BELL CONSULTING GROUP INC.

I attended Cisco's "C-Scape" Analyst conference Dec 10-12, 2007 at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. It has changed quite a bit since I first attended ten years ago, when there were about 30 analysts in attendance. Even after Cisco has split the financial analysts off into a separate conference, C-Scape is huge: 550 industry analysts in attendance; 45 from IDC alone.

Working luncheons were held Tuesday and Wednesday in a sizable ballroom with each of 64 round luncheon tables setup for discussion of a different product/technology area, and the responsible Cisco executives at the table. This created 64 "topic area" discussions. IDC was probably one of the few firms in attendance to have enough analysts there to truly "take it all in" (almost -- they only had 45 analysts to cover 64 tables).

Despite that, we came away from C-Scape with a good feel for what's new with Mr. Chambers' "Cisco 3.0" business model as explained in his keynote presentation; and a much better feel for many of Cisco's strategic initiatives, particularly their dive into the SMB space.

I had a couple of interesting conversations with Mr. Chambers. In his keynote, he had placed a lot of emphasis on Cisco's "Telepresence" business and the growth of video traffic. I hit him with my hardest questions at the break and at the after-hours mixer. He had some great answers, and I gained a new appreciation of why Cisco is evangelizing their "Cisco 3.0" business model.

I attended many sessions - on Cisco's enterprise strategy, SMB and Channel strategy, Wi-Fi and WiMax evolution, Telepresence, Video, NGN Internet, Data Protection, etc. Contact us if you have questions. Thanks to Cisco for putting on a great event!