About This Episode
In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, Frank Cottle speaks with Bob Cicero, who leads Future Proofed Workplace for Real Estate at Cisco, about how AI is transforming the physical workplace. The conversation explores the rise of agentic AI, the growing role of digital workers, the move toward collaborative “we space,” and why companies must now “earn the commute” by making the office more valuable, frictionless, and human-centered. Bob brings a technology and real estate perspective to one of the biggest questions facing organizations today: how should workplaces evolve when humans, AI agents, physical space, and virtual collaboration all become part of the same operating system?
About Bob Cicero
Bob Cicero leads Future Proofed Workplace for Real Estate at Cisco, leveraging 25 years of experience to drive growth and transformation through innovative cross-architecture sales motions. He leads go-to-market Workplace initiatives across Cisco’s largest customers. Bob is passionate about modernizing commercial real estate with technology and data, focusing on enhancing the intersection of people and space, and building diverse, high-performing teams that transcend technology.
What You’ll Learn
- How AI and digital workers are changing the role of physical office space.
- Why collaborative “we space” is becoming more important than traditional desk-based work.
- How companies can use workplace data, Wi-Fi, and collaboration technology to improve office experience.
- Why organizations must “earn the commute” in a hybrid work world.
- How agentic AI may redesign leadership, facilities management, and workplace operations.
- Why coworking and third workplaces may become part of enterprise real estate strategy.
- How Cisco is thinking about workplace technology as a secure, integrated platform.
Transcript
Bob Cicero
[ 00:00:00,000 ]The notion of how do we actually use all this data to actually fundamentally create a workplace that works for not just how we work today, but for this manifestation of when AI digital workers come in place and we’re vastly approaching this world of agentic. The industry is approaching on on agentic meaning we’re going to have all these digital workers and all these agents running for us to be able to be more productive when we think about that agentic world. It’s really how do we fundamentally reshift and remake the workplace to make it work just not for this notion of humans coming together but also our digital counterparts.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:00:37,440 ] Bob. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to the Future of Work podcast. It’s really great to have. With your experience, especially from a company like Cisco.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:00:47,870 ] Well, thank you for having me today. I’m looking forward to the conversation.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:00:51,400 ] Well, I am too, you know, real estate, office space, planning, AI, all the changes that are going on right now. Cisco’s leadership with the technology that’s used in the office. I think gives us a lot to talk about, probably more than we could actually cover today.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:08,560 ] Um, I’m going to start off and ask a Maybe a too broad a question.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:16,440 ] Is the day AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Out of the office. Today. What are the impacts that you see AI is having on office space and design on the physical workplaces? Not just the technology that’s deployed within the world.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:01:33,960 ] Places.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:01:36,170 ] It’s a great question. AI, you cannot turn on anything on TV. Have a conversation without those those two letters. Right. Uh, the most fundamental shift that I think any of us are going to see in our lifetime from a technology standpoint. And when you look at it, we, you know, fundamentally believe it’s going to take 8 billion people and turn it into 80 billion people from a productivity standpoint.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:01:58,240 ] Well, I hope we don’t have to feed them all.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:02:02,250 ] Those digital workers need to live somewhere.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:02:04,330 ] Yeah.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:02:05,930 ] Um, and we think about this notion of, you know, everyone questions the value of space and place when you think about AI and those digital workers. I just alluded to. And the notion of how do we actually use all this data to actually fundamentally create a workplace that works for not just how we work today, but for this manifestation of when AI digital workers come in place and we’re vastly approaching.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:02:32,660 ] This world of agentic right when you think about this notion of where we are today with chatbots, etc. effectively when you when you look at what we’re doing with AI. The industry is approaching on agentic, meaning we’re going to have all these digital workers and all these agents running. For us to be able to be more productive. When we think about that agenda. World, it’s really how do we fundamentally reshift and remake the workplace to make it work just not for this notion of humans coming together but also our digital counterparts.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:03:02,970 ] Well, I think that’s true, but what shifts do we really need to make? I mean. I’m going to have an agent on my shoulder, maybe an agent on each shoulder, whispering in my ear. Um, kind of sounds like the devil and the angel, maybe— whispering in my ear, telling me, ‘Hey, do this. Do that. You can do this faster, or let me do that for you.’ Which is more likely? Do I really need to change the shape of the office or the physical workspace to deal with that?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:03:33,920 ] I think we do. Right. And what we’ve seen post-pandemic is, is that this notion of more collaborative space.