India’s in-country IT prowess has long been overshadowed by the country’s strength in outsourcing. But the internal market and its leaders were front and center this week at the first edition of Interop Mumbai. At the Bombay Exhibition Center – a former textile mill – 75 exhibitors and several thousand attendees and counting (the show ends Friday), shared a coming out regarding their joint accomplishments in business technology. Continue Reading »

The first edition of Interop Mumbai opened up successfully yesterday,  providing me with yet another memorable experience in this often astonishing country. Although our Indian team fretted that late-season monsoons would keep the crowd away, the sun broke through mid-morning, just in time for the opening keynote from Cisco Chief Globalization Officer Wim Elfrink. Wim gave a great talk describing the “Internet of things” where automation drives us into the next stage of the Internet.

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I hope you all had some quality time off this summer and are ready to gear back up for the Fall. The highlight of my summer was a cruise with my family through Alaska’s Inside Passage. I’d been so busy before the trip that I hadn’t thought much about what to expect. But on the first morning we awoke to the amazing glaciers of College Fjord and I took a load of pictures that only begin to give a sense of their majesty and beauty. Really, it was one of those “got-to-be-there” experiences.

In the end, there’s no substitute for seeing for yourself. That applies to Interop, too. We can’t promise you glaciers. But at Interop, you’ll get up close and personal with all the “giant” ideas that are changing the course of the business technology market – such as cloud computing and virtualization—while learning what’s new in security, the data center and other key IT areas. Sure, you can hook up to the Interweb to learn about these topics. But there’s no substitute to interacting live with experts, vendors and peers and drawing your own conclusions. That’s never been more important than today when technology is moving so quickly and dollars are so tight. You need direct access to the right information so you can make the right choices for your organization.

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It was great seeing so many of you last week. Thanks to everyone who made it out to Las Vegas to join us. In these tough times, it was great to come together as a community and see that innovation is tremendously strong and our industry is healthy and vibrant.

Since many of you are back in the office summarizing your Interop experience, I thought I’d take a stab at it, too.

I’ll start where I left off above: I suggested in the opening keynote that the biggest takeaway of the week would be that we’d see that our market is on strong footing and that we will help lead the way out of the recession. I don’t think I went too far out on the limb here. I knew how strong our program was in the big growth areas such as virtualization, cloud computing, unified communications and data center. I’d also talked to many of our exhibitors coming into the show who were saying business was relatively good considering the overall economy. I also knew that while overall attendance would be down from last year, our pre-show survey indicated this year’s attendees were coming with deep pockets and long shopping lists. So when you put together enthusiastic buyers, strong exhibitors and surging innovation, you get the magic that you can only experience at a big event like Interop: We came together and showed ourselves - and many others outside the convention center via Interop TV, Twitter, vendor blogs and media converage - that our market has tremendous momentum right now.

Cloud Computing: Drilling down into show highlights, you have to start with Cloud Computing. We had blanket coverage, from the Enterprise Cloud Summit to Cloud Camp and the Cloud Zone on the show floor. Going in we were a little bit in danger of adding to the hype around Cloud. But I also wanted to be sure gave everyone the right toehold into the Cloud scene. Attendance was strong at all our Cloud programs, so interest is certainly high. Clearly, though, the Cloud story is a complex one that will require IT leaders not only to keep tabs on emerging technology solutions, but perhaps more importantly, on on understanding where, when and how Cloud services can be applied to one’s own IT challenges. To learn more about the Cloud, check out some of our videos from last week, including our keynotes from SAP CTO Vital Sikkah and IBM VP Rick Telford, as well as a fireside chat with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels during the Enterprise Cloud Summit

Data Center: Undoubtedly, though, Cloud Computing, along with virtualization,  is fueling tremendous interest in speed and flexibility inside the data center. The old Sun adage of the “network is the platform,” is becoming a reality in the data center: As servers and storage are virtualized, the network becomes the master cylinder. And no surprise, this platform is the next battleground for networking companies, with everyone gunnng for Cisco, of course. Watch our keynote panel on Reinventing the Data Center and read the analysis of my co-moderator, Art Wittman, who is concerned about data center management and standards.

I think we’ll remember this year’s show as the start of a long battle for data center supremacy among the leading networking companies.  Cisco a few months ago raised the ante by adding server capabilities to its deep set of offerings via its Unified Computing System. By doing so, however, it punched a hole through a competitive firewall by turning its guns against erstwhile server partners HP and IBM. Cisco’s move also opens up the field for competitors such as Brocade, Juniper, Force 10 and 3Com, via its new H3C division, as well as the start-up Arista. Cisco isn’t, of course, giving up ground easily: UCS, after all, won a Best of Interop award. I also noticed sitting through a few Cisco presentations in the Interop Conference that Cisco’s pitches constantly reflected the depth and interconnectedness of their product lines. Cisco is well prepared for battle against re-energized competitors. That said, it’s just going to be plain fun watching HP take off the gloves and come right at Cisco. From the opening keynote where it announced a big UC partnership with Microsoft to its slick, front-door booth, HP pretty much owned the show.

