Cisco C-Scape - Day 1

Well,there's not much to post about yet, but I've been here for a couple of short receptions. The full Cisco C-Scape event really starts later today. I realize it's now Tuesday for most of you, but it's still late Monday night here in Las Vegas.

I got here early afternoon, and have been catching up on deliverables and email most all afternoon. Things have been fairly quiet on the analyst front, but that's going to change very quickly. Until then, thought I'd pass along a few photos from this afternoon. The real work starts bright and early at 7am, PST!


What do they do with this thing, once the conference is over?



Nice lounge here. I keep thinking about Dire Straights looking at this...."that ain't woikin', that's the way you do it, your money for nuthin...."



Had an interesting visit at the Flip kiosks. This represents Cisco's first true consumer offering, which is a bit of a departure for them. The Flip is a pretty neat product, and I got a taste of all the various flavors they have on tap. I especially liked the underwater model, which was on dispaly here with a waterproof case. It may seem trivial, but with summer here, I can definititely see the appeal. Cisco may have a way to go catch up to Apple in the cool cachet department, but I think they're doing a pretty good job here.

Cisco Has a Message for Carriers - the Future is Video, not Telephony

Cisco made a lot of noise this week announcing the CRS-3 router, and I took part in the webinar briefing. I'm not an expert on routers, but I got some pretty strong takeaways about the bigger picture implications for carriers. In short, their future is about video and the Internet, not telephony. It sounds like strong medicine, and what you'd expect to hear from Cisco, but I happen to agree.

I've put my thoughts together on this for my latest Service Provider Views column, which runs on TMCnet. It's running now, and you can read it here.

You don't have to look far for coverage of Cisco's announcement in the press and blogs, and I'll just steer you to one from here in Canada - ITBusiness.ca - where I contributed some commentary. Just as the carriers face a lot of risk adapting to new technologies and changing customer preferences, Cisco has its own set of challenges, some self-created, and others stemming from general market conditions.

Nobody has a free ride here, so it's an interesting story that goes way beyond the current state of router technology. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this theme soon, but would love to hear your thoughts any time.

Aastra MX-ONE's Canadian Push Continues

Last month, I attended a briefing for Aastra's launch of MX-ONE in Canada. I know it seems strange that a Canadian vendor is just now bringing this solution to the home market, but things are a bit different up here. We don't get a lot of firsts, but we're still #1 in hockey, and hey, Canada won more gold medals than anybody in Vancouver - nothing wrong with that.

Anyhow, I don't have much news for you, but earlier this week I came back to visit Aastra for part 2. This time I got a full demo of MX-ONE, which is their enterprise class offering. As with all the telecom vendors, MX-ONE is much more than an IP PBX. It's full of all the requisite features to support Unified Communications and contact center applications. They showed me lots of multimedia examples, including wireless handoffs, calendaring integration and presence.

Not being an IT guy, this was nice to see, but I found the go-to-market, value proposition conversations more interesting. Probably the most important takeaway here builds on what we heard at the analyst briefing. Namely, their close working relationship with HP, and how MX-ONE offers a versatile and complete alternative to Cisco, as well as Avaya/Nortel. Those are really the major players that Aastra is up against, especially in terms of building their channels. Of course, there is Mitel, Shoretel, etc., but for MX-ONE in particular, they're aiming pretty high.

While the technology appears to be solid, and I'm sure the pricing is attractive, Aastra's biggest challenge will likely be brand recognition. I've long contended Aastra is the best kept secret in this space, and seems typical in so many ways of successful Canadian companies that don't get much attention elsewhere. This is especially strange for Aastra considering they are a profitable public company, rapidly closing in on $1 billion in sales. I don't know how you keep this under the radar much longer, but I don't need that external validation to know that Aastra has a good thing going here.

Just a couple of photos from my visit...

Cisco - Q2 Collaboration Review

Today was the first time I've attended one of Cisco's Collaboration Reviews via telepresence. Telephone or WebEx sessions are the norm, and while they're usually pretty good, TP is the next best thing to being there. Before getting your hopes up too high, this wasn't a full-blown TP session (and I've been on plenty of those). It was just me and their AR liaision, Andrea Berry at Cisco Canada's HQ in downtown Toronto. While this was a global event, with 22 analysts participating, it looks like I was the lone Canadian analyst - lucky me. So, I can say with pretty good confidence that this may well be the first news you've heard about today.

