Do you watch Modern Family?  I love that show and it just keeps getting better. The episode where parents Phil and Claire moved daughter Hailey into her college dorm was particularily hilarious and I’m still laughing over the “Phil’s-Osophy” book he created for Hailey on “things I’ve learned”  — hence, my strange title.

When Cisco asked me to participate on the Channels blog, I decided to risk the obvious and write about soft skills because it’s my observation they’re not widely appreciated – especially by women. What I mean by soft skills is personal brand: the image you portray and how others percieve you.  It’s the very foundation on which your career is built.  The timing couldn’t be better: we are in the throes of launching a very exciting project here at Westcon Group (more on that later) and today — you may note — is International Women’s Day.

Women want to develop professional and business skills, but often overlook what I call their soft skills foundation. For starters, there’s that nagging perception of the glass ceiling. Well, let’s ask this question: is it a glass ceiling that’s holding women back or is it something else?  You might consider the following when evaluating your own soft skills foundation.  Read More »

Tags: Cisco, distributor, International Women's Day, partner, Westcon Group

Did you know the number of mobile-connected devices has broken the 1 billion mark? We have become more reliant on the Internet to get things done, take care of customers, and expand our businesses. This is a very important topic for partners, including small business partners.

Cisco’s newly expanded small business portfolio can help your customers better address their needs in this increasingly mobile world, where connectivity on a range of mobile devices is crucial. You already know that Cisco helps small businesses perform to their maximum potential through offerings that span security, connectivity, and collaboration. Cisco’s latest offerings continue that story, helping our partners fuel small business success and paving the way for future growth. To learn more about these recent announcements and how you can seize new market opportunities and add value to your customers, check out my recent post on the Small Business blog.

Read More »

Tags: Cisco, partner, portfolio, small business

A few weeks ago we launched new Cisco Unified Access solutions at Cisco Live. These included the new Catalyst 3850 switch and the new Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller, both built on the new Unified Access Data Plane ASIC.  These will be key for Cisco partners and their customers as they implement BYOD policies and add more wireless access in branch offices, stores, and other remote locations. It’s a great opportunity for you to help your customers deploy these technologies with a converged approach.

To capitalize on this opportunity, of course, you’ll need to learn something about Cisco Unified Access and I’ve got some ideas for you on that.  Read More »

Tags: Borderless Networks, Catalyst 3850, catalyst switch, Cisco, Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller, contest, Ike Theodore Willis, iPad, partner, unified access

This is the third blog in the Cisco Partner Talent series, helping partners attract, develop, and retain the right people with the right skills at the right time. Last month’s blog shared talent attraction tips. This month’s blog post goes into detail about stage three of the Cisco Fit4Talent Employee Lifecycle: Onboarding.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Maybe we should get back together.

Many of us have thought something like this at some point in our lives. But you might be surprised to learn that your new employees are having these same thoughts about their previous organization—and often from day one on the job

In many cases, new employees haven’t broken their emotional ties with their previous employers, nor established new ties with you. Humetrics, a talent recruitment and retention specialist, recently conducted employee exit interviews on behalf of a client, and found that as many as 20 percent of that client’s employees would consider returning to their former employer.

The reason? They said that hadn’t yet developed an emotional attachment to their new employer. And having that emotional attachment is critical, according to Humetrics, because emotionally-connected employees are the predictor of business outcomes such as productivity, profitability, customer engagement and turnover.

How can Cisco Fit4Talent help partners?
Read More »

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Fit4Talent, fit4talent, onboarding, partner, talent

Cisco and VMware share a long track record of joint innovation and integrated solution development, providing differentiated capabilities and benefits for our partners and customers. Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a great example of technology that raises the performance bar and dramatically simplifies the data center operational environment by delivering a compute platform purpose-built with scalable virtualization in mind. Meanwhile, VMware Horizon View is uniquely suited to delivering a total desktop virtualization solution that simplifies IT management, increases security and increases control of end-user access while centrally delivering desktop services from the cloud, which drives down costs.

When you pair Cisco UCS with VMware Horizon View-you get the best of both worlds: truly scalable, easy to manage, end-to-end solutions that dramatically improve price-to-performance ratios for desktop virtualization deployments.

Large enterprises began adopting Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as customers sought more secure, scalable and cost-effective means to deliver desktop workspaces to end-users. These days, VDI helps enterprises support growing trends like Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), or as some of our VMware friends call it, Spend-Your-Own-Money (SYOM). As a result, Cisco and VMware have been successfully delivering VDI solutions to enterprise customers for the last two years.

But what we’ve heard from you, our trusted channel partner community, is that it’s harder to build the business case for VDI with customers who are in the midmarket space. Not only do these customers have fewer seats to virtualize, but they’re also usually without the resources or time to decipher how all of the moving parts associated with VDI fit together. How do we enable them to benefit from VDI without the significant CAPEX hurdle, or the costs associated with scaling once their needs grow? And how do we provide them with simpler, more cost efficient solutions?

Check out how partners benefit from a tremendous midmarket VDI opportunity.  Read More »

Tags: atlantis computing, Cisco, EMC, fusion-io, midmarket, netapp, nimble storage, partner, vdi