Cisco Networkers opens in Brisbane

Les Williamson, vice president of Cisco A/NZ opened the first day of Cisco Networkers by thanking the 1,100 delegates attending the conference.

In a similar tone to Cisco’s Worldwide Partner Conference earlier this year, collaboration was the main theme.

Michael Boland, distinguished systems engineer for Cisco A/NZ was the keynote speaker and he explained where Cisco is heading in the next 12 months and beyond.

Boland touched on many of the networking giants product areas including the Nexus 5000, launched earlier this year. Convergence in the data centre is a priority for Cisco with ethernet-only data centres on the agenda.

Cisco’s Quantum Flow Processor was cited as one of the three main areas of concern in the next 12 months.

“We are breaking all of the moulds as to how they are built. The world is moving from packet processing to extreme processing,” said Boland.

“The Quantum Flow Processor was a huge change we led in the industry here by many definitions.”

Cisco has now commissioned 269 Telepresence units globally and they have an average usage rate of 45 percent.

Between well-travelled flight paths, like Sydney to Melbourne, the Telepresence units have a usage rate of 95 percent.

After introducing ‘the end to lost time and productivity, telepresence’, Boland spoke about WebEx Connect. Tailored to the SMB market, WebEx Connect provides an opportunity for channel partners.

Boland then provided a demo that showed the interoperability of WebEx Connect with the Apple iPhone. Users can move a video call from your desktop to their iPhone and then transfer the call to another person’s iPhone as well.

Cisco also partners with Apple to provide security on the iPhone using their VPN technology.

On the company front, Cisco acknowledges the necessity to be a global company and have a strong presence in the emerging markets.

“What Cisco’s doing, is innovating our global structure….Cisco built a new headquarters we call Headquarters East in Bangalow to address the emerging markets... John Chambers split his executive team and sent them to Bangalow…we must innovate in overall structure as well.”

Closing the keynote, Boland left his partners with one last message; “When I becomes we, we think globally, we can do wonders.”