This writeup has been re-posted from Jon Arnold's Analyst 2.0 Blog: Picking up where I left off yesterday, here's my wrapup from Day 2 of Cisco's Collaboration Summit here in Miami Beach. The content and speakers were equally good yesterday, and the big picture themes continued along the lines of collaboration being "the investment of the decade". It may be a bit early to make that claim, but I think it holds up pretty well for both parties - CIsco and IT managers. We saw lots of validation that Cisco is betting heavily on collaboration, and considering how nicely they've bounced back from earlier this year, the sharpened focus seems to be working. Early in the day, we heard a lot about their architectural approach to collaboration adn how this allows IT to deliver scalable tools, which in turn provide an easy to use end user experience that helps them work smarter. The messaging and demos were very effective for two audiences - IT and end users. I found this to be a pretty complete vision, as they make the case fo a network-centric approach along with a people-centric approach to collaboration. Delivering on both ends should put - and keep - Cisco at the forefront of the ever-expanding collaboration space. A lot of what they're doing - especially around Quad and Social Miner - is still ahead of the business market, but I don't see any other vendors with such a strong focus on both aspects of collaboration. Their traditional competitors are more telecom-centric than netowrk-centric, and don't have the range of endpoints that enable collaboration across such a wide range of scenarios. I'll expand on these ideas in future posts, but for now, I just wanted to say that Cisco's collaboration story is getting stronger with each iteration, and they pretty much have things right now for making it the gold standard for others to follow. Unified Conferencing demo showing solid interop across many endpoints - PC, Mac, Cius, TelePresence - on a hosted basis. Makes a strong case for virtualization that's scalable, flexible and more economincal than premise-based solutions. Executive Q&A session For most of us,  this was probably the highlight of the summit. In the afternoon, we had a site visit to the JW Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Miami. As we learned, this is a very upscale brand within the Marriott hotel family, and is totally built out with end-to-end Cisco everywhere. It's a fantastic showcase for Cisco in the hospitality sector, but more importantly for all the cool things that make the guest experience really special. We got a walk through the property and saw lots of examples, and here are just a few. How's this for fun? TV screen embedded in the bathroom mirror. Even better were the mobile phones in the rooms. The idea is for you to use them anywhere in the hotel, plus they double as walkie-talkies. Again, another convenience element that speaks to how people like to relax - remember, collaboration is social too! This is a full size venue for events - see that huge multi-panel video screen? - guess you can figure where that came from. Aside from concerts here, this is a full size hardwood court which NBA teams can use as a practice facility. The Heat play very close by, so it's a great hook to get NBA teams to stay at the hotel where they can practice in private and just walk or taxi over to the arena. Guess that's another Lebron dividend for Miami! Here's my favorite - the virtual concierge. They're still experimenting with it, but the idea is you can start a TelePresence session - see the Cisco IP phone in the lower left corner? - and speak with someone just as you would with a concierge face-to-face. Pretty handy when the lineup at the desk is too long, and if you're comfortable using video. Of course, when not in use this way, it makes for a fabulous HD billboard to tell you just how fabulous this place really is. So, you just might be wondering, who is that agent you'd be speaking with for some virtual assistance on getting directions for your night out? Glad you asked. Well, if you turn around, you see this lovely wall in the lobby. The 'virtual concierge' is behind that wall in their contact center. How Wizard of Oz is that? Am sure a bunch of things come to mind here, and they're probably all true. Look, it's early days for high-touch consumer collaboration, but you have to give both the Marquis and Cisco kudos for aiming high here. In time, they'll make it more consumer-friendly, and from there, things should start getting interesting. It really is a cool experience, and once people get a taste of that, you'll believe more in Cisco's mantra of using technology and networks to transform our lives, both at work and at play. ... View more