There wasn't anything really groundbreaking, and the session was just an hour - and I mean that literally. Cisco makes extensive use of TP internally, and apparently their TP rooms are booked months in advance. So, when your time slot is up, it's up. The screen abruptly went blank on the host in mid-sentence at 1pm on the dot. Gotta keep the train moving I guess.

Most of the talking was done by two key drivers of their collaboration initiatives - Barry O'Sullivan - SVP Voice Technology Group, and Carl Wiese - SVP Global Collaboration Sales. They had a lot to recap from the recent quarter, and here are the main points that I can share:

- they posted 17% year-over-year growth across their collaboration portfolio - UC, contact center, telepresence, IP telephony, WebEx, etc.

- like any vendor in this space, they have been aggressively going after competitors who have struggled, namely Nortel, Siemens and ALU

- while revenues were not disclosed, they cited early successes in their various spaces - 12 customers now using WebEx Mail (all are U.S. and primarily SMB), 450+ are using cloud-based IM, over 3,600 locations using telepresence, and 75 customers using Show and Share

- perhaps the strongest message overall was their move into hosted services - this will now give their customers a choice between premise-based and carrier-based solutions

- highlights were given about 4 recent customer wins - each one showcasing a particular strength of Cisco or attractive market opportunity

- their objective of providing "pervasive video" - both big and small - was briefly discussed, but no updates on the Tandberg deal were given

A couple of these points warrant a bit more detail, so here goes...

Regarding WebEx Mail, that was a highlight for me at their Collaboration Summit last November. They shared one lesson learned with us today, which I found interesting. Their early deployments did not support BlackBerry, and it looks like they underestimated how important this was, even for SMBs. As such, they've had to accelerate BlackBerry integration to keep these deployments moving forward. I asked if they had any indication yet as to whether their email platform has led to faster adoption of other collaboration tools. They liked the question, but didn't have much to say - am guessing it's early days, but I have to think that's the end game here.

The move to hosted has huge implications, and the analysts had lots of questions about this one. I wanted to better understand the role they seek to play, especially in terms of owning the customer and sharing revenues with service providers. They talked about their intent being to get the carrier set up to offer hosted, and then let them run with it. The acronym they used is BOT - "Build, Operate and Transfer". That's the process, and we'll just have to see how it actually unfolds. It's clear they want to have it both ways - deploy on-prem, as well as partner with carriers - with the customer choosing the best path. They wouldn't quantify the market opportunity, but did go so far to say that it "appears real". They're in talks with 10 carriers now, and BT is the one they point to as an announced partner for hosted. There is a lot of potential here for channel conflict, and Cisco is not afraid to tread on new ground. However, I got the sense they are approaching hosted cautiously, and it looked to me like they were choosing their words carefully. Regardless, they're not going to ignore the hosted market, so get used to it, folks.

Two customer wins were of particular interest to me. One was Duke University, where they talked about how they're using telepresence to help extend the classroom experience off campus. I've long felt that distance learning is a huge opportunity, and that IP technologies will play a big role in re-defining higher education.

The other customer win was Molina Healthcare. Aside from this being another great vertical market for collaboration, they cited an interesting outcome from deploying telepresence there. They're finding that people are meeting twice as often, but for half as long. That's a pretty good result, and a great way to validate the value of telepresence.

Finally, I just had to comment on the actual experience of using TP today. Since the topic was collaboration, one would expect the tools for the meeting would properly reflect that. For the most part they did. Even though the screen we used was fairly small - see photos below - both the audio and video quality were very good. However, there was no use of split screens, which would have been effective at times, since Barry and Carl were in different locations. As such, the visuals were very much in a serial manner. One speaker at a time - cut to the next speaker - cut back to the first speaker, etc. I found it a bit like watching a newscast - it's ok, but not that engaging.

Two other small things. I suspect other locations had multiple screens, whereas we only had one. When the host was addressing me, she was looking to the right, which must have been the screen she was seeing me on. This would look perfectly normal from her end, but Andrea and I only saw her looking right, and not at us. This takes some getting used to, as it wasn't clear that she was talking to me. To us, it looked like she was talking to someone else. Live and learn.

