IT Life: The Scot Who’s Connecting The Commonwealth Games

As country manager for Cisco Scotland, Donald McLaughlin is on the spot. He is leading Cisco‘s project to make sure the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow has top-notch communications. He’s also keen that the project will showcase his special interests: as director of collaboration for the UK, he oversees Cisco’s offerings for video, cloud and mobile.

Tell us about your career
I have been with Cisco for 14 years and have been in the IT industry for 26 years, having joined the Unisys graduate program straight from University in 1988.  During this time I’ve been lucky enough to experience quite a few different areas of technology, from mainframes and minis at Unisys through to PABXs and call centres at Siemens, before joining Cisco in early 2000.  Since then I’ve had the chance to work on most of Cisco’s portfolio over the years, although I’ve always been most passionate about our collaboration solutions.

Most connected games

What’s the favourite IT project that you’ve ever worked on?
The Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games. I was born and bred in Glasgow and feel immensely proud that we have the opportunity to show off our city to a worldwide audience.  I’m equally proud that Cisco will help make it the most connected Commonwealth Games ever.  We are the official network infrastructure supporter for Glasgow 2014 and have a fantastic team working round the clock to get things ready. Any project which has a very public and immovable completion date makes things that little bit more exciting.

What technologies were you involved with ten years ago?
IP Telephony, which ten years ago had really started to take hold in the market. By that stage we had been selling IPT for a few years, however that was the year we saw a massive shift in the market from the traditional TDM PABX world to IP.

What do you expect to be using in ten years’ time?
Stronger reading glasses and ‘Just for Men’ hair colouring! That aside, I believe the Internet of Everything (IoE) will have transformed the way we do pretty much everything. Only one percent of all the things that can be connected to the network are currently connected, and with that set to increase rapidly over the next ten years, we have a very exciting time ahead of us.

Anticipate the changes

What do you think is the greatest challenge for an IT company or department today?
Continuing to innovate ahead of the competition. Many organisations change when they think it’s time to change, but by then it’s often too late.  Companies need to anticipate market transitions and be bold with their R&D investments. To achieve this, IT companies need to attract and retain the best employees who will fuel innovation within their companies.  This is particularly critical in an industry where a massive skills shortage is predicted. Understanding the different motivations of the next generation of IT workers is essential to overcoming this challenge.

To cloud or not to cloud?
To cloud – definitely. With our partners, we recently announced the launch of Cisco global Intercloud, offering organisations an expansive suite of value-added applications and network centric cloud services to accelerate IoE. From a collaboration perspective, cloud can play an important role in making communication tools such as video more pervasive due to the simplicity and speed of deployment cloud provides. Ultimately, this should make it available to a much wider audience which will improve productivity for all businesses.

Who is your tech hero and who is your tech villain?
As I work in the collaboration space, my tech heroes would have to be Alexander Graham Bell (pictured) and John Logie Baird (both Scottish of course). The telephone and television transformed the way the world communicated and audio & video still form an important part of how people collaborate nowadays.  My tech villain would have to be ‘Cat 5’ Woman – or what about The Wicked “Switch” of the West?

What’s your favourite device ever made and what do you use the most?
The electric piano, as I can play it with headphones without annoying the family. The one I probably use most is my smartphone – I’m an Android man (…well – not literally of course).

Apart from your own, which company do you admire the most and why?
Probably Google. They have a highly innovative culture and are constantly looking for new ways to approach conventional problems. Any company that can turn its brand into a commonly used verb is clearly doing something right.

What did you want to be when you were a child?
I actually wanted to be a marine biologist or a fisherman.  I grew up spending my summers on the Isle of Arran and loved living by the sea and being close to nature. However, I ended up turning down a place at medical school to study maths as (strangely) I found Pythagoras more interesting than physiology.

Try our Tech Sports Quiz!