This writeup has been re-posted from Jon Arnold's Analyst 2.0 Blog. Great start to Cisco's Collaboration Summit here in Miami Beach. Having been to a few of these, it's really interesting to see how the overall messaging has evolved, along with all the new offerings that keep coming. I don't say that last point lightly, as Cisco is working very hard to address as many touch points as possible around how people get things done in the workplace. Sure, it all drives network usage, and that's good business for Cisco. There's a higher motive at play though, and there's little doubt that Cisco is trying to be a lead author in the next great American novel, Work 2.0. On that note, I'll make a literary digression that seems appropos here. Studs Terkel is definitely my kind of guy, and he literally wrote the book about work in a post-war society. If you're not familiar with his work, get started here. His books are great, and not much has really changed over the years. Bottom line - people work because they have to, and while we all take pride in work's intrinsic value, we generally take the path of least resistance. Back to Cisco, and how they're trying to address this timeless quirk of human nature. The summit is a great roadmap update, but it's also a worthwhile opportunity to hear about how technology is being developed and deployed to make work a better experience. We're hearing nicely from both sides - what Cisco is bringing to market, and how customers are using it. The last part is of more interest to me, and it's fascinating to hear how companies both embrace and struggle with all these great tools. There's a lot to digest here, and I'm just going to pass on my key takeaways from today. Otherwise, you can follow my tweets - @arnoldjon - as well as the Cisco feed from the summit #csummit. - Barry O'Sullivan set the stage nicely with big picture stats about global population trends, along with the scale of technology adoption. Bottom line - half of the world's 7 billion people are under 25, and their collaboration tools are very different from their predecessors. Translation - a huge market opportunity for Cisco to address. Point taken. - Cisco is clearly in the software and cloud business now. I don't think I heard "unified communications" all day- it's all about moving applications into the cloud and giving us real-time tools that work seamlessly anywhere and on any device. The end result sure looks like UC, but here, it's all about having the right network architecture to deliver these capabilities. We saw some very slick video and live demos that make this look like a slam dunk. Yes, it sure looks easy, and makes for a happy ending, but we all know how complex this really is to do. Cisco isn't the only game in town, of course, but based on what I see industry-wide, nobody is covering more bases. There's a lot of Kool Aid here, but for enterprises willing and able to go down this road, there clearly is a promising upside. Collaboration takes many forms, and I think Cisco is doing a good job of defining the high end of the spectrum. - Social media is high on the buzz charts, but it's still a wild west environment. We heard a lot about Quad and Social Miner; yes, there's interest, and yes, companies are buying. How they're using it is another question, and it's clear that everyone is learning on the fly. Usage policies are lacking, IT is trying to accommodate BYOD desires, and while everyone quickly learns how to be social with these tools, it's not clear how much quality content generation is going on. These things will certainly evolve, but right now you get the feeling it's mostly a vendor-driven trend. Enterprises simply can't ignore how employee expectations are changing, and coming back to Studs Terkel, you have to let them define their state of happiness. For me, that's the real secret sauce of collaboration Cisco-style. There wasn't much talk today about ROI or TCO, so there's a leap of faith where IT has to concede more control to employees with the hope that measurable productivity gains and network efficiencies will come back in return -  hopefully before management loses patience. Enough said for now, and I'll pick up the thread again tomorrow. Until then, here are a few photos from Day 1: Barry O'Sullivan giving us the big picture. No pun intended, but he sure looks tiny against this giant visual. :-) Live collaboration demo - nicely done. Murali Sitaram - talking about collaboration in the "post-PC era" - he makes a strong case as to why cloud is the way to go. To support this, he announced a free trial of a limited version of WebEx for 14 days. That should stir things up. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't very nice here! ... View more

Yesterday I attended the Q2 Collaboration Review via telepresence at Cisco Canada's HQ in downtown Toronto. From what I can tell I was the only Canadian analyst among the 22 analysts globally who participated. It was my first time joining one of these reviews, and I found it quite helpful, and definitely preferred the telepresence experience to staying at my desk and joining via WebEx. The main takeaway for me was Cisco's move into hosted services, which I think will have a ripple effect throughout the collaboration ecosystem. This will be good news for some, and bad news for others, and today's news about the split with HP is indicative of some of the potential fallout we might see in the coming months. I think hosted can be a great market opportunity for Cisco, but it's going to take some time for the other stakeholders - service providers, resellers, solutions partners and enterprises/SMBs - to figure out where Cisco really fits in the value chain. I have other thoughts on the review as well as my impressions of the telepresence experience, along with a couple of photos. You can review all this on my blog post, and by all means, feel free to continue the dialog here. ... View more

This is my second post, and it follows the same pattern as my first. Again, since I can't cut and paste text, I'll provide the link here to yesterday's post about Day 2 from my Analyst 2.0 blog. Of particular note are my thoughts on WebEx Mail, and I'm not alone in feeling this was a highlight of the event. In the post, I cited an article about this that ran on ZDNet. It was done practically in real time, as I collaborated with the writer as the presentation was happening (both commentary and a photo), and I'm pretty sure he was first to market with the news outside of us attending the event. It's not quite the type of collaboration Cisco was talking about, but it worked pretty well nonetheless! ... View more

This is my first post for Cisco Community, and I'm happy to be part of it. I attended this week's summit, and posted a couple of times to my Analyst 2.0 blog . Having just created my profile tonight, I'm going to be expedient to share my thoughts with you here. This blogging platform doesn't seem to allow cutting and pasting of text, and I was going to import the text from my blog post about Day 1. So, the next best thing is for me to steer you directly to the post, which also includes some photo hightlights. For future Cisco events, I'll post directly here, so it will be easier for others to see everything I'm doing. ... View more