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• Telecom Conferences

  • Cisco C-Scape 2008 - Day 2

  • Posted: 4:38 pm Wednesday, December 10, 2008

• Well, Day 2 is done, and so is C-Scape 2008. I really enjoyed attending, and feel lucky to be part of the scaled down group that was there in person. The overall content was quite good, and Cisco really seems to be trying hard to stay close to the analysts and listen to our thoughts on their direction.

  As mentioned yesterday, a lot of the focus was on how Cisco is transforming itself into a "next generation" company (am still not sure what that term means any more) rather than how they're going to change the world around them. That said, their new tag line makes it pretty clear that's the end game - "Cisco - Best in the world. Best for the world." Got that? A bit of a throwback to GM in the 1950's, but you get the idea. If all this technology carries the day, it will be Cisco's world, and we'll just be living in it. Hey, they've got $27 billion in the bank and a lot of desperate companies at their feet, so anything is possible, right?

  Am being a bit facetious here, and Cisco is being every bit as careful and pragamatic as the rest of us. I found many of the sessions down to earth, and Cisco seems very conscious of getting their house in order and focused on helping their customers leverage IT to get themselves through both good times and bad. Day 2 continued the mix of sunny keynotes and hands-on breakouts about their various business lines.

  What strikes me overall is the breadth of their market coverage. Having recently been at Avaya's analyst event, it was interesting to see them talk about scaling down their business focus from some 27 lines of business to 3. Cisco was talking about managing 26 priorities - i.e. growth opportunities - so they're certainly not putting all their eggs in one basket. I highly doubt many analysts in the room - if any - can possibly be up to speed on all 26 priorities, which makes Cisco a difficult company to fully understand. Maybe it's that way by design, but listening to their top execs, you come away thinking there really is a grand plan here, and it's all under control. Sure hope so.

  I'll leave you with a few photos from today...

  Rob Lloyd talking about Cisco 3.0 and what this means for how they will transform the relationships they have with their customers. Pretty forward-thinking ideas here, and if executed well, will serve as best practices for others to follow.

  

  
  Art Hair, CTO of Disney - very interesting presentation about the realities of making movies in the digital age and how important networks are to the process. Never thought about film-making this way, and Disney really is a great showcase for Cisco in the sense that film is the most collaborative of all art forms, and collaboration is Cisco's driving mantra now.

  

  
  Charles Stucki updating us during the Telepresence breakout. Did you know that Cisco is doing over 4,000 meetings a week using Telepresence? That's got to be adding up to some serious savings in travel costs.

  

  
  The best for last - final session was an open-ended Q&A/fireside chat with John Chambers. I think he enjoyed this as much as we did.

  

  Technorati tags: Cisco C-Scape 2008, Jon Arnold

• Telecom Conferences

  • Cisco C-Scape 2008 - Day 1

  • Posted: 12:27 pm Tuesday, December 9, 2008

• It's Day 1 at Cisco's C-Scape analyst conference in San Jose. Keeping in step with the overall economy, C-Scape is scaled down this year, but still a pretty big event.

  Most of the morning was taken up with keynotes from John Chambers and new CTO, Padmasree Warrior. On the CTO front, it's quite a change from Charlie Giancarlo, who I just saw at Avaya's conference a few weeks back. I want to keep the focus on today, but feel free to search my blog for earlier entries about these changes.

  Over the course of the day, there have been two types of sessions. The keynotes have generally focused on Cisco itself and how the company is evolving to be more productive in a weak economy, as well as to be driven by the Web 2.0 mantra of collaboration. On the other hand, the breakouts had more to do with their various lines of business and how they're serving customers and entering new markets.

  Compared to last year, the messaging was more nuanced and less grand. The vision is not as ambitious in terms of leading the world to the promised land of seamless communications experiences, and there was not much hype about new technologies. Last year, we heard and saw a lot about Second Life, video, Telepresence, digital media and Cisco Field. There were bits and pieces about some of these, but more toned down. To me, that was a good thing.