The other small thing was the use of a slide deck during the session. They were really just used in passing reference, and most of our attention was centered on the speakers. That was probably for the best, since the slides were only displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen. Since we had a small TP unit, the slides were really small, and almost impossible to read. I'm sure this would be less of a problem on a full-size system, so I guess this comes with the territory. On the other hand, I would have been just as happy to have no slides, which would give us an unobstructed view of the speaker (see photos below). For any speaker sitting on that side of the screen, the slides block out a good portion of their body. While Anderson Cooper would probably roll with that, Ted Baxter would be freaking out - so, as long as the egos are in check, it's probably not a problem. :-)


Barry O'Sullivan


Carl Wiese

Google + Gizmo5 = More Disruption

Voice continues to be a really interesting space, and while I was attending Cisco's Collaboration Summit this week, a couple of notable developments took place. On the topic of disruption, Cisco is doing its best to upset the apple cart and reinvent itself as a software company. During their summit, we got a steady diet of collaboration, video, cloud services and the new world of work, but never a word about routers. Anyhow, you can review my earlier posts this week for more about that.

Back to Google. I'm going to keep things short and steer you to a nice piece that ran in Wired on Wednesday. It sums up the Google/Gizmo5 story quite well, and give appropriate kudos to uberblogger Andy Abramson, who has been on the right side of deals like this for some time. Many of his clients have had successful exits, and he's been writing about Michael Robertson and his Gizmo venture for ages. Great to see Andy get his due in a publication like this.

More importantly, Google is methodically building on their earlier GrandCentral acquisition (another Andy thread here) to create a bona fide service in Google Voice that should be cause for to concern to anyone in the voice business. In some ways, this could be the first serious challenge to Skype, especially since Gizmo5 is totally SIP-based, and can connect to all the mainstream IM platforms, including Skype - and Skype can't do that. So, this has the potential to become a truly global any-to-any service, and if the quality is there, this can be a big deal.

I say so for two simple reasons. First, between GrandCentral and Gizmo5, Google has move to the head of the line without even spending $100 million. They've been accumulating fiber for years - not likely at great expense - and through the wonders of the Internet and an endless expanse of server farms, they can now compete against any carrier in any part of the world, all of whom are struggling to compete under the weight of complex, expensive communications networks.

Not only that - my second reason - but Google doesn't need to make money with voice - at least right away. Skype needs every penny it can get from subscribers since that's their only real revenue source. Google still makes most of its money from advertising, so they can run Google Voice without much regard for making money, which is a luxury no other operator can afford. Pretty interesting set of circumstances to say the least.

Anyhow, I have three posts to steer you to that cover the ground very nicely. First is the Wired piece I referred to earlier; second is Andy's post - which ran before Wired's story, and finally, Andy's post from today, which notes that the deal is now official. I'd say everyone connected to these posts is pretty happy today.

While I have you, Google/Gizmo5 isn't the only deal going on this week of note. These things always seem to happen while I'm away. A step or two away from the world of Google Voice/Google Talk is Jajah, a company I've followed and written about for a while. Sooner or later you know they'll be a target, and you may have picked up on this from TechCrunch. I don't have anything new to add, but this item doesn't surprise me in the least. They are another disruptor like Google, and following Ribbit's acquisition last year by BT, these companies are truly validating Web 2.0 as a platform for creating, hosting and providing all forms of communications services. This is not good news for incumbents.

Finally, let's not forget Logitech, who have made their second video acquisition of note. Following last year's pickup of SightSpeed, this week they announced their deal for LifeSize, valued at $405 million. This deal pales besides Cisco's dogged attempt for Tandberg, but together, all of this activity points to some serious consolidation coming in the video space. And this brings my post full circle to Cisco. For them, video is every bit as disruptive as voice is for Google, and when players of this size make moves all at the same time, you know big things are coming. It's made for a busy week, and I'm happy to end the week posting about it.

Cisco Collaboration Summit - Day 2

Tuesday was end-to-end Cisco, starting at 8, going through til 5 with a series of presentations around various aspects of collaboration and cloud services. It was a pretty intense day, and if there was one thing everyone could agree one, it was the overwhelming amount of information.

There was definitely a lot of interesting content here - a mix of demos, announcements and vision - but it's not the kind of thing you can distill into a sentence of two. To me, that's the strength and weakness of events like this. It's a strength in that having us all here is an efficient way to get all this information across - fair enough. However, it's also up to us to make sense of it all, and with so many new things to take in, everyone will have their own take on what Cisco is doing here.

