Welcome to New Orleans! After some great Mardi Gras-style entertainment, partner group chief Keith Goodwin is out to get things started for Cisco Partner Summit 2011.

As Goodwin briefly runs partners through a history of New Orleans, we’d like to welcome tweets from our good friend Liam Lahey of Partnerpedia, which will also be included in the liveblog here.

Goodwin says there are about 10,000 attendees to the Virtual Partner Summit event. And it’s Cisco’s 15th Partner Summit, “a significant milestone,” says Goodwin.

Goodwin having a chat with a partner from France who’s made it to all 15 Partner Summits. Goodwin was hoping this one would be is favorite, but nope. “Hawaii.”

Also getting some time with Keith, Kent MacDonald of Calgary’s Long View Systems, who’s been to 14 of 15.

Hawaii is also his favourite. I think that’s pretty much unanimous.

Goodwin finds a number of partners who’ve been here for 10 or more of 15, dating back to the sub-200-attendee first conference in Napa, California. “The measure of our success is our partner’s loyalty.”

Goodwin’s running through the four architectures that were the theme of last year’s Partner Summit — Data Centre, Virtualization, Cloud. All the areas where Cisco is growing today.

Now he’s going through the changes the company made in its structure middle of last year, combining its channel organization with ISVs and strategic partners… the moves that saw Goodwin move up and Edison Peres promoted to worldwide channel chief.

Goodwin on SMB: “Frankly, we are not getting our fair share.” Intends to change that with partner-led approach in the space.

This year’s theme: Impact. “Short and powerful. Impact is about making a difference,” Goodwin says.

First aspect is Impacting customers, especially in terms of the shift of CEO/CIO priorities from cost-savings to innovation. “We have an opportunity to participate in eight of ten key spending priorities,” Goodwin says.

Second aspect; Impact business. “You impact our business every day, and in turn, we impact your business every day,” Goodwin says, both top-line and bottom-line. “We are mutually dependent, but more importantly, together we are virtually unbeatable.”

Third aspect: Impact industry — Goodwin gives the example of transforming the voice industry.

Fourth aspect: Impact the world — “If you think about it, we have an opp to think of impact in the context of where we are today, New Orleans.” Detailing Katrina’s own impact in 2005. Says Cisco chose New Orleans three years ago, wanted to help in the ongoing recovery.

Now he’s going through the “giving back” part of Cisco’s investment in New Orleans, helping rebuild homes through a local organization, The St. Bernard Project.

A theme for each day at the conference — Today is Impact Opportunity. Tommorw, Impact Innovation. Thursday, Impact Leadership.

Tomorrow’s keynotes include Michael Capellas. It still seems surreal that he’s back in a relatively high-profile tech executive position 10 years after Hewlett-Compaqard.

Goodwin teases “a couple of announcements partners won’t want to miss” for Thursday’s keynotes.

And with that, Goodwin hands off to Cisco CEO John Chambers.

Chambers: $170 billion opportunity for Cisco today, growing to $210 billion over the next few years.

Chambers going through the decision to go partner-centric 18 years ago, underscoring that this is a long-term concept for Cisco.

“The great news is the network is going to be the platform for transforming all forms of IT.” Says Cisco predicted that, and now competitors are reacting by either jumping in or commoditizing the network.

Says Cisco will spend some time here at Partner Summit addressing “new architectures” from competitors.

(Editor’s note: Trying to type at the speed John Chambers talks is all but impossible.)

Chambers welcomes new competition, saying now having strong competitors is a good indicator that the market you’re in is in trouble.

World leaders — government and business — are recognizing technology as a transformer. It’s no longer behind-the-scenes of innovation, it’s now right up with innovation plans.

Chambers’ latest market transition is “the networked economy 2.0,” the current era.

Says one thing Cisco does very well is see market transitions early and go after them with partners.

Chambers is running through some of the challenges the company has faced over the years, including “not being able to spell telephony.” “We may not have been able to spell it, but we sure know how to own a market, don’t we?”

Timely discussion, given the recent concerns bout switching, goernment business and set-top boxes at the end of 2010.

Likens it to the “IT hundred-year flood” of 2001.

With major challenges over the last 15 years — service provider in 2001, Asia in 1998, Chambers says Cisco has tended to “double up” on the impacted region,as long as the company sees opportunity there.

“If you’re just selling point products, that’s going to be a hard market to be in, for you and for us.”

Five priorities for partners

1. Core routing/switching business
2. Collaboration
3. Data Centre, virtualization and cloud
4.  Business and technology architectures
5. Video

Beyond that, Chambers says Cisco is looking at building “the next 20-plus” priorities. Wants all partners to focus on the above five, and then pick and choose from among the next 20 priorities.

Chambers takes a moment to thumb his nose at critics and competitors who thought Cisco would be “one and done” in the data centre space, likens it to the way it hit the telephony market. “Together, we almost always become number-one.”

Data centre growing 59 per cent last year, “raw internal growth.”

