Slideshow: Cisco’s in it to win it at Partner Summit San Diego

San Diego marks a turning point in Cisco’s channel history. The last time the Partner Summit was in the sunny southern California town the networking giant announced Keith Goodwin would be its channel chief.

Since then Cisco has gone through its up and downs and this slideshow takes a look at some of the more whimsical moments from the conference.

Click on to see what Cisco is doing at this summers’ London Olympics.

By Paolo Del Nibletto

The Baron de Coubertin would have been proud to see all the flags waving at the San Diego Convention Center for Day 1 of the Cisco Partner Summit. Cisco is sponsoring the London 2012 Olympics and will have Cisco House at the games to display innovative technology. Keith Goodwin greeted partners from 90 countries each are carrying their flag on stage to mark the opening of the 2012 Partner Summit. Cisco’s Olympic network will be 35 times more powerful than the one used at the Beijing Olympics just four years ago.

Keith Goodwin greeted partners from 90 countries, with each carrying their flag on stage to mark the opening of the 2012 Partner Summit.

Cisco CEO John Chambers admitted that the company had a rough 18 months and needed to trim the fat. Chambers, pictured here with Rob Lloyd and Gary Moore, hired Moore to run operations. For more on how Cisco recovered click here.

Chambers said that “Average is over and above average is over in three years.” He is now committed to doing five things with the channel partners: 1. Educate, 2 Inspire, 3 Listen, 4 Share Successes, and 5 Have Fun.

2011 wasn’t much fun for Chambers and Cisco but he hopes the future will be.

I’m sure you’re wondering what Avnet Canada president Brian Aebig and this citizen of San Diego has to do with Cisco Smart Services? Well, nothing much really. It’s just a funny picture and Brian was really cool about it. Avnet is one of Cisco’s top distribution partners and he attended the conference. You can read more about Cisco Smart Services by clicking here.

Cisco does a lot of business with channel partners; more than 80 per cent of the company’s entire revenue goes through solution providers. But a significant chunk is also done with alliance partners such as EMC, NetApp, Microsoft and VMware. They too attend the conference. Pictured here is Michael Kerr, director of EMC Canada channels. He is holding up a very old IBM memo card.

Pictured here are Kent MacDonald of Long View Systems of Calgary and Paul Goldman of IT Methods of Toronto. Long View Systems won best Cisco Western Canadian partner at this year’s Cisco Partner Summit.

Cisco Canada president Nitin Kawale hosted a large contingent of channel partners from across the country at the Fleetwood club in San Diego. Pictured here with Kawale are Bob Milne, vice-president of Cisco Services and Brett Bourgon of Cisco Customer Solutions Finance. Recently, Kawale set up a meeting with Cisco CEO John Chambers, Brian Murphy of Thought Corp. and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Click here to get all the details of that meeting.

Tech Data Canada president Rick Reid holds court with top channel partners Philip Stone, president of Boardwalk Communications, Mike Blackwell, COO of Graycon Group at the Cisco Canada Party.

Cisco COO Gary Moore attended a costume party before joining me and several other top channel partners, media and analysts at the USS Midway docked at the San Diego harbor. Moore allowed himself to be photographed for this CDN slideshow only if I joined him. One of the cardinal rules of journalism is to never make yourself part of the story. But the photo was too good to pass up. Moore was a good sport and has done a great deal for the company and for channel partners.

You can read more about Gary Moore here.
Link: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/cdn/News.asp?id=63420