Wireless: Speaking of gloves, Xirrus had the most talked about booth featuring a full-sized boxing ring. Xirrus put WiFi in the spotlight, along with Aruba, which also snagged a Best of Interop award with a branch office solution featuring remote management capabilities.

Virtualization is the current turbine for change and innovation in the IT market. I expected full rooms when we discussed emerging topics such as virtualization management and security. What I wasn’t prepared for was the crowds that gathered any time there was a discussion of desktop virtualization. Without a doubt, this is going to the next “big thing” for many IT organizations. Gartner, in fact, recently suggested desktop virtualization will experience massive growth.

No trip to Interop is complete without a tour of the InteropNet. Built by a couple of dozen sponsors including Enterasys and Qwest and host of volunteers, the network once again performed flawlessly. If you missed the tour onsite, check out our virtual version here.

Thanks again to all who made last week possible. And if you couldn’t make it to Vegas, we hope to see you at Interop New York in November. That is, unless you can join us in Tokyo in June or at our new event in Mumbai in October.

We’ve got a lot of great experts here at TechWeb, the home of Interop. One of the best is Art Whittmann. Art has been a top editor for years - including a stint as editor of Network Computing - and currently runs InformationWeek Analytics, IW’s premium content service. Art has a great handle on developments inside the data center for years so I asked him to join me in moderating our Interop Las Vegas keynote panel, Reinventing the Data Center, which takes place Wednesday morning, May 20th.

To help kickoff the conversation, Art posted some questions on his blog and asks readers to offer other suggestions.  One of the areas Art plans to explore is the question of standards: As vendors offer more tightly integrated solutions what becomes of open standards? Obviously that’s near and dear to our hearts here at Interop.

Please check out Art’s blog and tell us what questions you want us to put to our experts from Brocade, Cisco, Juniper and Riverbed.

My team keeps asking me what’s going to be hot at Interop Las Vegas. That inevitably that leads to explorations of cloud computing, virtualization and mobility.

But aside from these and many other technologies, what’s really going to be interesting in Las Vegas is that we’re going to get the first full look at a vendorscape that has changed dramatically in the last year. And it’s changed in pretty much every way possible.

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With today’s debut of the Unified Computing System, Cisco is a leveraging a series of technology developments and market opportunities to take a giant step toward fulfilling John Chambers’ goal of putting Cisco on par with IT behemoths IBM and HP. It’s less, though, about Cisco offering servers like it’s big competitors. Instead, Chairman John has driven his company on a long march into corporate boardrooms to gain mindshare among business leaders.

Despite tremendous success in networking, Cisco has been handicapped by being the “router” company. Sure it’s been invaluable to many companies in that roll. But it’s been the server companies (and you have to put Oracle in that club) that get the most of the love from CEOs.

Chambers could have thrown a Hail Mary and bought a server company along the way. You have to believe that Cisco has kicked the tires on Sun several times. But in an interview i did with Chambers years ago, he told me he was very leery of large deals because of the challenges of merging different cultures.

Instead of rolling the dice on a big deal, Chambers has moved CIsco steadily up the ladder of IT influence. His network-is-the-platform pitch, which Chambers brought to Interop several times, was a cornerstone of his campaign. At the same time, Cisco expanded into logical, communications-related categories, such as the PBX and storage networking. Video conferencing is also an obvious market for Cisco. But Cisco’s high-end Telepresence effort has the added benefit of putting the CIsco logo right in front of the very people Chambers wants to influence.

Still, Cisco has long way to go: In fact, Gary Moore, Cisco SVP Advances Services, noted at today’s announcement, “A lot of people don’t understand how long we’ve been working in the data center.”

No doubt, that’s about to change. But what shouldn’t get lost in the post-game competitive analysis is that Cisco has found the perfect time to become a data center player. Servers have long been king of the data center. But virtualization has knocked them off the thrown. The old one-to-one relationship between application and hardware is gone. There’s a power vacuum in the data center and Cisco means to fill it with a unified architecture that aims to put networking and virtualization on the level as the server.

At the very least, it’s safe to say Chambers and Cisco injected some stimulus today into the business technology market. We’ll be discussing today’s news and the competitive reaction at Interop during our keynote panel on reinventing the data center.