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:03:40,750 ] And I think that when you look at agentic and look at AI, AI is going to do the tasks that we would typically do when you’re sitting at a desk, as an example. It’s going to be done by the digital worker. And so it’s really going to be this manifestation of bringing humans together and what we do from a human being perspective in terms of collaborating. And those collaborative moments are going to be super critical. And we have to cater the workspace to be able to accommodate that. And so, when we look at this, is that we see more collaborative workspaces because people are going to come together for a reason. They’re actually going to be more human interaction if you think about that from an AI world point of view, because the digital workers are going to be working and it’s humans going to be getting together. And so, the remake of the space will need to be more collaborative space. And we start at that after the pandemic. And we think that is just going to accelerate in terms of really thinking about the way that humans work together. And what we’re seeing from a trending standpoint with all the data that we have is that how people are working has fundamentally shifted.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:04:42,160 ] And people are actually Absolutely.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:04:45,270 ] Absolutely. And people are working in these small groups. collaboration.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:04:50,380 ] And so a lot of what we see is actually sub-three. in terms of physicality. where folks are actually coming together from a physical standpoint in terms of working together in these collaborative moments with sub-three people. Um, but then we’re also really thinking about that notion of physical and virtual, and how do we bring that together for larger group conversations? But that’s a fundamental shift, right? In terms of thinking about space and place, and have more collaborative spaces. But more collaborative spaces that cater to smaller groups, in terms of what we’re seeing from a data perspective.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:05:22,810 ] Well, you know, when you bring in that, now first I want to make one comment on AI relative to collaboration. We’re seeing AI agents between individuals, I’ve got one, you’ve got one, we’re seeing those two agents actually collaborating directly.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:05:44,050 ] Without the people. The people’s instruction, if you will, is: ‘Hey, go work with Bob’s agent and do these things. Your agent says yes, I’ll accept that task on your behalf, etc.’ So we’re seeing the classic management structure changing as well, where a manager, agent, is directing a staff member’s agent to do actual tasks.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:06:14,420 ] on a coordinated basis or within a group. Are you seeing that as well, or do you think that’s just something that’s just barely starting?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:06:21,840 ] I think it’s barely starting, right? Because this notion of agents as they’re coming online— you have to think about them as a as a counterpart. Yeah yeah, digital worker. Right, it doesn’t work unless you think about that from a construct of saying, like, okay, yes, it’s not a human, but it’s another worker from a digital perspective. And really, when you think about leadership, leadership is going to be about, yes, people and organizations. But it’s also going to be about how do we coalesce around this notion of the people side plus these agents coming together? And really, you’re going to be managing the agent aspect as well in terms of those agents and communicating with other agents. And how do you most effectively utilize all that together?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:06,830 ] Yeah, I agree. I think people creating teams without their agents as part of that process is not going to exist in a year.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:16,450 ] That within a year, everybody’s team will be the individual human, as you say, plus their agents as a part of that, as an activist part of the team, not just a ‘Day them.’ Management or supplier of pure information will be an interactive part of the team.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:07:36,620 ] Up for sure.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:07:38,350 ] And the question is, going to be one agent. Or is it going to be 10 agents? Or 20 agents?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:07:45,760 ] It’s going to be, I’ll tell you the answer. It’s going to be 10. And the reason I say that right now is: We just deployed, most people know us, we have all workspace. We also have Alliance virtual. And so. we’ve been around for lots of years, service about 300,000.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:06,430 ] Globally and that sort of thing. And. We’ve actually set up, for our own facilities, we’ve Oh.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:15,480 ] Our chief administrative officer has created a an agent, who has other agents working for it in order to do all of our facility management.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:28,100 ] So it’s a single agent running agents.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:31,980 ] Uh, and there’s about eight components to that, separate components to that, relative to the various asks involved in facility management which you’re very familiar with from your background, and you know that a hyper office manager or facility manager is a very good place to deploy that type of structure.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:53,680 ] Um, So I think it’s happening now.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:08:59,000 ] We’re a little punky company by comparison to you. Uh, and uh, you’re all application of. That type of agent hierarchy has to be.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:09:10,630 ] Very well developed.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:09:13,260 ] It’s the manifestation of the agentic role. There’s a lot of pre-work right that needs to That needs to happen. And that’s a lot of organizations that we see out there are planning for. For us, it was a journey around. Really rethinking space and place and thinking about the technology component as a platform versus thinking about discrete projects if you would, because we were trying to position ourselves to have a common data layer, because that data layer then informs the agent side. and so when we look at it, we’re really trying to cut across all parts of of the business and all parts of operations— facilities management, plus IT operations, plus all of that is going to come together because the agents are going to be communicating. But there’s a lot of prep work in terms of how we’re going to get there as an organization and all organizations in the next few years.