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Today, VMWare kicked off its user conference VMworld in San Francisco, where they expect more than 10,000 customers to attend and learn about the latest virtualization technologies from many different vendors. 

One technology that is transforming virtualization is the Cisco Nexus 1000V which was develop in collaboration with VMware and recently released as part of VMware’s vSphere solution in May.  I recently had a chance to sit down with Paul Fazzone of the Server Access Virtualization Business Group to discuss the reaction this solution is getting from customers and partners.

If you want to learn more about how Cisco is helping unify the network infrastructure to simplify virtualization management for our customers, I recommend checking out:

“Tous pour un, un pour tous. ” (All for one, one for all.)
  -  Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

The fifth and final key finding from the study, Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards (pdf), is the most unexpected: collaboration is useful in organizations of all sizes.  A company of 300 people can benefit from collaboration equally as much as a company of 30,000.  The study contradicted traditional expectations that collaboration is more prevalent in large enterprises.

In our top two collaborator segments, Collaboration Enthusiasts and Comfortable Collaborators, the distribution between enterprise and midmarket companies is nearly equal. 35% of our Collaboration Enthusiasts are in midmarket sized companies, while 28% are in enterprise sized companies. Similarly, 24% of our Comfortable Collaborators are in midmarket sized companies and 35% are in enterprises.  This suggests that culture, process, and access to the right tools are more important for successful collaboration than other factors associated with the size of a company.

Investors love to learn about Cisco and we, in turn, learn from interacting with our investors. Case in point: check out a two part WebEx Tech Talk we hosted last week. You can find a replay of both sessions on the Cisco Investor Relations website through September.

Why did we choose our theme of “Back to the Core”?  Investors asked to learn more about the strength and competitive advantage of Cisco’s core routing and switching business so we discussed proof points, Cisco’s architectural advantage, competitive positioning, sustainable competitive advantages, market share and more. 

A special thank you to routing execs Pankaj Patel, Kelly Ahuja, and Suraj Shetty. They highlighted Cisco’s commitment and focus on its core competencies in routing, especially in the service provider market.  Part one of the talks discussed the demand drivers in traffic growth due to video and mobility requirements along with a whole host of other topics.  The team did an excellent job addressing market share, product offerings and Cisco solutions.

Atlanta, Georgia (PRWEB) – August 31, 2009 – Orion Health, Inc. and Cisco today announced the Rhapsody Connect AXP, a new solution to address current challenges in public health reporting and to improve the early detection, tracking and rapid response to possible disease outbreaks such as seasonal or H1N1 flu. The solution integrates the Cisco Application Extension Platform (AXP), …

August 31, 2009 By Mike Stone Cisco® Unified Communications has helped transform St. Saviour’s School in Lagos, Nigeria, from an institution with basic telephone connections into a high-tech cyber-school. The 320 or so students at the independent primary school, dedicated to teaching the U.K. national curriculum, now enjoy fully-networked classrooms with computers, interactive …

In this week’s print edition, The Economist focuses on Cisco as part of a package on why ‘Big is back.’  An interesting and intelligent read, what I like best about the story is it’s clear look at how Cisco focuses on two things with near maniacal focus – innovation and operational excellence.

The story takes deep look at Cisco, both at the market adjacencies we aim to serve and how we are organizing the company.  It makes clear what we know – it’s tough and a work in progress – while making clear also that in order to succeed, change is the only constant.

The piece states that moving into new areas for Cisco “are best seen as a portfolio of business bets, much like those of diversified companies such as 3M and General Electric (GE). Yet Mr Chambers is keen to point out how Cisco’s collection is different. “GE’s is comprised of individual pieces. The light-bulb group doesn’t tie into the jet-engine group,” he explains. “Our pieces are all tied to the network.”

In OCS 2007 R1 the web scheduler was a nice to have handy to allow people to schedule meetings and not have to have the full client or add-ins available.  Now in R2 the web scheduler is back and available once again. Keep in mind that the support agreement still applies and that’s a best effort support with the tool. Some of the main features of the scheduler are as followed:

• Authentication using Windows credentials
• Schedule a Live Meeting or a Conference call
• Verify names of enterprise invitees
• Specify Meeting Access Types
  • Open
  • Closed
  • Anonymous
• View List of Scheduled Conferences
• Modify\Delete Scheduled Conferences

Take a look at the link below to get a copy of the tool…

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6d6848ec-e7d6-41f4-82d9-5bed3526fcbd&displaylang=en

“Productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth.” William Simon

Continuing in my series of blogs on the study, Collaboration: Know Your Enthusiasts and Laggards (.pdf), we now come to the fourth finding: productivity is the highest perceived benefit of collaboration.

Interestingly, in all collaborator segments, productivity is valued more than innovation and cost savings for their companies. In our top two segments, Collaboration Enthusiasts and Comfortable Collaborators, over 98% surveyed indicated that productivity is the main motivation to using collaboration tools. Likewise, 76% of Reluctant Collaborators and 85% of Collaboration Laggards indicated productivity as a motivator.

SAN JOSE, Calif. – August 27, 2009 – One month after Cisco began shipping its evolutionary new Unified Computing System and one quarter after the Nexus 1000V Virtual Switch began shipping, Cisco will host a live Internet TV broadcast and Q&A session to discuss customer traction and data center virtualization deployments. Cisco will be joined by special guests: James McGibney, lead …

There’s been quite a bit of talk about our Councils and Boards structure lately and we’ve gotten some diverse feedback coming from both Cisco employees as well as beyond these walls.  Transparent communication is very important to me, and in that spirit I wanted to take some time to provide my opinion as a leader and member of several Councils here at Cisco.

I say this all the time: Cisco suffers from an excess of opportunity … and that could not be truer than it is today. The growth opportunities facing us are incredible.  As the network becomes the platform for work, home and everything in between, Cisco is becoming more and more relevant in many new areas – we call these our Market Adjacencies.  And let’s be clear, we must aggressively address each one, as we work to continually drive greater value from the network.  With 30 adjacencies today, you can only imagine the operational challenges we experience as we work to manage each of these high potential areas.

In 2001, with revenue of $22B, we were only #1 or #2 in two market segments (routing and switching).  Today, we are #1 or #2 in 12 market segments.  As the EVP of Operations, Processes, and Systems, I spend time daily in both the Council & Board world as well as my traditional functional role.  And that’s because it can’t be just one or the other.  What we’re doing at Cisco is tapping the best of both management approaches.