  It's a tough market for everyone, and 2008's theme for analysts seems more about how Cisco is striving to become a model company for how these technologies can be adopted. There were lots of examples of Web 2.0 applications being used internally for collaborating and knowledge management, which I thought was great. Even John Chambers is doing video blogging now.

  He talked a lot about finding a balance between innovation and operational excellence. For Cisco, the latter is the priority, and when you have a well-run organization, innovation will follow. Getting this balance right is at the core of his vision for Cisco 3.0. He sees this vision not just as a strategy for Cisco itself, but also to create an environment that lets Cisco get closer to its customers. And by extension, if it works for Cisco, it will work for Cisco's customers. Good strategy.

  Another big theme for Cisco's roadmap was related to "Phase II of the Internet". Sounds like Web 2.0 to me - personalization, collaboration, multimedia, social networking, etc. John Chambers talked about this being their next iteration from the "network as the platform" mantra they have been following most recently. This is a big shift for a company that still makes most of its money from routers and switches, and speaks to the transition that he and the other execs talked about to stay ahead of the market. Virtualization and cloud computing are now big topics, and Padmasree in particular connected these themes to Cisco's vision for helping customers better leverage IT for growth and productivity gains in a global marketplace.

  That's it for today - will post tomorrow about Day 2. Here are a few photos of the day.

  
  Well, this is one way to creatively trim costs. A simple bit of branding to let you know you're in the right place. This is the Cisco event - uh, Adobe's conference is down the hall. Nothing fancy, but it works. And with some clever rearranging, it could make a nice menorah. Blinded by the light...

  

  
  John Chambers leads off with his keynote

  

  Not much new being presented so far - at least compared to last year. Here's a cool twist, though. John Chambers talked a lot about the globalization of communications, and this Telepresence demo with Jim Grubb was done with a Cisco employee in Madrid. He was asked to reply in Spanish, and as you can see in the second photo, his comment was translated on the fly into English in the caption at the bottom of the screen. It's bit like watching closed captioning on TV - same idea, but more profound. Reminds me of Jajah's Babel service, and speaks to the huge opportunity that IP-based technologies has to break down the natural barrier of language for communicating.

  

  New CTO Padmasree Warrior

  

  
  Cisco customer Q&A session - HSBC, Verizon, Disney

  

  
  SMB session, moderated by Rick Moran

  

  
  Randy Pond - Cisco 3.0 and creating transformation through leadership

  

  Technorati tags: Cisco C-Scape 2008, Jon Arnold

• Podcasts

  • Podcast - Socialcast - Social Media in the Enterprise

  • Posted: 5:32 pm Monday, December 8, 2008

• I'm an occasional contributor to Business Trends Quarterly, and they recently invited me to do a podcast on social media in the enterprise. My guest was Tim Young, the Founder and CEO of Socialcast, an interesting company in this emerging space.

  We had a pretty long chat, and covered things like what Enterprise 2.0 is starting to look like, and the role that tools like social media are playing. Tim is somewhat of a pioneer in the space and talks about what companies like Socialcast are doing to help enterprises harness the potential of social media and actually get their money's worth along the way.

  The podcast is quite long - about 42 minutes - so you might want to download it to your iPod and listen to it on the go. I've got two ways for you to access the file. One way is to pick up the link from my website. Just look for the Socialcast podcast on the Media Citings section of the site.

  Another way is to download it directly from the BTQ website, but you have to register first to get it. If you like podcasts from a wide range of thought leaders, it's worthwhile since there's so much good content there. To find my podcast, you need to go the Web Events section of the BTQ site, then scroll down - quite a ways down actually - to Web 2.0 podcasts. It's the last topic listed there, and once you're at Web 2.0, it won't be hard to find the link, along with my photo.

  Either way, I hope you give it a listen, and would love to hear your feedback.

  
  Technorati tags: Business Trends Quarterly, Jon Arnold, Socialcast, social media, Enterprise 2.0