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:10,430 ] No, I agree. I think it turns everybody into a microengineer. If you will, structurally, I think. But, you know, talk about going back to what you said earlier about more.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:23,210 ] Places for people to meet and to get together on the human side.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:27,830 ] Right now we’re just Oh. Maturing. from the pandemic where everybody got separated and remote work, which has always been around. I’ve been a remote worker for 30 years.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:42,360 ] Um, It’s always been around, but it became a standard as opposed to an anomaly.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:50,310 ] and people’s commutes were changed and this and that. I think you’re in New York, you know, commuting was.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:10:56,870 ] Everybody’s happy to be in the office. Not very many people like going to the office.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:02,340 ] Proverbial train. Uh um.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:07,000 ] How do you manage in a new, let’s use hybrid as the standard. Three days in the office, two days away from the office, third workplace, homework, whatever it happens to be. As a new standard, how does that impact your need for space design around common areas?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:27,350 ] And how do you manage that? You’ve got to. Excess space— if you use the space you had pre-pandemic—how do you manage the movement of people in all of that to be effective?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:11:43,900 ] You really get the bang for the buck you’re looking for.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:11:47,340 ] It’s a great question, if you think about— we’re four years post-pandemic—whether you would. We see organizations still grappling with this notion of ‘you know’ mixed presence is just fact at this point. Right, the world is going to be physical and virtual coming together. And when we think about refactoring space for us, we’re looking at 70%. What we call ‘we space’— from the point of view of that—is that collaborative space. And it’s the ‘then’ there’s the 30% of me space. Think about the ‘you know’ the focus work which will ultimately write that focus work aspect. Could arguably be that a lot of it being done by the agents.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:12:25,430 ] But then you think about this notion of space. In place and predictability of the human side of it in terms of humans coming inside the space in terms of you asked about a three-day a week. Work example, right. So say it’s Monday, Wednesday, Thursday— as an example. Shalom. You know you have a predictable model there. But what a lot of other organizations are looking at is it’s not a predictable model. But yet you have a square footage that doesn’t change. I can’t move the walls overnight.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:12:56,770 ] And so, when we think about that space design aspect, is that 70% of the space today is collaborative. You need to have areas inside of that that provide a level of fungibility. If you would, in terms of thinking about once you do come back into that space, that fungible aspect is common areas.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:13:16,600 ] That people can not only collaborate in, but also. Do their work there and think about that notion of working from office home and anywhere. How do you take the anywhere tool set if you would and use that inside of space and place in these common areas for dealing with this fungible aspect of thinking about? If you don’t have a set work schedule, how do you actually deal with that?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:13:40,260 ] That comes into planning and from a facility management or a departmental management. Real estate departmental management. And I won’t say Cisco, but do you see across all of your peers in your own company and other companies, are for the same number of people? Are companies going to need more or less space to accomplish this, relative to what they had?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:14:07,910 ] Three.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:14:09,470 ] I don’t want to say pandemic, but free adjustment.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:14:14,170 ] To this new model.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:14:16,920 ] I have my opinion, and it’s less— by the way. Um, But what do you see, and what do you see people doing with that?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:14:26,140 ] If you look at the real estate market in general, we saw this flight to quality after the pandemic, right? Agreed.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:14:34,140 ] Especially if you need less, you can afford better.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:14:37,410 ] You can afford better. And we did see that contraction square footage, like we have absolutely contracted, and we continue to monitor that with all the data that we have around. How do we actually do that? But I think that what we’re seeing is you think about real estate, it’s a long tail business, right? 10, 15, 20 year, 30 year decisions. And so we’re still seeing this notion of compression with some organizations.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:15:03,260 ] But there’s also growth in others, depending on the market segment that they’re serving. And so some industries are actually growing from a space for a footage standpoint, versus contracting now. Part of that is fundamentally because of this notion of the industries that they’re serving or in this rapid growth phase, etc. But the other piece is that it’s this notion of how do people actually work? And so we see a lot of square footage expansion in industries that are actually in the apprentice model of work. Where you think about legal. Legal is really about an associate working with a senior partner to learn about, you know, how do you actually become the best lawyer. And so there’s an apprentice side of it.