Cisco Live: Forrester Research Hails “Jane” Chambers
Move over, John Chambers. Apparently, Forrester Research has spotted your future replacement — Jane Chambers — at the Cisco Live conference in Orlando. Here’s the scoop, and the video evidence to go with it.
Video highlights from Cisco Live include:
Gartner Analyst Rich Costello stating that he has “reached a level of understanding about Cisco.” It’s always reassuring when analysts understand their assigned markets:
Forrester Research Analyst Rob Whiteley apparently protecting his, um, privates (and a Cisco banner) from a free kick, then calling “Jane, er, John” Chambers a “visionary.” Yes, John is a visionary. But who’s Jane?
Nemertes Founder Johna Till Johnson saying she’s impressed by Cisco’s “vision” (there’s that word again) to tie together telepresence and data centers. Actually, The VAR Guy has to admit, she’s a pretty engaging speaker.
Yankee Group Analyst Zeus Kerravala cheering on the Boston Red Sox (ugh) but making a key point: The network really is the only thing that touches everything in corporate IT, giving Cisco a potential competitive advantage from the data center out to all devices. He also admits that Cisco hasn’t been a strategic player in the data center — refreshing, since he’s at a Cisco event with a Cisco person holding a camera. You can tell he’s very comfortable covering Cisco, talking shop, and adding his own perspectives to a conversation.
Ha! Well, I attended the Cisco Live! Event all week and during the Chambers keynote (which had a splash of the same predections he makes each year) was a phrase he thinks he coined “EAAS”…..yep….Everything as a Service. As if we needed another “as a service” acronym.
On a second note, I attended a very interesting session at the conference entitled “the business impact of Managed Services”….hmmmmm….why was this at Cisco? Well, it was very compelling as they told their view of the MSP industry and I will be sharing that PDF as soon as I get it. What was interesting in that class was the customers in there that shares complaints about their dealings with MSP’s. They said that the one thing they currently find hard common is the decline of support over time. Trust was another big issue noted in the room as was the general feeling that SLA’s are useless unless they provide a very tangible benefit.
Afterwards, I decided to do a little further investigation and I stopped by the “Cisco Powered” booth where I spoke with the head honcho of their services division…..he painted a fairly general picture of Cisco heading into the managed services industry and I asked him if Cisco planned to do this for the SMB market and if they were going direct to customers. Well…..as you can imagine, I got very little information but he did say Cisco was seriously looking into playing in the MSP industry as a “master msp” most likely but also, they never rule out going direct……
I got his card and information as he really wanted to discuss this further. I can’t miss that “opportunity”.
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