Now giving the example of growth in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and dropping some head-of-state names… another staple of the John Chambers keynote.

Innovation details: $5.3 billion annual R&D investment, 13 per cent of revenues. “And no one… let me repeat… no one does acquisitions like we do.” Example: Tandberg growth exploding post acquisition.

“We started on the data centre 7.5 years ago, and people said ‘What are you doing? You can’t be a major player in the data centre.'” But says Cisco moved because it saw a convergence opportunity.

“5 to 6 years ago, the biggest bet we made was all about video — it’s not an overlay, it’s not just 90 per cent of the load on the network.” Detailing moving Telepresence through the stack from the high-end to the Cius tablet.

Chambers says architecture approach is a differentiator for partners against “people who are selling a piece of routing or switching” or other point solutions.

And with that, up comes the man with the coolest title in the game, Jim Grubb, chief demonstration officer.

Grubb and Chambers going through Social Miner and the latest results on the company’s collaboration products, including the VXI lineup. (Link goes to ChannelBuzz.ca’s coverage of that launch.)

Chambers says Telepresence has been replaced in his heart as his favourite product by the Cius tablet. And just when Telepresence was starting to get all grown up, too.

Demo details how integrated collaboration products and services from Cisco are becoming.

Grubb discussing a Cius app store for enterprise applications.

Per Cisco’s Raja Sundaram, partner services executive at Cisco via Twitter, partners will be able to post their own Cius apps on that app store.

Grubb is done, and Chambers discussing opportunities — $60 billion in borderless networking. Shot-term opportunities include collaboration and video, intermediate opportunities – security and cloud. And then in the very long term, looking at additions to the portfolio.

Cloud/data centre could ‘be bigger than the first phase of the Internet” for Cisco, Chambers says.

“Rather than being threatened by clouds, we view it as a huge opportunity,” a shift in how information is created and consumed.

Chambers tells partners to keep an eye on Videoscape — it’s a consumer play today, but it’s going to have implications on all kinds of commnications, he posits.

Missed the Videoscape announcement? No worries. We got your back.

On to next-generation switching opportunities. Says competitors will always have an additional feature or two, but Cisco brings the ability to tie it all together in an architecture that works together.

“Where we need to, we’ll compete on price/performance, but it really is about the architectural plays and how it all ties together,” Chambers tells partners.

Cisco’s advantage is in ability to tie it all together, including the “new products” portfolio that now make up 31 per cent of Cisco revenues.

Chambers addressing “FUD” about market share in switching — long-term charts show share consistent quarter-over-quarter between Cisco, HP and Juniper.

When Cisco and parnters both offer services, customer opportunity grows by 50 per cent, Chambers says.

“Invest in what we can do together in terms of architectures and solutions,” Chambers urges partners.

“My commitment to you is the principles of partnership we’ve never varied off of … how we win together, how we joint differentiate.”

Chambers offers his “thank yous” to channel partners, and with that, he hands back to Keith Goodwin for a New Orleans culutural interlude.

Out to sing “Time Is On My Side” is New Orleans’ own Erna Thomas. Think there’s a subtle message in the song title? Hmmmmm….

Up next, the guy who’s doing the job Keith Goodwin has done for the last five years at Partner Summit —  SVP of worldwide channels (ie: channel chief) Edison Peres.

Edison encourages partners “to keep the straight and honest conversation” going in order to keep the partner program moving in the right direction.

Peres talking a little bit about past transitions — notably the move from talking about networks to convergence.

Peres echoing Chambers comments on how industry pundits and competitors were wrong about Cisco’s ability to compete in the voice space. Clearly, Cisco wants to build partners’ confidence in its ability to move into new spaces and succeed with them.

Peres says Cisco seeing 2x the market growth for managed services vs. resale.

Now walking through changes to partner programs over the years, highlighted by the long-running Value Incentive Program (VIP).

Peres: Cisco investing at a runrate of $1 billion in VIP.

Walking through the changes for VIP 17, starting Feb. 1, adding more Borderless Networks SKUs available for rebates, adding small business track (previously had a separate development fund program for small biz). 

Peres says the company will continue to evolve the program — it typically refines the program every six months.

And then there’s Teaming Incentive Program — announced at last year’s Partner Summit. Peres says many partners have not yet seen the benefits of it — early feedback was that the program was “missing the mark.”

TIP was not rewarding as much as Opportunity Incentive Program despite similar or higher costs.

Peres says they’re fixing it by making the benefits equal “so you clearly get the message that teaming and finding new customers are equally important to us.”

Says general availability of the new TIP in August, after more piloting.

Up next: MyCisco — the company’s customized “front door” for partners to access the networking vendor. 

“It’s having a great impact,” Peres says — 84,000 individuals in 46,000 partner organization in 150+ countries.

Was enhanced a few weeks ago, and Peres pledges more to come.

“I want to be very clear — if all you see on the horizon is cloud, your focus is much too narrow. Cloud is part of a broad set of opportunities we have before us.”

