The Cisco kid returns, but this time he’s the main man

He, his wife and two young daughters moved to a rented home in Rathfarnham – and spent two weeks in self-isolation. The family is now mulling buying a house of their own, navigating a property market thwarted by a Covid-induced dearth of supply.

Qatar “felt very remote from family and friends – and parents specifically – throughout the last year. Then the opportunity to come home arose within Cisco,” the 44-year-old says from his home office, via Cisco’s Webex video conferencing platform, which also offers calls and messaging.

“In Qatar last summer, we were very jealous because we could see that family and friends in Ireland were out in public parks and play areas. We had just come through the restrictions in Qatar – and even when you were allowed out, it was 40-odd degrees, so the girls couldn’t really go outside.”

These days, Heraty is getting plenty of fresh air, with daily walks around Bushy Park, where he takes Webex calls on his phone.

“I don’t think I’m the only one doing this. I’m starting to see a community of other people at the park on calls – we acknowledge each other on a regular basis,” he says.

Heraty is in his 16th year at Cisco, which is named after San Francisco – the city where in 1984 Stanford University computer scientists Leonard Bosack and his now ex-wife Sandy Lerner founded the company.

Bosack and Lerner designed and built routers at home and experimented using Stanford’s network, becoming instrumental in connecting computers at the university. They pioneered the concept of a local area network (LAN) connecting geographically disparate computers over a multi-protocol router system.

By the apex of the dotcom bubble in March 2000, Cisco’s share price had surged to nearly $80 – making it the most valuable company in the world, worth $500bn (€421bn).

But the bubble burst – making Cisco’s subsequent plunge a cautionary tale of the dotcom bust. Though it now has a market cap of $218.8bn.

The San Jose-headquartered juggernaut develops, manufactures and sells networking and telecommunications equipment and software, as well as cybersecurity and collaboration tools such as Webex. 

A large portion of Cisco’s revenue comes from purchases of expensive network hardware by government agencies, corporations and video and phone service providers. 

In early February, Cisco reported a decline in revenue for a fifth straight quarter, falling slightly to $11.96bn in the fiscal second quarter from $12.01bn a year earlier, as enterprise clients spent less on its network infrastructure products for offices, due to the rise of remote working. 

However, the remote working trend propped up demand for Webex, the virtual private network AnyConnect, and Cisco’s cybersecurity products.

Indeed, it is Webex that has grabbed the lion’s share of headlines for Cisco, after the pandemic forced workers to stay at home and necessitated employers, schools and governments to seek new options to keep operations afloat.

Cloud-based platforms such as Webex, Zoom (created by a former Cisco Webex executive and engineer), Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have been called upon for everything from cabinet meetings to birthday parties to virtual court hearings.

Later this month, Webex will even host Elton John’s pre-Oscar party.

The app had 600m users on average during the fiscal second quarter, compared to 324m in March 2020.

Heraty, who cites Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins as his business role model, says: “As recently as last month, there were tens of thousands of calls across Webex in Ireland alone. The Taoiseach is a very regular user of the Webex platform.

"Indeed, all government entities are heavy users of Webex, but it’s equally pervasive across all segments of industry.”

Growing up in Rathfarnham, Heraty developed a love of GAA and – eventually – business. His father, who ran a supermarket and post office in the northside suburb of Harmonstown, was a mentor when Heraty played for Ballyboden St Enda’s.

“I played minor football with Dublin and with the U21s. It was a very important part of my childhood,” he says.

After sitting his Leaving Cert at Coláiste Éanna in Ballyroan in 1995, when the web was still in its infancy, Heraty studied business at Dublin City University, cycling to college and back from Rathfarnham every day to maintain his fitness for football.

After graduation, he took up a sales position at the technology company ITG, selling telephone systems to small and medium-sized enterprises.

Sales suited Heraty: he had learned that he “loved dealing with people and meeting customers” from the part-time jobs he worked while at school and college, including a stint at an Italian takeaway and behind the deli counter at Dunnes Stores in Kilnamanagh.

During this time, Cisco was expanding in Dublin, where a sole employee had set up an office after spotting that the technology multinationals then piling into the city would require networking technologies.

