RALEIGH -- John Chambers, the globe-trotting CEO of Cisco Systems, one of the region's largest employers, has some good news for the Triangle's embattled technology workers. The company is resurrecting its grand plans to one day employ 10,000 people on its Research Triangle Park campus.
The world's biggest maker of information network technology already is in the midst of a $100 million conversion of a two-story building in RTP into a data center to open next year. It will showcase the company's advances in cloud computing, virtualization and other technologies.
In an interview Thursday, Chambers called the RTP site Cisco's East Coast headquarters, and said the global technology company has not abandoned its original growth aspirations in the area. He wouldn't provide a timeline for when it might happen but said the company is poised to grow.
"We usually, over time, get to our plans," Chambers said in an interview in his suite at the downtown Marriott City Center. "Clearly we have the capacity for twice the people here.
"It could be one of our fastest-growing sites in the United States," he added. "The data center is the first move."
Cisco has 4,300 employees and contractors in the Triangle, down by about 200 as a result of the recession. But unlike many companies, Cisco has weathered the recession remarkably well and expects to hire between 2,000 and 3,000 people this year across the country.
Chambers is in town to mark the 15th anniversary of the company's RTP site, the San Jose-based company's second-largest in the United States and third largest in the world. This morning, he's the keynote speaker at an engineering summit sponsored by N.C. State and Duke universities. Cisco is not only a bellwether for the national economy, but also an employment stronghold in a region that has been badly battered by the economic downturn. Thousands of high-tech workers have lost their jobs at Sony-Ericsson, Nortel Networks and other companies that once seemed invincible.
Zeus Kerravala, who follows Cisco for the Yankee Group market research firm, said Chambers' optimism is not hype. "It's hard to bet against them," he said. "They always seem to hit market transitions at the right time."
But Kerravala said he has also heard Chambers describe Cisco's office complex in Boxborough, Mass., as the company's East Coast headquarters.
Cisco got its start by creating the switches and routers that direct Internet and phone traffic. It still dominates the global market in those areas.
But today the company is branching out into consumer products, electric smart grids and computer servers, which puts it in competition against the likes of Sony, Siemens and Hewlett-Packard.
The new data center in RTP will display some of the company's newest technologies. The RTP site also is home to such key functions as sales and customer service, technology development and data services for governments.
Chambers said the company expects to keep growing at 10 percent a year, a trajectory that analysts say requires the company to continue making acquisitions. Cisco has bought 137 technology companies since it was founded in 1984, and the company has been on the prowl to acquire companies that show potential but have been weakened by the recession.
"We've been the most aggressive we've ever been over the last two years," Chambers said.