Without a doubt, the word of the day around here is "collaboration", and it turns up in about every third sentence. Fair enough, and there's no doubt that the focus is on how people work together, and Cisco wants to be in the middle of all this. Until recently, most of Cisco's messaging has been around the network and convergence of various technologies. There's a definite shift now from convergence to collaboration, but as we're seeing across all the sessions, there are so many branches to this tree.

As hard as Cisco is trying to be the great enabler of collaboration, it's a very broad pallet, and these capabilities don't emerge overnight. They're about as far along as any company can possibly be, and as you get your head around the scope of all this, you have to wonder how willing and able enterprises are to run with Cisco. No doubt Cisco is getting its share of traction, but I think it's going to take some time for businesses to catch up with all this, especially since we heard very little about the ROI story.

I'll leave you with some photos and narrative to give you a sense of the topics we heard about yesterday. If there was one takeway to share it was their WebEx Mail announcment. I commented about this briefly in the last two photos below, but I'll also point you to an article that David Greenfield wrote yesterday on ZDNet about the news.

I should add that the genesis of this story very much embodied the spirit of collaboration we've been hearing so much about here. During the WebEx Mail demo yesterday, I was IM'g with David on Skype, and within an hour I had given him enough narrative and one of my photos for him to get an article written and posted. That's pretty much a real-time form of collaboration, and I'll bet he had the very first published article about this launch. Way to go, Dave!

I'll stop now, and leave you with some photos.

Demo with David Knight and the virtues for enterprises to use a blend of premise based and cloud based collaboration solutions


Charles Stucki and the rationale for Cisco's big push into video


Video demo where Charles talked about Tandberg and how Cisco can seamlessy interop with Tandberg, Polycom and Lifesize - all at the same time


Rick Emery, talking about what Jabber brings to Cisco



Laurent Philonenko demonstrating Cisco Unified Presence 8.0, and their advanced capabilities for working across various IM platforms


Murali Sitaram talking about ESS - Enterprise Social Software - and Show and Share, their new solution to enable video-based collaboration. Pretty neat stuff, including tagging video content and making it searchable, just as you would with text-based content.



Duncan Greatwood and the "evolution of email". This was the highlight for me, and we got a solid demo of their just-launched WebEx Mail service. For any heavy user of email, it wasn't hard to see how they've added intelligence, and made the user experience more powerful. It's especially attractive in that you never have to leave the email interface to do other things such as start a chat session, retrieve and review files, and access the personal profile and contact history of anyone in your log of messages.

Cisco Collaboration Summit - Day 1

Yesterday was the kickoff for Cisco's Collaboration Summit. Last year I attended virtually, and this was my first time going in person. As with other Cisco events, it's very well staged, and has the feel of a rock concert at times. Given that the focus is on collaboration and using all the multimedia tools to fullest effect, it all felt about right.

There was a lot of buildup around the slew of releases coming from Cisco now, and they made this clear repeatedly, so the basic message is that Cisco is up to some big things and jumping to new curves. That's not a new message from Cisco these days, and they shared a lot of vision with us about how they're taking collaboration and the cloud to new levels, and how this is going to change the way we work.

A lot of the discussion was around plumbing and architectures, and not being an IT guy, the technical revelations were not as interesting to me as the focus on what collaboration and the cloud means to the enterprise and the end user experience.

Things opened with an appropos reference to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which happened 20 years ago yesterday. Of course, Cisco is trying to do the same thing with their vision for collaboration. They view this as a $30 billion opportunity, and in short, their definition of collaboration is people + teams + information. Fair enough, but it's going to take the better part of 3 days to explain all this to us.

Even though yesterday's session was only 2 hours long, I wasn't alone in trying to get my head around the multitude of announcements and initiatives Cisco shared with us. Lots of talk, esp from John Chambers, about the need to have strength in two areas - the underlying technologies, as well as being supported by business processes that are driven by specific goals for the enterprise.

They spent a lot of times demonstrating this by Cisco's own example in terms of how they've done a lot of this themselves. John Chambers talked about the cultural changes Cisco has gone through, shifting from "command and control" to "teamwork and innovation". He backed this up talking about Cisco making 4 acquisitions in the past 45 days, which could only been possible by having all these collaboration capabilities in place. Am not sure if enterprise customers have taken these ideas totally to heart, but Cisco sure seems to have made the move, and it's hard to deny that they have a lot of agility for a company of its size and global reach.