After a spell at Siemens, Heraty joined Cisco in 2005, and began managing the company’s relationship with Eir.

In 2011, he and his wife Nicola and their baby daughter moved to Doha, in search of “adventure”.

There, he managed a Cisco client called Qatar Telecom, which has since rebranded to Ooredoo (and made history in 2018 when it became the first operator in the world to launch a live 5G network).

“Ooredoo is headquartered in Qatar, but has operations across the Middle East and North Africa, and as far as Indonesia and Myanmar,” Heraty says. “I used to travel to their various different operations and deal with their local requirements.”

By 2016, the Dubliner was running the enterprise business at Cisco Qatar itself, and quickly rose up the ranks to become country manager and country director.

While in Qatar, “we worked on some incredible projects, as they are building some mega-infrastructures to facilitate the World Cup and for the transformation of the country”.

Cisco is providing technology for the eight climate-controlled stadiums that are being built for the tournament and the fan zones. Qatar – the first Middle East country to host a World Cup – is promising the most connected games of all time.

Heraty says Cisco is also “heavily involved with Hamad International Airport and other forms of public transport that are being put in place.

"There will be an incredible integration between the airport, public services, transport and hospitality services, so that a visitor to the country will get a truly integrated experience when they arrive.”

However, Qatar’s treatment of its migrant workers (primarily from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) has been the source of scrutiny ever since 2010 when it won the right to host the World Cup.

Since then, more than 6,500 migrant workers in the country have died, a report by The Guardian has shown. There have been 37 deaths among workers directly linked to construction of World Cup stadiums, of which 34 are classified as “non-work related” by the event’s organising committee.

At the end of March, Amnesty International called on football players and FIFA to use their influence and put pressure on the Qatari authorities to follow through on promised labour reforms.

Heraty said it would be “very difficult for me to comment” on the issue, “not having access to the figures myself”, but “the Cisco participation will deliver an incredible experience throughout the games”.

Since his return to Ireland, Heraty has not yet had the opportunity to meet any of the staff who normally work at Cisco’s office at Eastpoint Business Park or at Cisco’s R&D facility in Galway, which focuses on cloud collaboration and is working on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning into the Webex platform.

He declined to provide the number of people working for Cisco in Ireland, but said all of them are working from home and will continue to do so in the medium-term.

Cisco will retain its Eastpoint office space, though they expect to operate a hybrid work environment after the pandemic.

Cisco would arguably benefit if more companies returned staff to centralised offices, because its network switches and Wi-Fi access points are used by enterprises. But the behemoth is preparing for the much-mooted emergence of a hybrid workplace.

“The likes of a Cisco become central to organisations around a distributed workforce and that virtual hybrid scenario,” Heraty says. 

“Our strategy is based around the needs of our customers today, around re-imagining the use of the application, the transformation of the infrastructure to enable that distributed workforce, and critically to connect that distributed workforce securely.

"Then it’s about using the collaboration technologies, so that a distributed workforce can be empowered equally – whether they are in the office, remote or using one of the regional hubs the Government has announced, which is a fantastic opportunity for regional development.”

CURRICULUM VITAE

Name Shane Heraty

Age 44

Position Cisco regional director for Ireland and Scotland

Education Coláiste Éanna, Ballyroan, Dublin, then a Business Studies degree at Dublin City University

Family Married to Nicola, with two daughters, Holly (11) and Lauren (9)

Lives Rathfarnham, Dublin

Favourite podcast The David McWilliams podcast

Favourite film Gladiator

BUSINESS LESSONS

What advice would you give someone interested in taking on a leadership role in the tech industry?

“I really value authenticity, and I think it’s really important for individuals to be authentic to themselves and to their teams.”

Who is your role model in the business world, and why?

“There are many. But I have to say that I’m very fond of our own chief executive Chuck Robbins at the moment. He’s done a phenomenal job of managing the organisation throughout the pandemic. At one stage we were doing weekly global check-ins for the whole team. It really was the chief executive, from his home, talking off the cuff about how we were responding to the pandemic.”

Sunday Indo Business