, alerted, secured, and cyber security is all in all of it. And we have the right ports and we know understand which data should be going where, and we know understand the entitlements.
And it's not just, I, I have to click and re host and re log on to this and try that for this one. And that, uh, that's, that's the beauty of what like the IT organizations should do is just like make it seamless. Let us do the complexity. I got it. Um, that's what we're really good at.
[00:39:42] Ian: Yeah. It's pretty wild that this, the office of the CIO went from, you know, the, the senior technologist to also you're doing employee experience just broadly, and then now it's like, also now you're doing customer experience broadly, and it's like, wait, isn't that just the whole business?
[00:39:58] Raj: No, no, I'll actually say the opposite right now, Ian. The first thing that I'm sure Cisco thinks about right now is experience, both customers and employees.
Oh, for sure. Then the other things come in, right? So that, that became the baseline. Earlier it was the opposite way, right? Let me think about technology first, then I'll think about experience. Today, you have to think about the experience layer first, then think about the technology behind that.
[00:40:25] Ian: Yeah, we're saying the same thing.
[00:40:27] Cisco: I agree, I mean, the experience really matters of how people interact with things, because Like that's how they get, that's how we get graded to be super honest. Like how was it to go into a conference room and hit one button and I get connected or I'm in the office in Wuxi or Singapore or Germany or Cork and it's the same connectivity, super cool.
Yeah. It's, it's not, I have to do this and try this gyration to get in. It's, it's just seamless. And so we do think of customer experience. That's like one of the first things on any like good, good Architecture design of an application is how does it work? How does it delight customers and interaction with our partners or doesn't work?
Cause you'll hear like that, like it doesn't work. This doesn't, this takes too long. You know, and so we think about a lot of that.
[00:41:17] Ian: Yeah, definitely not on the, on the CIO job description 20 years ago.
[00:41:22] Cisco: Yeah. Yeah, I don't think, in my COBOL class, I don't think we had that.
[00:41:28] Ian: Well, let's, let's look forward into the future with our next segment, Vision for the Future. Yeah, curious, just like looking in your crystal ball, what are the things that in the next 5 to 10 years, I know it's impossible to predict the future, but obviously we talked to Bhanush about, you know, Gen AI and, and machine learning, but any other things that you feel like you want to be investing in for, you know, Qualcomm's digital ecosystem or just technologies or tools or, or anything that you feel like you feel, you know, pretty passionate about for the future.
[00:41:58] Cisco: Yeah, I, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting, at least I know we talked about Gen AI, but I honestly, I honestly think we're just in the first inning.
[00:42:05] Ian: Sure.
[00:42:06] Cisco: And the reason I say this is, is there's a lot of, Training activity that's taking place.
So think of like these big, large models, uh, that are getting created and being used. And so there's probably only like, and I'm making this up, but I'm probably close, six ish, uh, uh, companies out there in the world that actually can create these large models because it takes a lot of horsepower to create a trillion model, a trillion parameter model.
It takes a lot of work. And then there's these smaller models are getting generated. But I think it's, that's the first inning. The second part is, is it, how do you use it? And so the training moves to inference pretty quickly. And you and Raj and I are, are users of it. And so we're going to be inferencing a lot of the content.
And I think today the solution we know is, uh, as a user, I come from my client and I go to the cloud and I ask a question and it comes back and it does work. It works really well. Uh, but there's, there's other stops in the road. Like, there is your PC, your mobile phone. It has a ton of compute power. It has the ability to run, uh, a lot of parameters.
Then there's your colo or your on prem. Which is a, is a, before cloud that you can run a lot of parameters. You know, we have the, our AI car that runs 870 tops, which is a lot on one single card. And so, and then you have the cloud. And I think with the, the, the interesting thing for us is how do you use all three of them seamlessly?
Like the previous conversation of, I don't care where I, if I go to cloud, I don't care if I keep it here. End user, but we care from an IT profession, we care because otherwise you're going to have all these cloud providers and our ESG goals are just shot because we have all this more infrastructure and you're not leveraging the other stuff, you know, your on prem or your colo, your, your, your cool PC that's coming out, your mobile phone, your car, your IOT devices.
And so I think. There's a lot that still hasn't been tapped into on leveraging how to, to build out and use the inference that's there and have an LLN that's running constantly pervasive and doing things for you. And as the end user, you just ask a question, do stuff and, or it cleans up your day and allows for a better AI experience.
That I think that's the exciting part that it's maybe that second inning, third inning that we're going to go after where inference everywhere, not just inferencing cloud. Yeah. That I think are going to allow for use cases that we haven't even thought of yet. You know, I can imagine the day, you know, for me, as an example, for me, you know, I plug my phone in at night.
I'm sure you guys do too. Sometimes I forget. Most of the time I do it. And then in the morning when I wake up, I unplug it, I check my email, check my personal email, and I remove myself from all kinds of spam that comes in, and then I look at my calendar, and then I look at what do I have to wear today? Do I have to dress up smart for you guys today?