Otherwise, lots of impressive demos and messaging about how "the new normal" is driven by collaboration, especially video. Most of the focus is about Webex and Telepresence, with a few references to IP phones (esp the new 9971 video-enabled phone). Remember routers? Not a word here. This is all about defining the new normal - helping IT cope with the endless treadmill that IP is putting us on - more info than ever before, more devices, more access, more security risks, more storage needs, more power/energy demands, fast time to market, etc. More, more, more.

If you can figure all this out, then Cisco has the answers. I can't sum this up with a simple explanation - that's why we're here for 3 days. So, conceptually, we all get it, and in Cisco's mind, the path is clear. With each passing session, it's getting clearer to the rest of us, so just bear with me another day or two.

Waiting to begin - setting the stage...





See that glow above his head? That's the JC halo - it follows him everywhere - he's so good getting his message across...



Nice demo here, with a video image on the right for Telepresence, and the same image on the left on Cisco's new IP phone.

Next Stop - San Fran - Cisco Collaboration Summit

It's been a busy few weeks travel-wise, and my last stop is finally coming up. Next week, I'll be in San Francisco, attending Cisco's 2009 Collaboration Summit.

Not much more to say, but I feel lucky to be part of this group, and collaboration is definitely of interest to me these days. Cisco has been active in this space all year, even if you put the Tandberg story aside. Am sure that will be one of the topics of discussion, but I'm particularly interested in how they'll be going to market with scaled down collaboration solutions that will have broader market appeal. As I saw on my Telepresence panel at Supercomm last month, Cisco is doing just fine there, but not everyone needs or wants full scale TP.

Anyhow, I rarely get to San Francisco, so this will be nice stop. I'm there Monday through Wednesday, and if things go to plan, I'll be done traveling for 2009. Time will tell.

Cisco, Ifyphone, Jaduka - 3 News Items, 3 Different Innovation Stories

The last couple of days have been interesting on the news front, and I'm highlighting 3 items that are all coming out around the same time. I'm citing them all here to show the diversity of things that are going on, and that innovation is alive and well. Of course, innovation can be very subjective, but there's no doubt that companies of all sizes are trying to differentiate along this spectrum.

The following three examples are completely unrelated aside from the fact that they're news items right now. Each tells a different story, but they're all after the same thing - trying to bring something new to the market that adds value for their customers. To me, this is a much healthier sign of life than the steady stream of new product releases or line extensions that are of more benefit to the sellers than the buyers.

1. Cisco - "Everything as a Service", and enhanced security

Last week, Cisco did a lot of media and analyst briefings for these two items, which were under embargo until this morning. This seems like a long time for an embargo, but maybe I just got briefed early in the pack, and they needed to speak to a lot of people last week. Anyhow, these two items are quite different, and are fairly complex, especially the first one.

On the first front, Cisco is boldly moving further into cloud computing territory, and this announcement is meant to showcase what's possible when WebEx is paired up with extensive collaboration features. Seems like WebEx on steroids, and I suspect it needs to be ramped up like this to show why this acquisition was money well spent. By calling it "everything as a service", this news pushes Cisco well beyond its hardware roots into the realm of applications. Cisco is not shy saying this is a big growth story, and that they are determined to get their share of it.

I've been on this theme since their last analyst conference, and I'm hardly alone in noting how big of a leap this can be. Of course, Cisco is very good at this sort of thing - arguably better than Microsoft - and WebEx gives them the platform they need to become a serious SaaS player. Fair enough, but this news can also sound a bit like a scorched earth policy where Cisco will do what it takes become a leader in this amorphous collaboration space, and that's where I find it all a bit hard to follow.

It's clear that they have solid technology here, and their focus on the cloud and collaboration is right on. What isn't clear - at least to me - just what the vision is for the customer. No doubt it's great to have all this capability, but if you are a soup-to-nuts Cisco shop, it doesn't look like there's much room anywhere for anybody else. As with other markets Cisco has entered as a newcomer, they will invariably bump up against others who would normally be strategic partners.

Sure, that's what competition is all about, but it's hard for me to tell if Cisco's vision is to wholly own the customer, or work in concert with everyone else and keep the best-of-breed model alive. Even within their own world, I'm not quite sure how this vision works. For example, it's easy to see how collaboration and Unified Communications are related. Cisco has an awful lot invested in UC as well as telepresence, and I can't really tell how much this WebEx solution is complementary or competitive to each.

