One of Winston Churchill’s most memorable war speeches came on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon at Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill stated:

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

My father was always proud that he had taken part in the first battle that changed the tide of World War II. He was 19 years old at time and had been on active duty for only 10 days! He was particularly proud that Churchill had said: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat.”

Well, the point of all this is to blow the trumpet for this Manufacturing Industry Blog from Cisco and your group of Industry Gurus. With only a few bloggers and blogging for only a year or so, we managed to achieve several notable awards:

• I, Peter Granger, was proud to accept the “Best Newcomer Blog Award” on behalf of the team – we managed to get folks to stay on our blog longer than any other Cisco blog! A real achievement for the team!
• Andrew Lach, our Blog Admin Manager managed to top the charts of prolific bloggers two months in a row, and became a featured blogger several times.
• The rest of the team, Mark Wylie, Kevin Davenport and Paul Didier, continued to impress the Industry with their thought Leadership.

So, what of the future? Read More »

Tags: 2011, 2012, award, best newcomer, blogging, blogs, Churcill, cisco blogs, El Alamein, future, Manufacturing, Manufacturing Guru, winner, Winston Churchill

Here’s a Thursday quick quiz: What integrates social networking, voice, video, and unified communications into one workspace? Is it:

a)    Facebook
b)    Microsoft Office
c)    Cisco Quad

If you chose “c” then go get yourself an ice cream cone! But seriously, Cisco Quad, just like your ice cream cone, is pretty sweet—it’s a powerful enterprise platform that can improve business productivity, and accelerate growth by bringing content, business applications, communications, and enterprise social software into a single, intuitive experience.

So how does it work? Quad is a truly unified communications platform, with blogs and wikis. Users can also schedule meetings and engage in instant messaging, voice, and video communication, as well as manage and share documents.

Ready to leverage Quad at your own office? Right now, partners can take advantage of the QuadNow program, which offers Quad at a significant discount—95% off the list price.

Read on for details on the program, as well as to watch a demo of how Quad works.

Read More »

Tags: blogs, Cisco Quad, partners, unified communications, video, Voice

Guess what, partners: We’ve been reading your blogs, perusing your Facebook pages, and scanning your Twitter feeds to find out what you’ve been up to this summer. (Everything we saw was rated G, don’t worry!)

So what have we found? We’ve discovered that many of you are doing some really cool things. For instance, some of you have scored really interesting customer wins, while others have snagged celebrities to star in your ads, or you’re working on raising money for charity. We unearthed so many diverse and interesting tidbits that we’ve decided that periodically here on the blog we’ll showcase the cool stuff that our partners are up to. Here’s a roundup of what just some of you are doing.

Nexus IS posted a video on their Facebook page about their customer win with Global Cash Access (GCA). (We wrote about their win here on the blog, too.) The video features interviews with GCA’s CEO and VP of IT discussing how Nexus impacted and improved their business.

Meanwhile, Force 3 posted a news roundup video on their Facebook page called Great News, which highlights recent goings-on at the company. Great work, guys!

Read More »

Tags: blogs, dimension data, facebook, force 3, logicalis, MTM Technologies, nexus IS, partners, twitter

If you’re like the nearly 30% of mobile workers who check their smartphones every six-to-12 minutes during downtime – for those doing the math, that’s nearly 80 times a day provided that you’re not checking during work hours or in your sleep—you want easy ways to help you keep up with the latest news and info.

Now there’s a way to keep track of the latest Cisco partner news from your phone: the new Cisco Partners app. It’s available to all iPhone and Android mobile devices users for free!

The Cisco Partners app gives you access to late-breaking Cisco partner news, how-to articles, tips, program updates, the most current blog posts, and our video library – all at your fingertips. Plus, you can share with friends and colleagues using social media.

Ready for a quick tour of the new Cisco Partners app? Read More »

Tags: Android, App, blogs, Cisco, iphone, news, news feed, partners, video library, videos

E-ticket: check. Hotel room reservation: check. Fancy outfit: check. Cute shoes: check, check. We’re only a day away from BlogHer|BET 2011 and just like how participants are getting ready for this event, so are we at Cisco. But our list goes something like this: Reception hors d’oeuvres: check. Sound: check. Lighting: check. TelePresence Suites: check. Virtual Concierge: check…and check.

This will be the first time in BlogHer history that we bring women together for a few hours in 3 US locations for idea exchange, networking and some good, old-fashioned fun. Participants will be able to see and interact with each other live and in life size. Yes, ladies: life size. Amy Friedlander Hoffman, Founder of Priority Digital Media and BlogHer mentor looks forward to this experience: “I’m familiar with virtual spaces, however I’ve never been to a Public TelePresence Suite before. Priority Digital Media is a strategic consulting practice that focuses on content and distribution strategies across TV, broadband and mobile and thus, I am excited to see how this next level of interaction will translate into future entertainment experiences”.

Read More »

Tags: blogher, blogs, contest, events, TelePresence