Cisco will lead SDN and win IT, Chambers says

There’s a big showdown coming in IT pitting no-name hardware with overlaid software against purpose-built architectures that stretch from data centers to the edges of networks, Cisco CEO John Chambers says.

Most of today’s top IT vendors won’t be around in a meaningful way in 10 years, with Cisco — naturally — left standing, Chambers told a packed house at his keynote address at the Cisco Live conference in San Francisco.