In short, there's good news here, especially for WebEx fans and enterprises looking to leverage the cloud for more powerful collaboration tools. However, the overall vision strikes me as being very broad - maybe too broad - so it's a bit hard to say what it potentially means for the competitive landscape. Will have to wait a bit to see how this plays out with everyone else.

The second Cisco story is about a more extensive suite of security features. John Chambers is speaking about this today at the RSA conference, so I'm sure you'll be hearing about it from a few different sources. This space is not my forte, so I don't have much insight to add, but it is a logical extension to the first news item in this post. People will only collaborate to the extent they trust the environment they're working in, and that's what today's security announcement is about.

I really can't say how much of this is innovation versus line extension, but one security aspect that sounds intriguing is IPS 7.0 - Intrusion Protection System. During the briefing, they focused on their sensor software, and how extensively it protects the network from external threats. It seemed pretty comprehensive to me, but I'm no security expert, so I'll leave it at that.

Stepping back, all I can say is that by pairing the WebEx news with this security news, Cisco is sending a strong message to reinforce what I suspect will become their new mantra - "Collaborate with Confidence". I think you'll be hearing that phrase a lot over the next few days and beyond.

2. Ifbyphone gives carrier more tools/new tools/better tools

Speaking of the cloud, Ifbyphone is a pretty cool company that gets it, and is definitely driven by innovation. I briefed with CEO Irv Shapiro yesterday about yet another interesting offering they've come up with to make Voice 2.0 real for service providers. Their latest innovation doesn't have a name, so it's not so simple to describe. Basically, they're offering Voice 2.0 services to carriers in a very easy to do way. Any operator with a softswitch platform can partner with them to use as many features as they like. It's a classic utility model, which allows operators to maybe just try one application or ramp up for a busy season to meet spikes in demand.

I see this as a great way to experiment with new applications or trying to bring new value to a specific segment of a carrier's customers. This will be especially appealing to Tier 3s - CLECs, RLECs, IOCs, etc. - who are new to cloud computing, but have the SS platform in place to offer new services. While SS vendors like MetaSwitch and BroadSoft already offer a wide range of applications, Ifbyphone offers more flexibility for smaller operators, lower cost, as well as distinct Voice 2.0 features developed specifically for this market. Irv also notes this can also be done on a white label basis, and combined with their SIP Trunking offering, carriers can have a very competitive SMB offering with an end-to-end IP experience.

As with Cisco, it's too early to say whether this complements or competes with what the SS vendors are doing. However, Ifbyphone continues to remain on the right side of the innovation curve, and I've seen enough here to know they're on to something good. In terms of what's new, I think the innovation here is more about business models than technology, and I have no problem with that. Service providers need all the help they can get, and this being early days for Voice 2.0, the market needs companies like Ifbyphone to show the way in putting all these pieces together - cloud services, SIP Trunking, mashups, voice applications, etc.

To learn more about how they're doing this, you should spend some time on their website, which features Irv's personal blog (check out his post about where Google Voice falls short for SMBs), the company blog, as well as a White Paper they just released on what I've been writing about here.

3. Jaduka Exchange

Last but definitely not least, Jaduka just launched their thought leadership portal, Exchange. Good name, good concept. Collaboration and innovation go hand-in-hand, and this portal is a great one-stop-shop to get Jaduka's latest thought leadership - not just from their team, but posts from across the industry and individual bloggers, and relevant content such as articles, white papers, etc.

There are lots of portals out there, but consider the source. Jaduka is a good news story waiting to happen, especially now that Thomas Howe has joined as their CEO. None of this will be news to my regular readers, but for everyone else, it's not too late to get on this bandwagon. Jaduka's world is about many of today's hot topics - mashups, CEBP, collaboration, Web services - and the broader 2.0 convergence opportunity between voice and the Internet. Lots of opportunity and innovation going on here, and given how little most of us understand this world, Jaduka Exchange is the right idea at the right time.

Cisco's New Vision for Telepresence and Collaboration

Last Friday I had an engaging briefing with Cisco about their latest vision for collaboration, Unified Communications and Telepresence - perhaps the largest words in Cisco's lexicon these days. I mean that in the strategic sense of course, as these have been major growth themes for them since last year. Their news was under embargo until today, but I've been quite busy both in and out of the office today, and this is my first chance to post.