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:15:46,430 ] And yet we see law offices going virtual, going remote.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:15:53,600 ] We see one of the biggest exits of the commercial real estate market and large users that there is. They’re shrinking more than anybody. So they, the associate, don’t necessarily need to to look, touch, smell, and be in the presence of that senior partner. They just have to have access to their brain, which means they can do that 10 ways.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:16:17,550 ] And how do you make it effective for them to actually communicate that way, right? And provide the right tools to be able to do that in a physical and virtual manner is super critical to be able to achieve that.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:29,680 ] Well, I have a theory that says when the great revolution comes, we’re going to get rid of all the attorneys anyway. So, you know, we’ll. we’ll end up not needing attorneys at some point in time. But that’s a personal theory, I think. You know, mine. Well, how do you how do you track this this change in use? Are you using sensors? I know I was over in Beijing a while ago speaking at a conference.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:16:58,760 ] visited a number of newly developed spaces. And they had a sensors, recognition sensors, facial recognition sensors, all throughout their facilities. They knew where everybody was all the time and what they were using, how much desk time, how much occupancy time in various offices and conference rooms. How do you track this so you can get the metrics right? To gain the efficiencies which, honestly, you owe to your shareholders.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:17:31,430 ] It’s a great question. And the industry is developed with— you know, putting specific built sensors in. People were going out and, especially after the pandemic, throwing in sensors wherever they could just to figure out. What was happening because the dirty secret was, is that badge data was not really accurate. Badge can tell you the floor. The badge. You don’t badge in every room. And so, from the standpoint of we looked at our technology that we have, and if you think about the network and you think about collaboration technology.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:18:01,139 ] It’s everywhere. It’s pervasive. And so there’s a lot of data that you actually can get out of the not only network infrastructure, but collaboration infrastructure. And so, for example, we’ve invested with NVIDIA in terms of our collaboration endpoints.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:18:16,820 ] Count people inside the room.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:18:19,100 ] Um and so yeah, at the desk, in fact, uh, just as as a point, I don’t know if you’re using these or not, but we’ve seen, from a facility management point of view, heat mapping those people in the room and adjusting the HVAC, etc accordingly to reduce energy costs.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:18:39,620 ] Absolutely. We’re doing all of that. But it’s coming out of the IT infrastructure, which is a very different construct than in previous years, where it was really this separate. Sort of infrastructure for real estate to understand what’s happening with people, but now, when you think about wireless— wireless is being used all the time—people’s first form of connectivity is wireless. Well, with wireless, you know where folks are. From the point of view of knowing heat maps and so the collaboration technology counts people inside the room. Now, with this notion of more we space— Collaboration technology is everywhere. Now I can count people in every single room. I can use Wi-Fi to understand what’s happening in the rest of the spaces. And now you can drive outcomes that you one of them just mentioned is a super popular one: where we’re looking— we’re using people count in our rooms to be able to modulate thermal comfort inside the space to make it more about the human being that’s inside the space, versus just being about the four walls and the floor and the ceiling of where you’re sitting in. But how do you make it more comfortable? But using data that natively comes up out of an IT infrastructure.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:19:44,200 ] Versus putting in yet another infrastructure just to be able to do sensing of people and things inside of the physical built environment.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:19:52,790 ] Well, I’m going to take us off campus for just a second.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:19:57,590 ] And we talk about hybrid work. We talk about a three and two model. We talk about WeSpace.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:07,100 ] Have worked with an IT company that works with one of the major banking systems over in the UK.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:14,560 ] And they have developed the management. Option.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:20,720 ] Uh, to have a Wii Space both on-site and off-site, and to manage them against each other—meaning, instead of that two or three people getting together at the corporate office, the two and three people have the option of getting together at a third workplace, let’s say a co-working facility meeting room, as an option. And they actually cost out the internal cost versus the external cost. And they’ve determined that the external costs are lower.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:20:54,740 ] Um, But they’re tracking and going that far. With the options that people have for WeSpace, as you’re doing. Are you seeing that sort of use as well, or do you think that company is just a bit experimental?