Out of all the players involved in the connected universe, perhaps no single company stands to gain as much as Cisco Systems Inc. with its massive networking footprint. The head of marketing for its converged infrastructure business, Jim McHugh, did the math in an interview on theCUBE this week: “85 percent of the world’s data touches Cisco infrastructure at one point or another, and we believe 40 percent of data going forward is going to be created at the edge.”

That will amount to over 500 zetabbytes of annual traffic by the end of 2019 according to a forecast that the company published this morning, which should translate into a lot of additional router and switch sales. McHugh admitted much of this data won’t make it to the backend of the network where most Cisco gear is deployed, but his firm has a strategy to monetize that information too with technology like the real-time analytics software gained through one of its most recent acquisitions.

And that’s not even the end of of Cisco’s plans for connected devices. Watch the full interview with McHugh below to learn more about the networking giant’s vision for the biggest trend of the decade.

Photo via theCUBE