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Today I attended Cisco's Networker Solutions Forum, here in Toronto. The content and the audience was heavily focused on networking and IT, which is not really my thing. However, it's a great opportunity to see what Cisco is focusing on and how well they support the various communities in attendence. There were some 2,000 people there, and for Canada, that's a big community. To me, that alone speaks to the strength of Cisco's presence in Canada. It wasn't as flashy or star-studded as their U.S. events, but still pretty impressive nonetheless.

The day was packed with presentations - mostly technical, so a bit dry for me, but everything I saw was well done. I took in sessions on Unified Communications integration, the Connected Home, virtualization, and SIP trunking. They had a Solutions Showcase with big names like Bell, Allstream, HP and Dimension Data. IBM had a minor presence, and it was a bit surprising to not see Telus there.

They had some exec keynotes from Nitin Kawale, the new President/CEO of Cisco Canada, CTO Jeff Seifert and Allstream's Marketing SVP, Eric Fletcher. Lots of familiar and topical themes - green IT, virtualization, video, collaboration, unified communications and contact centers. No surprises there - just reinforcing the big messages their partners, resellers and integrators need to hear.

Not much else to add, but I'll share a few photos from the day.