It’s my favorite time in the Interop show cycle: At two months-plus, the pace starts picking up, but it’s not quite nail-biting time. So I can appreciate the steady stream of new exhibitors, the rounding-up of InteropNet volunteers and sponsors, catch-ups with our expert group of tracks chairs and planning sessions with the stellar Interop team here in San Francisco. This is also the time when the stories of this year’s show begin to take shape. One of the things that stands out from my conversations with exhibitors is how many companies are planning significant announcements at Interop. I can’t tell you about them just yet, but they span most of the areas we cover at Interop, including mobility, virtualization and unified communications.

Interop Las Vegas will certainly be examined for clues for how the recession is impacting the business technology market. Interop is always a bellwether for IT, never more so than this year. The new product announcements will help tilt the story to business technology being a relatively healthy industry and one where the U.S. continues to demonstrate global leadership. IT is anything but immune from the economic turmoil. But it’s also not a business, such as real estate, finance or the automobile business, that are in crisis mode, waiting for government intervention to move forward.

The fate of these businesses and many others will determine fate of the economy and keep us glued to the latest news from Washington. But i’m looking forward to Las Vegas where, for a week, we can take a break from the bad news and focus on what we always do at Interop: Showing off the latest innovations in business technology and showing attendees how to use these advances to help their organizations increase productivity and save money.

Come to think of it, that sounds like a pretty good stimulus plan …

I just tripped over an optimistic jobs report from Robert Half Technology. More CIOs still say they’re hiring vs. firing. Furthermore, when you dig into the results of RHT’s latest CIO survey, you see that CIOs in the Middle Atlantic region are the most optimistic about adding staff. That’s a nice surprise and i’m looking forward to hearing first hand at Interop NY what’s making this region so strong. Also interesting in this report is a comment from RHT’s executive director: Organizations are directing recruitment efforts toward professionals who can provide essential services — such as help desk and networking — and support the launch of Web 2.0 based functionality. We’ve been fans of Enterprise 2.0 for years and have focused on this area at Interop for the past three years. One of our keynotes Wed. morning, from IBM’s Bob Picciano, general manager of Lotus Software and the Websphere portal, will once again bring attention to this important emerging area at Interop. Here again, i’m going to be curious to hear how our atttendees are helping to promote Enterprise 2.0 in their organizations.

The countdown is on. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in just a few days and we’re anticipating a great show. I’m really excited about this year’s Interop Las Vegas. Here’s why:

On the widest scale, it’s a great time for business technology. There’s tremendous innovation ” virtualization, mobility, software-as-a-service, to name just a few emerging categories. Significantly, while we’re still at the beginning of the road for each of these technologies, they can all be employed today by organization to change the way they operate. These are not technologies in search of problems to solve, as we’ve seen in past development cycles. What you see is what you can use. In fact, I’m having a hard time coming up with anything today that is solely vendor driven and amounts to no more than a distraction for buyers. Sure there are technologies that can’t seem to get “done” ” NAC and 802.11n come to mind. But both are real and already producing benefits for many organizations.

At Interop we’ve been talking for several years about the impact of consumer technology on IT. This might have been a bit of stretch when referring to iPods and MySpace and the need for IT to respond to a new generation of users who have tremendous passion for technology and the ability to create and share information on their own terms. But in a blink, the iPhone and Facebook have landed right in the middle of most organizations forcing to the surface the debate on how these and other consumer-driven technologies will be digested. And significantly, it’s a debate that includes users. Users can’t be ignored. They have power: They can pick up take their data and put it on Google Apps and move their conversations to wikis and other social networking tools. Empowered users are challenging. But IT professionals that embrace this passion will find more success, and ultimately, more satisfaction in their own work.

The third reason I’m bullish about the state of business technology is that we’re plunging into a new cycle of innovation fueled by the rapid proliferation of services-based solutions. Software, Platform- and Hardware as-a-service is the next great thing. They’re great not only because of the new choices services give IT departments, but because they are so controversial. The build vs. buy debate always draws a big, passionate crowd. And in this case, it also bring out new players ” Google, Amazon and Salesforce.com ” for example, who are eager to court business technology professionals.

The Green agenda is another reason why IT is exciting today. IT pros can be leaders in the sustainability movement by adopting energy-saving products and strategies. It’s not that hard to act Green. It can be as simple as being sure laptops and PCs power down when not in use. Going Green doesn’t cost a lot and there can be real benefits in terms of energy savings (though we need better tools to calculate this). It’s pretty “cool,” too, that one of the biggest trends in IT ” virtualization ” helps to shut down servers.

If all this feels a bit too optimistic, you can fret about the economy. But the fact is that IT pros are experts at doing more with less, and belt-tightening is a way of life. And given all the changes I’ve described above, businesses can ill afford to sharply cut back on technology investments. And unlike the last economic downturn when technology got a black eye for helping to fuel the dotcom bubble, this time around I think we’re going to see that technology innovation is one of the things that helps get the economy going again.

So what makes you excited about business technology today?