There was no shortage of entertainment and music at Cisco’s 15th Partner Summit last week, with New Orleans’ finest bands and musicians playing for live and virtual audiences.

The action-packed event featured big news for partners, keynotes from Cisco’s top executives, breakout speakers, magicians, theater sessions, parties, a live auction, and generous donations from partners and Cisco are helping to rebuild homes and lives in New Orleans.

We put together a short video slideshow with pictures highlighting so many of the great moments from Cisco Partner Summit 2011. Enjoy! (And please share your own photos on our Facebook page.)

If you missed any of the news from last week, here are all of the big announcements for partners.

(For an exhaustive list of everything announced at Partner Summit, please download our comprehensive PDF on Partner Central.)

Here are the highlights:

• Architecture Specializations: There are three new architecture specializations available to you starting April 11, 2011: Advanced Borderless Network Architecture Specialization, Advanced Collaboration Architecture Specialization and Advanced Data Center Architecture Specialization
• New Cloud Partner Program with three foundational roles a partner can play in the cloud opportunity: Cloud Builder, Cloud Provider, and Cloud Services Reseller. (For more info, download Cisco’s paper detailing the Partner Opportunities in Cloud Computing.)
• Collaborative Professional Services (CPS): CPS is a portfolio of services that combines Cisco intellectual capital, engineering expertise and service automation to help partners profitably expand or build new professional services practices.
• Unified Communications Platforms for Small and Mid-sized Businesses: These new UC offerings provide customers in these distinct market segments with complete, affordable, business-class collaboration systems to help drive productivity and profitability.
• Partner Advisor, live support services for partners.
• Cisco EVP Rob Lloyd offered partners two deals at Partner Summit:
  1) Value Incentive Program (VIP): This new promotion offers up to double the VIP 17 rebate on core routing and switching technologies worldwide. (Visit the PDF listed above for additional details.)
  2) As part of our global IBLM program, Cisco will pay $2000 for every network assessment our partners do with customers around the world, effective March 3, 2011 through July 31, 2011.
• WebEx Everywhere! – Over 90% off list price for Cisco WebEx Meeting Center and Cisco WebEx Connect IM for every Select, Premier, Silver, Gold, and former Tandberg partners to make online collaboration part of your everyday business strategy.
• Yes! To Video – Equal to 90% off the Cisco Video Communications Server Starter Kit and 70+% off up to 5 Cisco Telepresence, EX-90 and Ex-60 units. This offer is available to Unified Communication Specialized, Telepresence ATP, and distribution partners.
• Quad Now! – 95% off Quad license for up to 1000 users (~$12 per user perpetual license plus a $6 per year per user support). (Some conditions apply.)
• Partner Architectural Enablement Offer: The first 500 channel partners that select a Cisco Specialized Learning Partner and initiate the process of achieving one or more Architecture Specializations by December 31st, 2011 will receive up to $5,000 in Cisco Learning Credits.
• Cisco Unified Workspace for Partners (CUWP) –   Continues at  an estimated 90% discount off of list price for the full Collaboration software suite, plus three years of upgrades.  CUWP3 includes New Release 8.5, Show and Share, full WebEx Enterprise Edition, SocialMiner and more.

And, congratulations to the partners who went home with awards this year!

• Provider Partner of the Year: Verizon
• Solution Innovation award: Datacraft
• Architectural Excellence award: Frontal Communication, Romania
• Architecture Excellence award: ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corp.
• Architectural Excellence Partner of the Year: Logicalis UK Limited
• Continued Commitment Recognition: FlexITy Solutions
• Commercial/Mid-Market Partner of the Year: Wafer Systems
• Enterprise Partner of the Year: PromonLogicalis
• Public Sector Partner of the Year: HCL infosystems LTD
• Services Partner of the Year: Dimension Data Europe
• Small Business Partner of the Year: CDW
• Learning Partner of the Year: Skyline Advanced Technology Services
• Distribution Partner of the Year: Comstor
• APAC Theater Partner of the Year: Datacraft Asia
• Emerging Markets Theater Partner of the Year: Dimension Data
• European Markets Partner of the Year: British Telecom
• Greater China Theater Partner of the Year: ECCOM Network System Co, LTD
• Japan Theater Partner of the Year: Net One Systems Co, LTD.
• US/Canada Theater Partner of the Year: World Wide Technology, Inc.

To watch replays of all the Partner Summit sessions, keynotes, and executive chats, visit Virtual Partner Summit. Replays will be available for another 30 days.

Finally, like the Cisco Channels Facebook page for the chance to win an iPad (two more winners will be announced soon).

Tags: ciscops11, cloud, collaboration, designations, edison peres, facebook, iblm, john chambers, keith goodwin, keynote, partner, partner summit, partner update, services, twitter, video, vps