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:21:12,300 ] No, I think, if you look at coworking, right, coworking really hit big before the pandemic. And then, after the pandemic, you saw all the. you know, Class A trophy spaces and monetizing their buildings to be able to provide maybe some of those capabilities inside of it. And then now you see the co-working firms that have survived that are out there. What we see broadly is that the gap was actually the technology side of it. Because people were going there and saying, okay, I might bring three people there to have a meeting in person, but we’re going to bring people remotely in. And it was always this, so I’m going to put a laptop in the middle of the table and try to use a camera that’s built into the laptop. It was just a terrible experience. And so the co-working space, you know, we do a lot of work with them, has figured out that technology is super important. We have to provide that as a baseline capability that is agnostic in terms of how people and what platforms they want to use, which is, we’ve done a lot of work on our technology to actually achieve that with them.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:22:13,290 ] And so we do see that model with you know this notion of just not a co-working desk anymore, where people you think about that industry, develop, hey, I’m going to go rent a desk, but more around this notion of huddle spaces. Yeah, I agree.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:22:29,050 ] I agree with that. That’s what we’re seeing as well. And it’s not just a private huddle because. companies. uh working as groups.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:22:39,500 ] need privacy.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:22:41,600 ] for any variety of reasons.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:22:45,840 ] That’s absolutely what’s going to happen. But we’re seeing quite a bit of that now working out. Honestly, since about 2015, We’ve been saying there’s no such thing as an occupier anymore.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:01,690 ] There are only travelers.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:04,990 ] And when we look at facility management or the HR side of this issue overall. We actually look and believe that the travel management systems that are used in corporate travel management, which is generally your third or fourth largest expense in a company.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:25,260 ] Really is a better way to integrate some of these activities.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:32,990 ] Than a pure facility management or on a departmental.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:38,780 ] You find a third workplace on your own basis. All the structure for managing a workforce.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:23:48,750 ] Uh, that is on the move is already available in the travel management systems they just haven’t matured or they they haven’t come to the facility or the HR side and the HR hasn’t but when those cross over That’s going to make another level of revolution.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:24:04,480 ] Way that space is used. And weigh the third spaces. Are used I think.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:24:11,940 ] Yeah, definitely look at that as an opportunity.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:24:16,070 ] How do you make it easy? Right. Because a lot of organizations right now are looking at, know one or two co-working providers, and providing you know, and doing you know commercial agreements with those folks for their organizations, but in terms of truly making it more flexible.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:24:30,190 ] But again, it comes back to thinking about what the capabilities are inside of those co-working spaces.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:24:38,040 ] That needs is super critical right in terms of looking at the technology components, which is where how do we potentially have a ranking system around that in terms of understanding just not, hey, I need a meeting room.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:24:49,820 ] But what are all my capabilities that I need for the outside world kind of travel management systems come in because they have all of those criteria ranked with hotel companies and airline companies, etc. They have a methodology or the technology that can deploy that pretty easily. And I think that this is whether that’s adapted or whether one is just learning from that and seeing how they do it. About. The model is uh very very beneficial to the way we should be thinking in the future, yeah. Um uh overall, at least you know, when you talk about commute and getting people to the core office, one of your theories is that a company has to earn. Commute. They have to earn the. The loyalty of their teams so that the commute is worthwhile and it’s not just to collaborate because we can collaborate a lot of ways, as we’ve seen.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:25:52,430 ] But how else? Beyond. Collaboration. Does a company like Cisco or others that you’ve seen earn the commute of their teams because it’s costly, time-consuming?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:26:09,440 ] It takes things away from family. It’s an anti-wellness issue. If you will, and wellness is key. What do we have to do to earn that community?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:26:21,310 ] The notion of earning the commute, we look at and think about employees as they wake up in the morning is. If there’s a choice, everyone’s going to ask themselves a question. What’s my return on commute?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:26:32,290 ] We also say don’t commute to compute. Meaning that if before the agents I like that they’ll commute to compute, meaning that if there’s a lot of work that you have to do and just plow through whatever you’re doing, that’s individual work. Probably not valuable to come in to the office and think about two hours, two and a half hours out of your day from a community perspective as you talk about the wellness side of it. But the space in the office is very much about the identity of an organization. And so what we found is is that when you come in, it has to be a delightful experience for people when they walk in. Of course, the technology components need to be there. But we’re still looking at organizations that are struggling with friction as they come in. So folks will go in and technology inside the room, take 10 minutes to get a meeting going. We have to make it easier for when people do come in. And we think about friction all the time in terms of looking at, ‘Hey, I’m coming inside of a space.’ Have the collaborative components figured out.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:27:33,800 ] But if I don’t come to that space a lot of times, how do I provide wayfinding capabilities for people to make it seem like, ‘Hey, I come in and I know where I’m actually going.’ And just think about all the friction points that people have throughout their day, inside the space, to make it just an experience. Right. You think about. Going on a vacation. Right, you go to a hotel. They’re experienced providers.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:27:57,150 ] The workplace is also experienced providers now, in terms of thinking about the way to earn that commute. Yes, and like I mentioned, it’s about branding for the organization, but also from that standpoint of taking that friction out of the daily day, of a human as they’re going throughout the space. What we see from our own data, anecdotally, is that when you’re successful with this, is that the number of people that come through the doors every single quarter goes up on a uniqueness human perspective. But also when you think about them operating in a space like this, it is that they’re touching five to six different settings a day from a seating perspective.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:28:35,660 ] Every single day. And there’s no friction throughout the day for them. People just get used to this comfortable notion of moving about the space to be able to use space during that period of activity in terms of what they’re trying to achieve from a work perspective during that time.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:28:52,320 ] You know, it’s funny. I was talking with a another fellow and he said that, and they’re trying to correct this problem that you’re talking about and and not doing so successfully. He said, when I walk into the office, I feel like I’m walking into like a airline club lounge, you know, at the airport where I got to look around for a seat.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:29:16,730 ] I got to take all my stuff with me because if I don’t, then somebody else is going to grab my seat. You know, he was very frustrated with that. Uh, inability to remove that friction. Uh, in their organization, and he felt that was driving people and that they were going more and more remote, which Maybe if you can’t manage it, that is a solution. Uh, I don’t know, but what you know, Cisco’s unique.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:29:45,260 ] Here’s your great opportunity here for a pitch. I don’t usually do that, but Cisco’s unique. You have, as a company, for years built systems that communicate in the office with others outside of the office that bring collaborative space together as a problem.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:08,990 ] You’ve been doing that for decades that I’ve known the company.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:13,700 ] And. This has always been part of your structure.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:18,430 ] What unique things does Cisco, as a company, have?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:30:24,300 ] And I apologize for putting you on the pitch spot here. I usually don’t do this, but I know you’re unique. Oh. What do you have that you that that is special. That makes this easier. Than another company might not have.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:30:41,130 ] It’s a great question, and I appreciate the opportunity.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:30:45,240 ] Think about if you think about all the elements that we have. As an organization, you think about all the lines of business that we’re in. People think about us from a connectivity point of view, the networking side, if you would. Wired in the space. Connectivity from home inside of the in the office, the wireless networking technology, the collaboration technology. That we have. We have a unique set of assets that we combined here to be able to really build a platform.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:31:15,790 ] And that platform.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:31:17,510 ] extends. From. Anywhere? To home? To office.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:31:24,000 ] It includes a full software suite when you think about the security components. So we have this opportunity and really what we’ve done is taking all of our assets, thinking about the secure networking side. Plus collaboration technology. Plus the data together. Doing it securely. All woven together. To provide a platform for our customers.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:31:45,740 ] We did it for ourselves, and that’s the unique differentiation: this notion of just not individual piece parts, but thinking through an equation of platform.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:31:55,930 ] And thinking about how do I stitch it all together. But not have it be a custom integration project, no matter where you go around the globe.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:32:04,520 ] And when you have that platform approach, what happens is the net effect is that Now we’re thinking about software capabilities, AI capabilities.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:32:15,150 ] That span all of those assets that are going to continually pay dividends, not only for ourselves, but for our customers.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:32:22,580 ] And that is our unique value that we provide to the marketplace because we have all the fundamental components and now we’re bringing it all together.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:31,710 ] Well, you’re really lucky because, as a company, this might sound odd, but you can eat your own dog food, so to speak, and make it work, which becomes, in many regards, guards the ideal lab.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:32:49,610 ] For product structure, you can determine with your own metrics and use yourselves because you’re big enough to do so. Uh, as an illustration, so that that is very unique, what do you think I’m here? What do you think in the next three to five years? Three years even. Five years now with AI doing what it’s doing, it’s hard to even look out five months. But. Over the next three years, what do you think the fundamental changes will be in the workplace?
