Keith Goodwin, Cisco’s senior vice president of worldwide channels,
deserves an Oscar for his performance at the Cisco Partner Summit last
week in Boston. When his colleague Andrew Sage finished talking about
collaboration and the utility of the Flip video camera, Goodwin
playfully asked how he could get one. Sage, vice president of worldwide
small business sales, told him that he could buy one for about $249 at
any electronics store. Goodwin, in a bit of staged banter, said, “Let
me repeat myself, how can I get one?” To which Sage surrendered his
Flip HD.
The choreography was perfect. The bit provided Goodwin and Sage the
right opportunity to announce that all 1,500 conference attendees would
receive a Flip HD (roughly a $375,000 price tag), and they were
encouraged to take videos and load up on social networks.
In the next keynote, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior (what a cool name)
describe video as one of the four pillars of our “future connective
life” and the Flip video recorder as an integral piece of the network
infrastructure. In her words, “Flip is not really about the device, but
the architecture; the user-generated content that can be uploaded and
shared.”
Cisco, as a company, is a true believer in the social networking
revolution and the application of both enterprise and consumer Web 2.0
applications to business uses. Besides the Flip, Cisco launched “The
Vibe,” a conference-driven social networking-microblogging site that
looked suspiciously like Twitter, and conducted virtual sessions and
online simulcast for partners that couldn’t attend the proceedings in
Boston.
While Flip is clearly a commercial product – the fifth-fastest
selling electronic gadget (the iPhone being first), its presence amid
Cisco’s vast portfolio of enterprise products is a bit of an anomaly.
But its Warrior’s description of the Flip as a piece of the
architecture that’s intriguing. As Alex Thurber, the director of
Go-To-Market strategies for Cisco’s worldwide partner program,
explains, the Flip is more a catalyst for enterprise capacity expansion
and a relevant piece of partner and customer collaboration.
The catalyst part of this equation is easy to see. No sooner did
Cisco start handing out those Flip cameras did raw video by partners at
the conference start appearing on Cisco’s own social network, Twitter
and YouTube. The impact was immediate, and follows a general trend
toward using video as a means of conveying marketing messages,
collaborating with customers and partners, and sharing experiences with
your community.
Perhaps, however, the Flip is more an analogy for the need to think
differently. Goodwin and other Cisco executives talked at length about
the need to look to the future, collaborate, anticipate customer need
and develop products, solutions and business models that meet those
needs. Part of the problem Cisco and its partners face is that people
can see the future even without holding a Flip camera in their hands,
but they’re powerless to address those needs without a clear
justification. Solution providers attending the 1nService dinner last
week in Boston concur that the refresh cycle is all but dead in the
business environment. Doing more with less has taken on the dual
meaning of “doing more with older.”
The other recurring message at the Cisco summit was the vendor’s
investment in rebates and sales incentives for partners selling core
technologies, such as switches and routers. Cisco is staring down a
market that is using more than $9 billion in product use that’s already
passed its planned service life and another $14 billion that’s
approaching that mark. Expansions in its VIP (Value Incentive Program)
and rebates up to 15 percent for hardware products is more a reflection
of the shellacking Cisco and other hardware vendors have taken over the
last three quarters.
Cisco wants—needs—its partners to sell more of its core technologies
while it continues to develop emerging technologies—such as
telepresence, unified computing systems and video technologies. Virtual
worlds, video conferencing and simulating and home-spun videos are
great tools for communicating and collaborating—as Thurbers says, “with
video, you can tell if someone really gets it or not.” But the reality
is Cisco is looking to flood the existing network with more packages of
data to force reluctant businesses to loosen up their wallets and
upgrade.
Much has been said in recent years about the consumerization of the
enterprise. As Apple iPhones, Webcams and MP3 players migrate from the
home PC to the work PC, so too will the higher traffic loads that come
with it. Perhaps Cisco is right that consumer electronics and many of
the online features users get at home will translate into higher
bandwidth requirements in the enterprise and force upgrades. If that
happens, we’ll all be doing “flips.”
Lawrence M. Walsh is vice president and group publisher of Channel Insider. Read his research reports at [CI] Perspectives.
GET CONNECTED WITH LARRY
>> Click Here to Follow Larry on Twitter
>> Click Here to be Larry's Facebook Friend
>> Click Here to Link Up with Larry on Facebook
Commentary 
