Cisco touts collaboration as way to transform data centers

The company also plans to implement policy and improve security in a virtualized data center environment, according to Rob Lloyd, Cisco's senior vice president of US, Canada and Japan. Cisco plans to policy-enable its VFrame appliance to provision data center services and resources via user and department profiles, and other metrics; and secure the environment on a per virtual machine basis rather than per port, Lloyd says.

On the consumer side, Chambers said the price point for a residential version of Cisco's TelePresence virtual conferencing system, expected within the next year, will be less than US$10,000.

"We think [US]$10,000 is very fair but it will be below that," he said.

Previously, Cisco had said that a consumer version of a TelePresence system would cost about US$1,000. TelePresence systems currently range from US$34,000 for the small office/home office version, to US$300,000 for a larger enterprise conference room.

Also on the consumer side, Chambers said he expects Ned Hooper, Cisco's senior vice president of consumer and small businesses, to deliver a proposal for replacing the Linksys brand on low-end devices with the Cisco brand within 12 months. Cisco stated previously that it planned to replace the Linksys brand with its own.

Chambers also said Cisco's WebEx and MeetingPlace collaborative conferencing tools will be integrated together, and the Cisco Live! conference will be virtual in the next five to six years.