The reality of Web 2.0

Sitting in a brewery listening to the head of Cisco’s channel discuss Web 2.0 and the networking giant’s channel, it struck me how dated this sounded and just how ubiquitous Web 2.0-tagged strategies are becoming.
For Cisco to only just be discussing this topic with its partners and how it would affect their business, seemed a little tardy to me.
But this is not reality. In a channel reality, listening to someone discuss a theory is very different to understanding how or even if this theory affects your business. And this is what most channel players are trying to understand.
One word that seems to go hand in hand with Web 2.0 is collaboration. At a Cisco event last week in Dublin, the vendor announced its plans to encourage resellers, ISVs, vendors and end users to snuggle up and target vertical sectors.
Many vendors have been calling themselves the Cilla Black of the channel for years ­ adopting a dating-agency approach to marry up their partners to fulfil an end-to-end solution ­ so Cisco’s announcement was not a new concept.
But given that it has been late to launch this kind of programme for its channel, Cisco at least had some flesh to its collaboration bones. The firm launched a very Web 2.0-style Second Life-esque virtual platform, where partners can meet ISVs and work together to target specific sectors, then be encouraged by Cisco to sell these solutions.
IBM and Xerox are just two of the vendors already using Second Life for this type of collaboration platform and while it is very trendy, it is still just a virtual reality.
It will not be until the vendors lead by example ­ collaborating with each other and putting real business help, such as SLAs, audits and margin structure in place around collaboration ­ that this will become a business reality.
Sara Driscoll is editor of CRN ­