Cisco's Partner Summit in N'awlins!

Getting ready for another great Cisco Partner Summit next week. This year, it's all about the Cloud (isn't everything?) and how Partners can participate in the market transition to "IT as a Service" or "XaaS".

Here's a great "explainer" for those wanting to know more about how Cisco is enabling the benefits of cloud with our partner BMC Software.

A bigger sail for partners to navigate the "Perfect Storm"

Cisco has added to its "Navigate to Accelerate" partner enablement arsenal with a series of announcements this week in Boston; less than an hour's drive from Gloucester, MA (where the Andrea Gail and Billy Tyne's ill-fated crew departed for the final time in 1991, inspiring 2007's "Perfect Storm").

The "Perfect Storm" for managed services adoption is well underway (fueled by technology enabling "clouds", the worst economy in 25 years keeping business "underwater", and many providers trying to offer their customers a "lifeboat" with new service pricing models). At the eye of this storm is Data Center Virtualization and the business benefits it will bring (efficiency, scaling, reliability, and new service time to market).

Among the announcements Cisco has made this week are new channel programs to expand its expanding data center partner channel:

Key Take-aways:

* To motivate channel partners to invest in building a unified data center practice, Cisco has expanded its existing Value Incentive Program (VIP) offering for all of Cisco's data center technologies, including unified computing, storage networking, and WAN optimization, as well as for its existing offering for data center switching. VIP is Cisco's flagship profitability program that rewards partners for investing in architecture practices around collaboration, data center virtualization and borderless networks.
* Cisco also announced the new Data Center Channel Solutions Program, designed to help enable and accelerate the sale of tested, validated reference IT solution designs that incorporate products from industry-leading data center vendors, including EMC, Microsoft, NetApp, Red Hat, and VMware.
* Cisco today announced it is opening the Unified Computing opportunity to a broader range of its channel partner community. Cisco is announcing an Authorized Partner Program (APP) to support the new Unified Computing C-Series Rack-Mount Servers. All Cisco DCNI Specialized Partners will be able to sell the new rack-mount servers after completing online training and exam from Cisco.
* The Cisco Advanced Data Center Network Infrastructure Specialization (DCNI) is the fastest-ramping specialization in Cisco's history. Despite the economic downturn, partners have rapidly invested in the specialization since its launch a year ago because of its strategic significance to their business.

More good things to come...

CIO Top of Mind: 1) Virtualization, 2) Collaboration, 3) How am I going to get #1 and #2 done?

According to a recent study by Network Instruments, three quarters of companies will have invested in virtualization and unified communications by the end of the year, despite the worst economic downturn since World War II. The biggest drivers behind this projection are the perceived cost savings and quick return on investments.

Susan Campbell of TMCNet summarizes saying: While this news is positive for this industry, the study also determined that some companies are not adequately prepared. In fact, 75 percent of the organizations that are rushing to roll out new network technologies do not have the tools and visibility necessary to monitor and troubleshoot performance problems.

This comprehensive study included nearly 450 CIOs, network engineers and IT managers throughout the world. It also explored the economy’s impact on virtualization and unified communications in addition to primary challenges in managing these technologies.

Key findings from the study highlight that more than half of all applications will run on virtual machines by 2011; companies deploying video conferencing solutions will double by 2010; 65 percent of network teams have not experienced layoffs and do not expect to in the near future; more than half of the surveyed companies lacked the appropriate tools or visibility into virtual environments; 80 percent struggle with identifying the problem source as their primary troubleshooting challenge; and 45 percent view virtualization as the greatest emerging monitoring challenge.

"While organizations have the right idea investing in technologies that reduce corporate expenses and improve productivity, they're failing to invest in appropriate monitoring tools," said Charles Thompson, product manager of Network Instruments, in a Monday statement. "This will actually create larger problems that can halt business processes and cause network teams to waste countless hours troubleshooting."

