Cisco pledges to build on growth at Galway plant

IN A further confirmation of support for its Irish operations, electronics and communications giant Cisco has pledged ongoing…

IN A further confirmation of support for its Irish operations, electronics and communications giant Cisco has pledged ongoing development of its major research and development centre in Galway.

The commitment follows a statement to The Irish Timesthat the company planned an expansion of the Galway facility, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

"Expect to see continuing investment into Galway from Cisco," Chris Dedicoat, Cisco president for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia told The Irish Timesat Cisco Live Europe, an annual conference held in London this week.

Mr Dedicoat said the Galway centre, which employs just over 200 people, “is the base for our collaboration in development” across several Cisco R&D centres, with the head of the programme in Galway.

READ MORE

He noted that Cisco has found Galway to be a rewarding location in part due to “access to talent from universities”, both graduates and regional research centres.

“We see absolutely as a continuing investment,” he said.

During a presentation, he also noted that Europe continues to lag behind the US in investment in information technology, with 2.8 per cent of GDP spent on IT in the US, compared to 2 per cent in Europe.

“It doesn’t seem much, but that equates to $180 billion,” he said.

More innovation and better uses of technology were a key part of economic recovery for Europe, he said.

For Europe to emerge from the economic downturn, he said it “would have to generate new technologies and new technology-based companies”.

Governments needed to “provide a new framework” of support to enable companies to get adequate broadband connectivity and access to cloud computing facilities that would enable them to scale in size.

Too much telecommunications regulation in Europe also restricted new networks being built, although he felt “there is an appetite for investment” by shareholders into fibre networks.

He also said he believed 2012 would be a year in which multinationals began to spend their large cash stockpiles, which most have kept in European banks to avoid tax charges for repatriating those revenues to the US.

“There is a huge amount of cash,” he said, with Cisco alone holding $40.3 billion in European banks. “The likelihood is that companies will use that cash outside the US” – in the EMEA region – for investment and acquisitions, he said, as hopes for a US tax amnesty or change in regulations have faded. Cisco is one of the world’s largest technology companies, with $30 billion in revenue in 2010.