Cisco's Emerging-Markets

Two limousines race through the desert north of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at 110 miles per hour, stopped at times by the winds coming off the nearby Red Sea. Networking giant Cisco Systems' delegation, which includes Senior Vice-President Paul Mountford, is running late for a groundbreaking ceremony hosted by the King of Saudi at the recent biggest construction projects on the planet. King Abdullah Economic City or KAEC is now mostly occupied by cranes. But by 2020, they expect around 2 million people to live in a futuristic metropolis three times that of the size of Manhattan and with some of the most advanced technology money can buy. As the black Lexuses arrive, one delegate remarked on the fast pace, and Mountford laughs. "That was nothing," he says.

The KAEC groundbreaking will see how hard Cisco is pushing. Its executives form the biggest Western delegation by far and after the event, the company will host the king in a separate tent for a demonstration of Cisco technology that will allow a person to appear on stage as a holographic image. All this before the company has won a dime of business for its products.

Cisco's promise

Cisco isn't only selling technology. Mountford's selling point is that Cisco can help countries to modernize its economies and become leaders in the Internet Age. The company defends that by investing in the Internet infrastructure Cisco sells, these governments can educate their citizens, improve health care, and boost national productivity. They can even create their own tech sectors, giving citizens the opportunity to become well-paid "knowledge" workers like those in Bangalore or Guangdong, China. That's the promise of the Cisco Effect.

"This is a chance for Cisco to influence the world on a much bigger scale," says John T. Chambers, the company's chief executive. "It's about raising standards of living and creating large middle classes."