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!