Detailing growth figures in data centre, video, moblity, security, borderless networks, etc.

Overall a $40 billion opportunity. “I like numbers that have Bs in front of them,” he quips.

“Some say that your relevance as a partner, reseller or systems integrator is actually diminishing — cloud is going to take it over — and that opportunity for you is going down. I do not believe that. Cisco does not believe that.”

He admits it’s an “inflection point” and that partners need to evolve, “but at the end of the day, there are values that you provide that will be needed in this inflection point as well as the ones ahead.”

Three key strategies for partners:

1. Choose your role in the cloud.
2. Invest in architectures and verticals
3. Lead with professional services. 

Partners need to choose their role in the cloud because of the shift from capex to opex, ease of migration, growth and innovation and cost savings of cloud. The technology is there to deliver on those promises, Peres says. “Customers are more ready for this next evolution than we are as an industry.”

Cloud infrastructure expected to grow at 25 per cent CAGR, and 75 per cent of that will come from building private clouds, Peres says.

Most cloud is going to be hybrid, and channel will play “a very critical role” in rationalizing the hybrid cloud, Peres asserts. Two biggest opportunities for partners: Building out public and private clouds, and growing professional services.

“More than any time in our history, customers are ready to pay for professional services, because they need your value in being able to rationalize managing a hybrid world.”

Peres pledges Cisco will be “partner-centric” in the way it goes to market with the cloud.

Three roles for partners: Cloud Builder, Cloud Provider, and Cloud Services Provider — three pillars of the new Cisco Cloud Partner Program.

“It is not Cisco’s intent to become a broad-based cloud service provider. It is our intent to allow you to deliver those services.”

Within Cloud Builder portion:

• Cloud Ready Infrastructure Competency, networking, servers, storage and virtualization for the cloud.
• Management and Services Competency — working with partners like Citrix to validate expertise — not a new specialization, but levarging the certifications partners already have.
• Applications Competency for Cisco’s own hosted applications, and soon to come, third party cloud applications. 

“Most of the opportunity in the next number of years is in this cloud builder space,” Peres says.

Cloud Provider level is for partner with Cisco-powered cloud service, and will be based on meeting audit requirements.

Cloud Services Reseller level is for those who resell Cisco Cloud Providers’ cloud offerings.

“There’s a lot of mystery around all of this .. and where there’s mystery, there’s margin,” Peres tells partners.

With the big topic of cloud done, Peres moving on to architectures and verticals, his second priority for partners.

The investment in architectures, re-orienting the business around it, “is starting to work,” Peres says — opening new doors and creating new opportunities.

Last Partner Summit, Cisco announced architecture-focused specialization, replacing previous technology specialization. The goal was to have them in place in the first calendar half of this year, and in fact, Peres says they’ll be available in April.

In the past, Gold partners needed four technology specializations — now will require three architecture specializations.

Partners will have “12 to 24 months” to make the transition, based on anniversary date of partnership with Cisco.

Architectures add a new sales role to the specializations.

Promo at Partner Summit — First 500 partners to take new specialization, Cisco “will help offset the cost of working with our learning parnters” by 30 to 50 per cent through learning credits.

Peres says Cisco wants “collaboration-enable” partners’ businesses.

• The company has added WebEx to its global price list for resale. “Don’t ask me why it took that long.” Wants all partners reselling WebEx and using it — giving partners 92 per cent the per person per month price for WebEx use internally.
• Yes to video — 90 per cent of the new EX90 and EX60 video endpoint units for partners internally.

“I’m looking forward to having a Telepresence conversation with you,” he says. Also hints at coming program for Cisco’s Quad business social networking tool. 

On to vertical strategy – Peres says more enablement, marketing and customer collateral available around specific verticals — mentions healthcare, education and manufacturing specifically.

Professional services – “You want to work with vendors that empower your professional services, than minimize conflict with you. Let me suggest you’ve come to the right place.”

“We have sent mixed signals over the years about our services strategy.” Last year, introduced a product and services coverage model, including 500 transformational accounts, and principals for engagement. Launching a new specialization, Integrated Architecture Specialization, to help partners address those transformational accounts.

Peres says “this is the time to double down” on building professional services capabilities — says Cisco will help minimize challenges through “collaborative professional services” model.

To explain that, Peres is joined by Gary Moore, EVP and now COO of Cisco.

Moore: Collaborative professional services will accelerate topline growth of services and increase bottom line. This model was initially announced three years ago, has been in development since — 40 partners, 150 pilots, and every time, tweaked the program.

Includes:

• Assessment services to collect and analyze data using the same collector Cisco Services uses — has seen assessments cut down to as little as a few hours to complete.
• Guidance and development services — use Cisco resources to either do design work or review and refine design work partners have done.
• Practice Accelerator — helps partners build out a practice around a new area. 

All three are across collaboration, data centre, borderless network and cloud.

Proving that in this industry, anything and everything witll be made an XaaS, Peres describes collaborative services as a step towards “services as a service.”