This is where partnering with a trusted managed service provider comes in. To get the job done, companies both large and small are turning to managed service providers to purchase: unified communications and collaboration "as a service" as well as virtualized infrastructure (virtual data center, virtual private clouds, storage as a service, compute as a service). I had an opportunity to participate on a webcast with the Kirk Laughlin of Information Week "Catching the Managed Collaboration Services Wave" where we discuss the business drivers fueling adoption of managed and hosted collaboration services. We also discuss how Cisco is uniquely enabling its managed service providers to "envision, build, market, and sell" managed services. To find a global list of the industry's leading "Cisco Powered" managed service providers, see the Cisco Powered Search tool: www.cisco.com/go/cpn. View the webcast and let me know your thoughts.

With regard to virtualization, as 75 percent of organizations have virtual network environments, the majority are running less than 25 percent of applications on virtual machines. This is expected to rapidly increase over the next two years. Yet as the majority of companies still cite monitoring in such an environment as a critical challenge, vendors will need to address this challenge and turn it into a market opportunity.

The study also found that the majority of companies will implement some form of unified communications within the next 12 months. More than half will have deployed video conferencing and unified messaging by 2010.

The Managed Collaboration and Virtualization Gold Rush is on!

Collaboration - Goes Mobile!

Well, what we've all been waiting for has arrived. The ability to leave a Web Conferencing session at your desk, transfer it to your mobile phone and continue the session while on the move. When you consider that 35% of mobile calls are made in transit, having the ability to take full featured web conferencing sessions (with voice and slides) has tremendous value in keeping employees productive while on the move.

At last week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Cisco-WebEx announced the ability to support mobile collaboration on the iPhone, RIM/Blackberry, and Nokia N60. Functionality includes the ability to transfer sessions in progress from your desk computer to your mobile and vice-versa. To increase the safety of users taking a web conference call from the road, Cisco has added a new "one click to join" feature. Several minutes before a scheduled call, WebEx will trigger the "one click" feature allowing the user to press one button and be connected to his full feature web-conference.

Video las Vegas! ...from NXTcomm '08

Post date 6/17/08 - 9:42am

I'm here at the NXTcomm show in Las Vegas where everything is about Video. Video is changing everything- advances in video and collaboration technology have made us increasingly visual in the ways that we communicate and collaborate. On demand IPTV, Mobile Video, and Rich Media Collaboration solutions (including TelePresence video conferencing) are driving enormous traffic growth over service provider networks. Cisco just published it's Video Networking Index which predicts a doubling of traffic every year for the next four years.

The business implications for network owning service providers are huge. While Service Providers are counting on video and mobile data services as their revenue engine for the next few years, they must invest in new service creation to monetize video traffic -and- invest in an intelligent network that will support rich media traffic efficiently. Everyone here in Vegas understands that "seeing is believing" :)

Wireless Broadband is “In the House”!

The recent announcement by Qualcomm that they were entering the femtocell market (Joining Cisco in investing in femtocell provider ip.access) provides one more endorsement for this approach to providing broadband wireless everywhere. So what are femtocells and why should I care? Femtocells are mini base-station / access points that are deployed indoors; providing excellent mobile coverage (voice and broadband data). Femtocells are connected to a customer’s wireline broadband service with traffic backhauled to the mobile providers network.

Femtocells solve two of the top challenges facing mobile providers. First, Femtocells allow a mobile provider to offload traffic from their traditional network to a wireline network. With mobile data services growing at over 50% per year, serious network expansion & upgrades would be needed within the next two years; femtocells can forestall millions in network upgrades. Second, Femtocells increase customer satisfaction and pave the way for new service opportunities by dramatically increasing the bandwidth customers enjoy indoors. With femtocells, the mobile providers dream of having customers only use 1 phone, their mobile, is possible. Other services such as real time video and phone to phone video conferencing are now possible.