Or can I wear a t shirt, right? And so, do I need to buy a gift? And so I look at my calendar. Imagine like your AI sleeping while you're sleeping, working all night, looking at your data, unsubscribing you from much email, saying, hey, you got to go buy a wife, a gift for your wife, because she's coming up, you forgot, you got to wear a tie because Roz likes you in ties, as an example, right?
And so imagine that being done, but it's all done on the edge versus always having to go to the cloud, because it knows my day, you know? But so I think all these use cases are coming where. We haven't explored them yet, which makes me super excited about the future because that allows us to be more productive, allows us to think about what we really need to think about, not like I have to unsubscribe myself and do this and do that.
It does it for you. And I think, so that's super exciting. The other thing I think is super exciting for the future is How to leverage some of that data sets that we haven't harnessed well enough yet.
[00:45:55] Ian: Yeah.
[00:45:55] Cisco: I know we've been like in this data, uh, remember big data and then we data migration and ML and then predictive.
I think now with AI, you can do more with data to allow it to optimize and hopefully create vaccines faster, hopefully create better experiences. And so I think there's so much that's super exciting, but AI on edge is going to be super fun. That's going to be a blast. It really is. Yeah, you know, for a nerd like me, it's going to be super fun.
[00:46:24] Ian: Uh, does, that was going to be one of the things that I was, I was going to say is just like, AI, the edge is so, so interesting. Like, I think about, you know, like I have, uh, I just put in some, we're planting some new plants and we have this, you know, this is a very physical thing, right? It's like water is shooting out of the, out of the pipes onto the plants that you want to get there.
Well, I mean, I'm just loading, looking at this piece of technology and I'm like, this is. This is so broken. I'm like, this, it should know everything about, you know, my plants and when they should get water and all this stuff and we should have sensors and all this. I'm like, you know, it's all coming. I mean, it all exists, right?
But, but where is it now? So, yeah, I agree. It's like AI at the Edge to me is like so fascinating for all the things that use technology or should be using technology.
[00:47:11] Cisco: I think that's the great part about this world of technology, and that's why I love it so much, it's constantly evolving and changing, and so it's never the same thing, and so you're always learning, and I think it's a bright spot to be in IT, because you're not going to just stop and say, I'm done, I learned.
It's no, no, the next wave, the next wave, the next thing, and I think it's an exciting time where, you know, at least from a Qualcomm perspective, we, we, we want to make sure that we are connecting everything, but because we want to connect everything, it has to be like super seamless and, and, and I love the name of their podcast. It has to be hyper connected. It really does.
[00:47:51] Raj: Yeah. And, and, and here at Cisco, you know, one of the things that, you know, I'd just like to add to what you said. When you think about the future, right, the growth of technology or the trajectory of technology is going so fast that, you know, we, we are all taught earlier that, you know, if you're stagnant for a period of time, then, you know, your efficiency goes down, right?
Now, if I look at the trajectory of, of change in technology, it is going so fast that my learning cycle is also going through a higher. Trajectory at that point of time, right? Otherwise, I'm not able to catch up. So, you know, yeah, just to add to Cisco, what I really think is, you know, earlier, it had, if I had to learn, say, five things in a month, today, you know, maybe I have to learn 25 things in a month.
Going forward, maybe it will be 50 things in a month, right? And that's where, you know, the learning is not going to stop. That's point number one. More from a human perspective, what's going to happen is, You know, some things will be influenced by by the machine, right? What will come from us is the human connect, the intelligence, and also more importantly, the empathy.
I don't think empathy is going to be passed on to the machines anytime soon. That's going to be driven by us. And that's where I, you know, Cisco, you keep talking about culture, right? Culture is something that, you know, we'll keep building and, and culture is something that we'll keep bringing into as, as human connect and, and taking things forward.
[00:49:19] Ian: I agree. Fantastic. Raj, couldn't have, couldn't have put it any better. Cisco, wonderful having you on the show. Thanks for joining Hyperconnected Journeys. Any final thoughts? Anything to plug?
[00:49:29] Cisco: No, I mean, I just just want to say thank you for the opportunity. I think what you guys are doing is very valuable in ensuring people understand what's coming and how it's happening.
And so I appreciate being on the podcast and look forward to the next time.
[00:49:41] Ian: Yeah, indeed. Thanks so much, Cisco.
[00:49:44] Raj: Cisco, it was brilliant meeting you. Thank you so much.
[00:49:46] Cisco: Yeah, likewise. We'll see you guys.
[00:49:48] Raj: Thank you. Take care.
[00:49:49] Ian: Thank you for joining us on Hyperconnected Journeys, where we explore the minds of technology innovators, future proofing their digital infrastructure. Go ahead and leave us a comment to share your thoughts on today's episode and be sure to hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts to stay updated on our latest episodes. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, unleash your own power of hyperconnectivity.