We all know about Cisco's Telepresence ambitions at the high end of the market, and they've done a great job there. It's getting a lot harder to find takers in this economy, and it's been just a matter of time until Cisco scaled down the product for the rest of us. They've been going in this direction for a while, but the latest iteration puts it that much more within reach of the mainstream business market.

There are a lot of moving parts to this story, so much so that there were two news releases about it - here and here. All told, this forms the Cisco Collaboration Portfolio, and pulls together a multitude of technologies and solutions that serve to make us more productive in the workplace.

Apologies if I'm sounding a bit vague here, but I'm struggling to share the essence of this in words. We covered an awful lot of ground in our briefing, and touched on just about every form of communication and collaboration, with all of it in some way falling under this portfolio umbrella. I know there's a lot of good value here, and during the briefing we talked about the challenges of pulling this together and articulating a clear value proposition.

On one level, this portfolio concept is Cisco's way of building on network-centric solutions and becoming more applications-centric. Looking at the bigger pieces - Telepresence, WebEx, mobility, iPhone support, integration with Microsoft Office - it's mostly about apps and endpoints - not a lot here about routers and switches or their more recent move into blade servers. Fair enough - we know this is where the growth is, and Cisco has rightly bet heavily that video is a key driver.

All told, there is a lot to like about what Cisco is doing here, and I wish I could convey it in short, simple terms. On a marketing level that could be a challenge unto itself, as the story I'm hearing is mostly about productivity and efficiency rather than cost savings. I don't want to sound too pedestrian, but saving money seems to be the big - and sometimes only - thing people I'm in contact with want to talk about right now.

Cisco does not chase these cost-driven businesses as a matter of course, but it's harder to be picky these days. That said, there is certainly an important segment of the market that will buy into their portfolio concept - and one of the press releases is largely built around an independent study validating this.

My main takeaway from all this is that if collaboration and improving business processes is high on your strategy agenda, then Cisco's Collaboration Portfolio will resonate very well. It was great to see a scaled down Telepresence system - the 1300 - and I really loved the Recording Studio concept.

The very first time I saw Telepresence, I asked whether sessions could be recorded. At the time, the answer was no, but clearly it's yes today. During the briefing we touched on some great examples of how Telepresence is being used to record video segments for things like training, job interviews, making announcements and recording presentations for future use. To me, that's what makes this technology cool - enabling new ways of working that could not be done before. Not to mention in Hi Def.

To balance out this post, my main caveat is that if it's this complex to explain, then it's too complex for the market. Maybe not all the market, but a big piece, I'd say. I know Cisco has a good idea here and the right idea, but it takes a bit of effort to understand all the pieces and how they fit together. That's fine - it's an emerging space, and nobody has figured it out, so it's hard to expect the precision of Procter & Gamble here. That time will come, I'm sure, but we're not there yet.

On another level, of course, this is tricky territory in that Cisco is extending its market presence into areas that have usually been the domain of their partners, and invariably conflicts will arise - not just with these partners, but the channels and enterprises themselves. I don't have an easy answer to all of this other than saying business is business, and if Cisco has what the market wants, they must be doing something right.

2008 Year in Photos - Part 2

This post rounds out my photo review for 2008. I posted about the first half of the year yesterday, and here's the rest.

That's it for me in 2008. Enjoy New Year's and I'll be back blogging in a few days.


Toronto Tech Week, Toronto, September




TMC IT Expo, Fall Show, Los Angeles, September

The Three Tenors... Amigos... whatever. How's that for an unlikely group shot? This would have been completely unimaginable a year ago, and it says a lot about how much the industy has changed in 2008.



Andy Abramson's wine dinner - always a highlight at conferences he attends.



BroadSoft Connections, Phoenix, October







Above: Walt Mossberg - what a treat! - and colleague Thomas Howe, winner of BroadSoft's mashup competition


Avaya Global Analyst Conference, Boston, October

Another interesting image you would have never imagined a year or so ago - Charlie Giancarlo leading the team at Avaya.




Ericsson Experience Center Roadshow, Toronto, October




CDN Channel Elite Awards Gala, Toronto, October




KOTRA Showcase - Korean Trade Association, Dallas, November



Just a few of the really interesting products on display - a Kindle-style reader, 3D television, and a mobile video cam that you can strap on pretty much anywhere...