So what does this mean to managed service providers? This offers a great opportunity to offer new, tightly integrated managed services catering to the “pro-sumer” (professional + consumer); service suites combining business & entertainment offerings. It presents telcos with an opportunity to leverage their wireline and wireless assets to provide more complete managed service suites. It also provides an entry to mobility providers to offer managed business services. What I'm really excited about is what this means in moving our industry closer to mainstream "connected home" services! The “net” is that femtocells in the home and business will dramatically improve the service experience we can all expect from our service providers. The bar is moving higher…

Managed Services: The time is NOW!

Wow, what a month it has been for managed business services! There has been a lot of buzz about this rapidly changing market over the past 12 months with the last 6 weeks having been especially busy. We’ve had the news of ATT announcing a managed intercompany Telepresence service, the news of HP buying EDS to shore up its global IT services delivery capabilities, and we’ve heard the updated managed services growth forecasts by Ovum that has the market growing (in a tough economy) at close to 20% CAGR over the next 4 years to top $66B by 2012. This is over twice the growth rate of IT spending.

So what’s behind this spurt in activity and robust growth projections? Well, although many of us have been talking about managed services for the past decade, it has been slow to develop. It’s only during the last four years that market growth has increased to a rate that’s interesting. During this time, we’ve seen the storm clouds forming on the horizon… the storm clouds that would form the “perfect storm” for managed services. A culmination of forces that brought together would unleash a dramatic increase in adoption of managed services.

Four forces are coming together to make NOW the time for managed services. The forces are: 1) Demand-side forces, 2) Supply-side forces, 3) Technology enablers, and 4) Economic conditions.

On the Demand-side, you have businesses of all sizes embracing managed services in record numbers. The “new” is off, the risk is lower, the business imperative to focus on “core” vs. “context” has sunk in – thanks Geoffrey Moore. Businesses simply don’t have the staff or resources to devote to adopting new technologies they need to remain competitive in today’s market. Businesses want the benefits of new technology at a predictable monthly cost, with access to expertise should they need help. Working with a managed service provider mitigates their risk.

On the Supply-side, you have IT, Network, and Services companies working to increase profit margins, reduce revenue fluctuations and improve customer “stickiness”. Managed services help them do all three. We’ve not only seen traditional IT companies grow their managed services businesses, we’ve seen them take aggressive moves into market adjacencies. Worldwide, telcos have been acquiring system integrators to shore up their ability to provide “one stop shopping” to their business customers while growing their profitable managed services revenues. This has allowed them to broaden their services portfolios to offer “managed LANs and desktop services”; areas traditionally owned by value added resellers. To differentiate themselves from the pack, managed service suppliers have been strengthening their customer service level guarantees which has further mitigated customer risk; fueling the market further.

With regard to technology enablers, we’ve seen an explosion in virtualization and network management technologies. Virtualization has changed the game - everything has become shared - networks, data centers, servers, storage, voice systems, you name it. Combined with lower cost network management platforms and new software pricing models, you have a technology environment that has made it easier for businesses of all sizes to build a managed services business.

And with regard to the economy, we all know the story there. Rising fuel prices have put the squeeze on everyone. Businesses have seen costs increase while their customers have less to spend. Going “green” has become a top company initiative; rising oil prices have helped people “do the right thing” and look for more efficient ways to get the job done. We’re driving less, telecommuting more, and using high end web and video conferencing services. We’re using technology more out of necessity. We’re doing this with less IT staff and budget. All of this driving us toward a different way of purchasing IT – we want it “as a service”.

These four forces have been building to create a perfect storm for managed services. While these forces have been coming together, there has been another force holding the market back. The force of customer restraint; restraint caused by a lack of trust in providers of managed services.

Until now, we have had a steadily growing supply of managed service providers, but not a standard definition of managed services nor a standard of quality for managed service delivery. Both key in establishing customer trust. This is changing. Over the past several months, we’ve seen our industry start to come together with managed service definitions and standards for service quality. Cisco has its Cisco Powered Managed Services designations that have set a high bar for service delivery while industry experts like Michael Speyer, Forrester, have developed managed service definitions that represent the collective thinking of our industry. These developments together have been creating the perfect storm for managed services – for once, I’m looking forward to the rain!