Cisco's Wendy Bahr: HP's 3Com Buy 'Flattering'

For Cisco's Wendy Bahr, the year began with a big-ticket promotion. Nearly a year after taking over as vice president of U.S. and Canada channels and replacing Chuck Robbins, Bahr in January 2009 became senior vice president of U.S. and Canada channels -- the first woman to become Cisco's highly visible North American channel chief.

Since then she's been, well, highly visible, no less so than when at Cisco's Partner Summit in Boston in June, she threw down the gauntlet for Cisco's erupting competition with Hewlett-Packard.

"We are competing with HP. Period. End. It is competition," Bahr said at a Partner Summit keynote. Strong words, now remembered as a key sound bite for the year that Cisco and HP stepped into the ring as once-friendly, now-competitive rivals.

Channelweb.com caught up with Bahr earlier this week to talk recession, HP and the competitive climate, and get a sense of how Cisco hot topics like energy, video and the data center are going to boost Cisco's partner community in the new year. Excerpts of the conversation follow:

It's been a busy year for the Cisco channel. Looking back, what was the most significant development this year for Cisco channel partners?

We have an awful lot of partner events, as you know, and as I listen to their feedback, I ask a very similar question about 2009. I think the Cisco brand, and our tradition of execution in difficult times, helped customers feel comfortable we would be the right place to be. 'Navigate to Accelerate' was put in place and we added a number of programs to help partners weather the storm, including extended financing terms, network assessments and trying to stimulate the pipeline so that as the economy is coming back, they'll be in good shape. I think we were good at keeping our eye focused on partner profitability and demand generation. When you get into a recession, it's easy to pull away from demand generation, but we think that we've weathered the storm with our partners quite well.

So the economy, then. And as Cisco partners come out of recession they're looking to new opportunities, including around those 30 adjacent markets we've heard a lot about from John Chambers. Which of those do you think are going to be most crucial for partners heading into 2010?

I think it's about architecture, and while that's not necessarily an adjacency [adjacent market], it means that we have virtualization, collaboration and borderless networks that are not separate architectures but integrated with one another. This is a key idea and concept and this is what differentiates Cisco from the competition. We have unified computing, for example, with the UCS [Unified Computing System], which partners understand means we are changing the IT dynamic. We cut our op-ex this year but didn't in a way that would impact our customers. We tightened the purse strings on the things we could control and continued to invest as well. In terms of key adjacencies, I would highlight smart grid, physical security and sports and entertainment.

Key as in these are most important coming out of the downturn?

The market is ready, the economy has turned, and partners have had a chance to understand our philosophy. What we've been talking about forever is that the network is the platform -- the network is the enabler for all forms of collaboration. I think even our competitors recognize that, and we're making moves at a period of market transition. We're not asking anyone to look too far ahead, and it'll be interesting to see how Q2 ramps out, but every day is a little bit better, and when that starts to happen you have to put your foot on the gas pedal.

We've heard much about the coalition between Cisco and EMC and VMware, and the Vblock product set. Partners are interested, but the ones who are qualified are also curious as to how Vblocks will move through the channel given that the three of you -- Cisco, EMC, VMware -- all have different programs. Can you provide any more information?

From a partner perspective, this is a complex solution. You saw Cisco, EMC and Vmware come together in this coalition for these robust V-block infrastructures. We're obviously very excited. It's also important to understand that it's the first of many coalitions using our open- and non-proprietary UC architecture, and you'll see continued partnerships with EMC, NetApp, Oracle and Microsoft, and others.

We are cognizant that coalitions like these will require changes in channel programs. Rather than having the partner aligned with each manufacturer, we're looking at programs that would reward partners across a broad scope of manufacturers. That has happened in the past, but not on a wide scale. The partners need to have one program that benefits from each of the manufacturers. We're very sensitized to that and there will be training around it.

So partners should stay tuned for an updated channel program around V-block?

Absolutely. It will start with the members of the coalition. My hope is to look where we have commonality for a joint program, a registration program or an incentive program where all three manufacturers are making it easier for the partner. Life is getting very complex for Cisco partners, I know. This is a key opportunity set for the coalition.

Next: Bahr on Smart Grid, Video and HP-3Com