By Prince Osuagwu

Dare Ogunlade, the General Manager Cisco, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra-Leone, cuts the picture of a workaholic. Even when he buries his big frame behind a portable laptop in his cosy Victoria Island office knocking away on the key boards, all it takes to bring him to life is a question on connected world or Internet of Everything, IoE.

With an electrical engineering background and having spent almost 20 years in the field, Ogunlade has ICT in his fingertips. He didn’t disappoint when Hi-Tech came calling.

Cisco is involved in quite a few developmental initiatives in many countries but Nigeria seems to be a different market where it’s important to be in the big cities in order to compete. This has led many organizations to settle within the big cities leaving the rural areas unattended to. Is Cisco doing anything to develop the rural areas?

Cisco is all about the network and anywhere there is network connectivity typically, you will find us trying to partner with those playing in the rural areas with our technology.

In the case of Nigeria we have sub-sea fiber-optic cables bringing an enormous amount of broadband to our shores. Now, various stakeholders are working towards getting this broadband to the hinterlands, including of course, the rural areas. Since our technology is centered on the network connectivity there has to be that infrastructure before we can step in.

In our model, we work with partners; we sell our products through partners and at the end of the day we enable our partners work with infrastructure providers in those remote areas to be able to deliver service to them.

We rarely hear about Cisco these days, even in critical areas that we believe are Cisco’s major focus like cloud computing among others, Can you tell us why Cisco keeps a low key on activities in Nigeria?

I am assuming you have this perception because we do not allocate a significant portion of our marketing spend to advertising when you compare us to some of the other big technology players out there. This is part of a calculated strategy.

We focus our spending on supporting our partners and their efforts to market to their customers – that is how we are creating awareness. We also invest heavily in roadshows and events designed to educate business leaders, customers as well as perspective customers about technology and its key drivers in Nigeria.

One of Cisco’s campaigns in recent time is on Internet of Everything (IoE). If the internet is in some ways expected to do everything, don’t you think the labour market will be affected in some negative way?

I do not agree because the more connected the world is, the more productive it will be. Indeed, economists have proven that internet penetration and overall internet connectivity do have a very positive impact on country GDP.

The more connected the world, the better the quality of decision making for instance and the less is the transaction costs. For example, imagine if we conducted this interview with you being in your office and me in mine and we could chat, you could see me and we have crystal clear communication. The hours spent on the road trip could have been used on something more productive.

Data warehousing is getting more popular in Nigeria. What do you think has brought about this trend?

Globally, the impact and the importance of wholesale data centers continues to grow as companies realize the value of minimizing infrastructure investments on the balance sheet and freeing up capital to strengthen their core business activities.

Let’s look at data centers from a Telco perspective: regulation forces them to keep records for a long time so they must have a huge data centre capability. Banks as well, because of the nature of their work and the sensitivity of the information they carry, must also have a robust data centre infrastructure. However, it doesn’t make economic sense, for instance, for 23 banks to build 23 data centers, which is what is pushing consolidation.

Let’s talk about telepresence. Looking at other disruptive technologies like Skype which is practically plug and play and very affordable. Do you think it will affect or has affected the adoption of telepresence in Nigeria?

I think there is a target market for both segments. Cisco TelePresence is typically for an enterprise or organization while Skype has more of a residential play. An organization looking for quality of service, security and how it can also integrate with existing tools will definitely subscribe to Telepresence.

You manage the West African business, where does Nigeria stand in Cisco’s Global business strategy. Is there a long- term investment plan for Nigeria?

The structure we have in Africa is that we have four focus countries and five areas. Our focus countries are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Egypt and our focus areas are our South African business, East African business around Kenya, English speaking West African countries around Nigeria, Egypt and other countries that make up Africa, which we call Emerging Africa.

As one of the four focus countries, Nigeria is important and we also recognize the growing rate of Nigeria so we know it is going to be one of the biggest countries by share price and opportunity. Yes, we have a long term view for the market.