25 (Tropical) Scenes From Cisco Partner Summit

Aloha, And Welcome To Hawaii

Cisco Systems once again selected Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oahu as the host city for its annual Cisco Partner Summit. The event, which ran April 7 - 10, drew 2,000 attendees representing 1,000 solution providers from 90 countries around the world. The conference first came to the Aloha State in 2004.

Home Away From Home

The Hilton Hawaiian Village housed many of the show's attendees, and its conference center served as the site for the first day's meetings, press conferences and parties.

Room With A View

Solution providers lucky enough to snag a room in the hotel's Rainbow Tower were treated to a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean and Waikiki Beach, with the Diamond Head volcanic crater in the distance.

Getting Down To Business

It wasn't all pina coladas and mai tais at Cisco Partner Summit (though to be sure there were plenty of both). Edison Peres, Cisco's vice president of worldwide channels, said the market for Cisco's data center technology and related partner services is expected to hit $14 billion within the next five years.

To help partners grab their share of the pie, Cisco at the conference launched the Nexus 5000 Series data center switch, targeted at the access layer where it can connect and aggregate existing LANs and SANs. It aims to provide line-rate 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching as well as input/output consolidation with support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet, Data Center Ethernet and virtualization technologies.

All In The Family

Cisco at the show also unveiled plans to acquire Nuova Systems, the company it teamed with to develop the Nexus switch line. Cisco has already invested $70 million to acquire an 80-percent share of the company and now plans to purchase the remaining 20 percent in a deal expected to close by July. Soni Jiandani, vice president of marketing at Nuova, said the dropping prices of 10-Gigabit Ethernet technology will help drive consolidation in the data center. Jiandani, like several of Nuova's top executives, is a former Cisco employee.

It's Still Rock And Roll To Me

Cisco brought in local musicians to entertain party-goers at a welcome reception with traditional Hawaiian tunes.

Pretty In Pink

Solution providers that stepped outside for a breath of fresh air found themselves in a bird watcher's paradise. Though the birds aren't native to Hawaii, the Hilton keeps a flock of flamingos on site.

Crowded House

The scene on Day 2 shifted to the Hawaii Convention Center, where throngs of solution providers awaited the start of the main keynote addresses from top Cisco executives, including Chairman and CEO John Chambers.

It's An Urban Jungle Out There

Cisco woke conference attendees up with a blood-pumping performance by a group of "urban athletes" performing parkour, a half sport/half art form invented in France whose participants seemingly view the world as one giant obstacle course.

Collaboration Is Key

Channel chief Keith Goodwin, Cisco's senior vice president of worldwide channels, hammered home the message that Cisco will both sell and use collaboration tools. He caught partners' attention when he said he needs upwards of $20 billion in new channel business over the next several years, pointing to collaboration -- between Cisco and its partners and between partners with each other -- as the means for scaling up to meet his growth targets.

Virtual VARs

To support that collaboration effort, the vendor at the conference launched Cisco Partner Exchange, a virtual environment where Cisco's 8,500 certified partners can create "booths" to share information about themselves and their skill sets, and then find solution providers with complementary skill sets to partner with.

Seeing Is Believing

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers told conference attendees that "visual networking," a combination of digital video and social networking, will help drive productivity for years to come.

Google Envy

Chambers outlined the "collaborative channel," which will enable collaboration between Cisco and its partners, partners and other partners, and partners and their customers. "We've got to learn how do we go to market together not only talking technology architecture, but business architecture and tie the two very tightly together in a way the market is striving for," he said. "There's a reason the market is looking to a place like Google. It's because they're not seeing innovation from the traditional players and we've got to realize that this is a void we can and should fill together."

Picture In Picture

Cisco Chief Demonstration Officer Jim Grubb joined Chambers on stage for a demonstration of collaboration technologies built on Cisco infrastructure. Here, video streams of varying quality are delivered to a Cisco TelePresence high-definition videoconferencing unit.

The Wonders Of WebEx

Cisco showcased its WebEx conferencing technology as the platform for collaboration. In the future, users will be able to populate WebEx with multiple "widgets" to manage collaborative tools such as video chat.

Find Me, Follow Me

"Content will find you based on your community of interest, your social networking group that you have," Chambers said. "The next generation of how this occurs in IT and in regular communications will be visual networking, streaming data video and multimedia with social networking access. It's a mouthful, but that's where the future will be."

Segway To The Beach

For solution providers that wanted a different view of Honolulu, one entrepreneur offered tours of the area via Segway Personal Transporters. Sunblock not included.

Polly Want Collaboration?

Several parrots call the grounds of the Hilton Hawaiian Village their home. No word on how Cisco got the birds to squawk, "Collaboration is key!" at passing solution providers.

ISR: It's The Real Thing

Chambers at the conference celebrated the sale of the Cisco's four millionth Integrated Services Router by presenting an award to the customer who purchased it, Esat Sezer, CIO of Coca-Cola Enterprises (left).

Give And You Shall Receive

But Chambers didn't leave the stage empty-handed. Sezer reciprocated by naming Chambers "The No. 1 Diet Coke Fan in the World," a distinction that came with its very own trophy.

Closing With Cleese

Actor/comedian John Cleese wrapped up the event with a session that was part stand-up, part motivational speech. Cleese poked fun at the sales executives in the room: "I do know a bit about sales people, and let me just say that I do have everything I need right now." Cleese also jumped on the collaboration bandwagon, drawing from his own life as an example. He noted that 13 people contributed lines to his script for the film "A Fish Called Wanda." "And, CEOs," he added, "I still got the Oscar."

Is This a Hotel or a Zoo?

Penguins might not be the first thing that come to mind when you think of Hawaii, but the Hilton staff breeds and raises South African Blackfoot Penguins, a threatened species. Eight of them live on the property.

Party On

Revelers make their way toward Cisco's Global Party, the last official event of the conference. One party-goer said he'd be on his best behavior because he had seen someone on the streets of Honolulu wearing a t-shirt that read, "What happens in Hawaii Ends up On YouTube." Point taken.

Hawaiian Fire

The beachfront party spanned the grounds of two adjacent hotels, but several fires kept the nighttime chill from the ocean winds at bay.

Did You Try the Banana Fritters?

Solution providers gather around a pool at Cisco's Global party to eat, drink and be merry.

Palm Reading

A farewell shot of Hawaii's big blue sky and some of Honolulu's many palm trees. The 2009 Cisco Partner Summit in Boston might be fun, but it won't offer the same array of exotic flora and fauna. Unless you count rabid Red Sox fans in Kenmore Square.