Frank Cottle
[ 00:33:20,950 ] Workspaces. And what do you think it’s going to look like? This is a future of work podcast. Give us your future of work view.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:33:30,600 ] It’s a great question. We’re going to continue to eat our own dog food, but I refer to ‘we’ want to sip our own champagne. Okay.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:33:38,080 ] I like that better. I like that better. ‘We’
Bob Cicero
[ 00:33:41,060 ] will always be customer zero if you would, but when you think about the next three years, workplaces will absolutely be refactored in terms of the more collaborative spaces. But the agents, the agents are going to be here. And I think that a lot of times we think about agents in silos and just our own digital workers. But we fundamentally believe that when you look at the agentic workplace, if you would. It’s Agents of Humans, agents on operations.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:34:09,840 ] and operations that span not just the IT operations, which is the natural approach because it’s all technology. But also the physical built environment. And those agents communicating together to be able to achieve outcomes that we never thought were possible. And I use this example a lot in terms of thinking about a human, again, coming back to that friction conversation. Say I have a meeting in a meeting room. In that meeting room, the agent said, ‘Hey, Bob can’t use that meeting room.’ Because we just had poor performance on some cloud applications.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:34:46,540 ] But the agents figured out that actually the performance issue was not because of cloud. It was because of our neighbor that turned on some interferer from a wireless perspective that the agents need to go and then change all the RF. But we don’t have time to do that because Bob’s meeting starts in two minutes. Let’s go notify Bob’s agents, digital worker. I gotta move. Notify my device and provide wayfinding capabilities to get inside of a room. That when I walk in there, my meeting is going to be in there. All the things that I like are going to be in there from the point of view of the environmental components. And I’m just going to be able to go about my daily day. Could be the same example on the temperature side inside of a room that’s too hot. But that only occurs if I have this common approach coming back to that platform effect that I mentioned before. With all the agents to be able to communicate across all of the individual silos that we look at— how organizations are typically operating today— to expand upon the effect of the agentic world.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:35:49,730 ] Wow. I agree.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:35:52,150 ] You know, it’s funny. I’ll end with a little funny thing that happened in our own company. We have a This group that’s working together is sort of our data group. Working with another tech team. And uh, everybody has their agents or multiple agents, and they came to us the other day. They said, ‘Hey, we have a problem.’ We need HR to address this problem. And I said, ‘What is it?’ He said, ‘Well.’ Our agents have started to date.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:36:20,280 ] So we have to have rules now where agents can’t create personal relationships. Uh, so I thought—uh, you guys have just gone a little too far and it was all tongue-in-cheek, and they were, they were just playing with it, but that’s how closely they felt that they could get their agents to work together to increase productivity. I found that quite fun, but also interesting that they were pushing that limit. And that will be changing the way we set up workplaces in the future for sure.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:36:52,490 ] The agents will continue to morph and change. Um, we’ve seen that with open source projects like Open Claw, um, and that’s where security is super critical because it’s just not about Bob getting access to, say, a financial system or HR system. It’s about the actions that the agents can do, and how do we actually secure that?
Bob Cicero
[ 00:37:14,129 ] So we can. Not have the agent’s date in your example.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:37:18,260 ] Yeah, well, I think as you go outside, I know we’re already looking at isolating our own servers for that purpose.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:37:27,480 ] Staying out of the cloud. Which is to have channels, but basically all of our internal security has to be isolated. You probably are doing the same thing.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:37:37,480 ] Why we need all these big damn data centers.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:37:40,640 ] So it is interesting as we go forward. Well, Bob, thank you so much. I love Cisco as a company and I’m really grateful to you for your time today. Um and uh, wish you all the luck of the world and everything that you’re doing. Come back and tell us what’s happening next year and we’ll catch up.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:37:58,630 ] I look forward to it. I do appreciate the time today was a great conversation.
Frank Cottle
[ 00:38:02,850 ] Take care. Bye.
Bob Cicero
[ 00:38:04,580 ] Take care.
