Cisco Partner Summit is just 10 days away, and if you aren’t attending the live event in Boston, consider this another reminder to register for Cisco Virtual Partner Summit (VPS). You’ll be joining thousands of our partners from all over the world for three lively days of Cisco Partner Summit keynotes, executive chats and breakout sessions on business-critical topics. During Cisco VPS, you’ll also gain access to a range of activities unique to the virtual platform, and a full program designed to maximize your online experience.
Let’s take a few minutes to look at what we have in store for Cisco VPS this year. Read More »
The balance of power is shifting to emerging economies. Compared to stagnant Western markets, business growth and investment in the Middle-East, Africa and Russia (MEAR) continues unabated.
It’s a shift that’s amplified by technological advances. In under a decade, these seismic changes have levelled the playing field, opened the door to a global market and made rapid business growth a reality:
The connected world where we can work, play and learn anytime, anywhere and with anyone.
Virtualization made it easier to manage multiple servers and reduce physical computing power.
Computing power has exponentially increased capacity and processing speeds so we can do much more for a lot less time and money.
The cloud offers all the applications and storage businesses need minus the server infrastructure.
You’ll probably point out many other factors, but I picked these because they are particularly relevant to MEAR countries and their IT spending patterns. Specifically, they are backed up by Forrester research in 2012. This showed that over half of MEAR-based companies plan to invest more in mobility, analytics, security and collaboration.
Unlike more mature companies, their spending isn’t being eroded by having to maintain and support legacy systems. This frees up budgets to completely replace or expand their IT in ways that improve their competitiveness. The top three areas that Forrester highlighted from 2011 to 2012 were mobile apps (spending increase of 47%), business intelligence (44%) and collaboration tools (41%).
Further research was carried out by Canalys in February 2012 of its online channel community – resellers, systems integrators, service providers and distributors. The results showed a positive outlook across MEAR despite ongoing economic uncertainty. Over half emphasized a move from capital expenditure to operating expenditure, with the highest demand for IT services expected from small to midsize companies (with 100-499 employees). As a respondent said, “Companies working their way out of the crisis by expanding.”
As more companies seek new technologies to secure future growth, our partner network across MEAR needs to be ready to help them become the technology leaders of tomorrow.
*Forrester, 2012, Forrsights: Cautious Optimism in 2012 IT Spending Plans -- A BT Futures Report
*Canalys, 2012, Navigating through dramatic industry change
One thing we truly appreciate about Cisco Live UK is the global nature of our attendees. Not only do we get to see our eclectic, enthusiatic, and worldly customers, but also we get to see our Cisco counterparts from all over the globe.
Take for example Ahmed Farrag. Ahmed is the Director of Business Development for Emerging Solutions Ecosystems, and he is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. We first met Ahmed at Cisco Live US last year. This year, he was very impressed with the customer presence from Emerging Markets, the Middle East, and EMEAR (Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia):