My Dealey Plaza Pilgrimage, Dallas, November

Being in Dallas the day after Barack Obama's election win, how could I NOT do this? I thought it was a great alignment of history, with so many parallels and inspirations to be drawn from JFK. Here are a few highlights from my expedition, and to see/read more, please check out my more extensive photo essay.

Here's my favorite shot - not just for this trip, but for all of 2008. To me, it sums up the spirit of what I experienced that morning. It's bit hard to discern in this format, but the shot was taken in front of the JFK Memorial, with the inscription of his name showing in the cenotaph in the background. Of all the people who happened to be in Dallas on that historic day, I didn't see anybody making connections like this...



Here are a couple more - the infamous Grassy Knoll, and the view of JFK's motorcade route, including the "X" mark where he was shot, and the Book Depository building at the left...





Tekelec Analyst Day, Morrisville, NC, November

CEO Frank Plastina



Cisco C-Scape 2008, San Jose, December





Above: John Chambers holding court, Rick Moran's SMB breakout, Art Hair's presentation about how Disney is using Cisco's solutions - very interesting stuff!

Avaya Canada Analyst Day, Toronto, December

New Canadian GM, Gerard Baglieri

2008 Year in Photos - Part 1

One way I like to recap the year is a photo review of the events and cool places I got to see in 2008. I'm no globetrotter, but I do my best to participate in a wide variety of industry events. This goes a long way to keep me current and connected to a whole lot of interesting companies that are leading the way in IP communications. I also love photography, and try to live in the moment with whatever camera I've got.

This summarizes my travels in the first half of the year, and tomorrow I'll do the second half.

CBC's Test the Nation, Toronto, January

What a fun way to start the year. Test the Nation is a national quiz show on CBC TV, and is based on teams from various walks of life. I was invited to be on the Blogger team, and we were up against ths likes of Chefs, Pilots, Taxi drivers, and... Celebrity Look Alikes! Definitely the best perk I've had as a blogger.



The celeb look-alikes were better looking than the bloggers, but were the top team in the end. Got more pix like this in my original post.




Not only did we win as a team, but fellow blogger Rick Spence came away with the top personal score among all the contestants. Whoo hoo.




TMC's IT Expo, Miami Beach, January

Can't think of a better place to be in the dead of winter. The big giveaway prize was this red Mustang, and it sure helped bring traffic on to the show floor.




Jeff Pulver's Social Media Breakfast, Toronto, March

Jeff's never-ending world tour of social media breakfasts made a well-received visit to my town at our local deli. Definitely the shortest commute I've had outside of my home office.




eComm 2008, San Jose, March

Probably the most important event I attended all year, and it should be even better in 2009.





Above: Lee Dryburgh, me - moderating the wireless panel, Truphone's James Body helping my son Max unlock his iPhone, just bought that morning from the local Apple store

Dimension Data Analyst Day, Boston, April




Dialogic Analyst Day, New York

Really enjoyed this event, but the camera in my Nokia phone had a major meltdown, and I have no photos from the sessions. The personal highlight for me, though, was the Yankee Stadium tour they gave us. What a fantastic experience, especially for Red Sox fan like me. I was able to salvage a few shots from the tour, and here's one. You can view a bunch more on my original post.



IT360 Conference, Toronto, April

Canadian telecom conferences are few and far between, and generally smaller than U.S. events. This was one of the bigger ones, and I had my hands full chairing the tracks on Unified Communications.



MetaSwitch Forum, New Orleans, April

April was my busiest month in 2008, and the MetaSwitch Forum was the most fun. They always put on a great event, and the setting made it so enjoyable. Got plenty more photos of N'awlins if you're into virtual tourism on my original posts - view them here and here.





Above: Andy Randall, the amazing Mardi Gras World, a taste of the French Quarter


Nortel Analyst Day, Ottawa, May

I was one of only 3 analysts/media attending this event, and we got a very sneak preview at some things that Nortel had not previously shared with the public. It was quite the day, and you can read/see more about it on my original post. Things haven't gone too well for Nortel since, but they do have some cool technology that is going to find its way to your desktop sooner or later.





Above: Project Chainsaw demo, Telepresence demo


Cisco Channel Showcase, Toronto, May