At the end of the June 2008, Cisco organized a conference for analysts and consultants in London. The goal of this 2-days long conference was to pass the vision and new products of Cisco to the analysts and consultanst of all Europe.
The conference was in the Cisco’s Campus in London and presented different contents and demos with concurrent sessions. Emerging markets, video communication, unified communication and security were the key words of the conference.
But the star notion of the conference was Video Communication. Cisco excutives gave a figure about Youtube, that was covering 10% of the whole world bandwidth spending.
I also paid special attention to the presentation that was showing the strategy of Cisco, which was founded as a hardware firm, and then transferred four years ago to the “service layer”. They presented this transformation especially in consultant sessions very condensely.
We talked with the Phil Smith, Cisco’s Europe Channel Director, about the goal of the conference which had been presented by the executives of Cisco who were coming from USA and different Euope Offices.
Turk-internet.com : What is the Cisco’s goal, to organize this analyst/consultant conference?
Phil Smith : Our intention is to make sure that the influencers in the industry are well versed in with Cisco’s Vision, Strategy and Execution and via face to face interactions help build relationships.
Turk-internet.com : How the ICT world is changing? What does cisco see in this world? How the systems and business model is changing?
Phil Smith : ICT is converging. Consumers are at the centre and they are demanding access to any content on any device in any place and over the network. This offers great opportunities for us who believe the Network really is the Platform.
Turk-internet.com : Cisco is pushing video communication and UC. So how those products will affect our lives?
Phil Smith : It is a very basic desire for humans to collaborate and communicate and UC with video provide us with a rich and flexible way of doing that – The huge rise in video and social networking on the internet show us that there is a huge demand for this kind of interaction – UC provide the best of that kind of capability in the business environment
Turk-internet.com : Who is joining to this conference ?
Phil Smith : Well over 150 Industry analysts and around 30 of our consultant partners
Turk-internet.com : Collobration is sounding one of the key word in this conference. So tell us the importance of this word?
Phil Smith : As per question 3 – we believe collaboration is a mechanism for companies to provide the next level of productivity and innovation. In a globalizing world, it is important to provide this kind of ability to collaborate to teams spread through the world and across organisations
Turk-internet.com : What is your expectation for Turkey. You invited 1 person from Turkey for this conference.
Phil Smith : Turkey has a great opportunity to transform the lives of its people through greater productivity and access to information. Like most developed countries it needs to stay competitive and believe that Cisco can prove a very strong partner to countries like Turkey in their plans.
We also talked with Cisco’s Turkey General Manager Erkan Akdemir :
Erkan Akdemir : The aim of this event is to create an inclusive conference which brings all analysts who cover Cisco in the European and/or Emerging Markets up to speed on Vision, Strategy and Execution in the theatres. It is aimed to demonstrate powerful and effective execution of Cisco’s global strategy in the two theatres across all segments. The target is 100 plus industry analysts from Europe and Emerging Markets. At the event this year we had a total of 114 analysts attend.
Turkish translation of this interview can be reach by clicking here.
Kaynak : 