At 10:12 A.M. Pacific, Rob Lloyd, president of Cisco and fellow Canadian took the stage to discuss: Application Centric Infrastructure, and the now two month old Intercloud and its ecosystem.
Two of Cisco’s largest Intercloud partners are Dimension Data in the channel and SAP in the alliance vendor category.
Lloyd announced that NTT and Dimension Data (Cisco’s largest global partner) have partnered with Cisco to build 13 data centres with Cisco’s cloud in the box architecture. And, there will be a special focus on emerging markets, where Dimension Data has historically shined. This signifies Cisco’s next level partnership with Dimension Data.
Lloyd also discussed the SAP Intercloud partnership. “Many of our cloud partners are SAP partners and we will build the infrastructure to deploy SAP Hana. There will be a Hana- based cloud.”
Lloyd’s keynote was channel centric. Dimension Data’s involvement will be crucial to Cisco’s cloud success. In many global markets, Dimension Data is the hands and feet on the street.
And SAP’s newer but growing channel strategy is sure to get a boost with the support of Cisco- a leading channel strategist.
Cisco is all in on the cloud and going to market with both infrastructure and application partners.
Certifications
The view from the ground floor. One of the best perks for techies at Cisco Live is the ability to take all of the certification exams for free. When I talk to technical folks, the recurring theme is, “I’m too busy working to take the exam during the year. But being at Cisco Live gives the network professional the opportunity to re certify, with all of the exams in one place and for free.”
While the biz dev folks are networking on the show floor, CIO’, IT directors and Architects are getting much needed technical advice from various vendors and other technical professionals. Sitting with an engineer out of Cincinnati, Ohio, he tells me, “I’ve had a Solarwinds question forever and could not find the answer. All I have to do is head to their booth and I get it answered in a minute.”
Party Effect
I am told the certification buffs come in two types at Cisco Live. The first group, are the ones that stay up late enjoying the many parties and end up sleeping through half of their planned tests. And then the second group who wait outside the sessions on standby and end up filling the vacancies left by the first group.
David Machlis is known as the Cisco Kid. Not to be confused with the 1950s TV series of the same name starring Duncan Renaldo. Machlis is the president of Intercast Staffing Ltd. of Toronto. David is blogging for CDN from the Cisco Live show at the Moscone Centre, in San Francisco.