Through a combination of analyst briefings and customer events, Cisco has ramped up outbound communication and marketing of its collaboration strategy in Asia Pacific over the past several months. The foundation remains video (TelePresence), webconferencing (WebEx), and IP telephony, areas where Cisco is a leader. But Cisco understands that to drive growth and expand its customer footprint within enterprise accounts, it must move further up the stack and increasingly compete with both traditional collaboration vendors like Microsoft and IBM and cloud-based alternatives like Google and salesforce.com.

While the strategy still plays to the company’s core networking strength, I question whether Cisco can position itself as a “go-to” vendor in the traditional collaboration space. As our research shows, senior IT and business decision-makers in Asia Pacific don’t currently equate Cisco with collaboration.

To address this challenge, Cisco is pursuing multiple initiatives/approaches:

• Leveraging its core strengths. Cisco is focused on expanding from existing unified communications (UC) initiatives within customer accounts by leveraging the combination of networking and video to drive value. Cisco is pushing “control” via intelligent networking capabilities (e.g., security, identity management, authentication, access), all delivered through Cisco networking hardware. Simultaneously, Cisco is pushing “flexibility” via device- and platform-independent collaboration capabilities like content, video, instant messaging, and social computing.

I read some  deceptively warm and fuzzy advertising riding on the subway this morning courtesy of our nation's top soft drink manufacturers. Together they have reduced calories of drinks in US schools by 88% by offering more low- and no-calorie options. "Gee," I thought, "I'd like to learn more." So as I exited the subway, I took out my phone and searched "no calorie soft drinks." The top link broke the spell; an article on msn exposing the same risks that no calorie drinks have of their sugary cousins.  My first thought was, "Well that isn't any better for our nation's children." My second was, "What the #$&?! Do these companies take me for a complete fool? Don't they know that I have the world's knowledge at my fingertips??" Apparently not.

Whilst with a software vendor yesterday I reused a favorite IT service delivery analogy that was inspired by, or was it borrowed from, James Finister at least two years ago. At the Forrester I&O Forum in Las Vegas this Thursday I will use it again when Glenn O'Donnell and I present on "A Mindset Change Is Needed: Support The People, Not The Technology."

To me the analogy is indicative of the fact that despite all of the investments organizations have made in increasing IT service management maturity and IT service delivery we still seem to measure our relative success in terms of IT rather than business outcomes.

So consider this somewhat frivolous analogy: comparing IT operations to pizza delivery operations

The pizza company has a palatial store and has invested in the best catering equipment (read state-of-the-art data center). It employs highly-qualified chefs who take pride in creating culinary masterpieces. When the pizza leaves the store it scores ten out of ten on the internal measurement system. This is, however, measuring at the point of creation rather than the point of consumption.

Now consider the customer view of the pizza when it arrives: it is late, cold, has too much cheese, the wrong toppings (even toppings that are unrecognizable to the customer), and it costs more than the customer expected (and wanted) to pay.

How much of this example can be applied to IT delivery?

We just published a report on the online luxury shopper in China, Selling Luxury Goods To Online Shoppers In China. The report looks at the demographic of the online luxury shopper in China and the nature of the online luxury marketplace in China — it also provides advice for brands looking to succeed in this rapidly evolving market.

In this report we note that:

Like all categories online in China, luxury is growing rapidly. According to the World Luxury Association, China is currently the second largest luxury market in the world — it is already clear that part of the demand is coming from online shoppers. In the past few years, a number of the world’s most elite brands have gone online in China. Going online now with a strategic approach will be key to securing long-term market share. 

There are many types of luxury shoppers in China. The online luxury shopper in China spans multiple income brackets and age ranges and lives in both tier 1 and tier 2 cities. Success in this space will mean being considerate of what each of these shoppers is looking for. 

The needs of the luxury shoppers with the most purchasing power are not being met.While a handful of luxury brands have gone live in China with localized sites, today’s online luxury experience is rarely compelling. Additionally, domestic online retailers primarily target online shoppers looking for a deal, with few websites offering sophisticated interfaces. In this report, we look at what is and isn’t being done and what changes will offer the luxury shopper a satisfying online experience.

Sound familiar? Executives across the globe feel peer and competitive pressure to “get to yes” on private cloud. This burden falls on IT to provide a cloud solution — oh, and by the way, we need it by the end of the year. With this clock ticking, it’s hard to think about private cloud strategically. In fact, why not to just cloudwash your virtual environment and buy your team time? Many enterprises (yes, even those presenting at events) have gone down this road. And some vendors will suggest this as a short-term fix. DON’T DO IT.

You’re cutting yourself short on what you could achieve with this environment while losing credibility with the business and your peers. Sound overdramatic? The consumerization of IT is forcing IT to connect with the business or risk circumvention. For many, the existing relationship isn't great. And each future interaction could either improve or worsen that relationship. Promising the business a cloud delivered within your own data center, and then failing to provide basic functionality of a cloud will just make future initiatives and interactions even harder. In the meantime, the business will continue to circumvent your department. If you're going to invest the resources/time to build this environment and rope in rogue cloud users — make sure you get to cloud.