Colleague Jon Arnold did a great, detailed writeup of what he saw at C-Scape, the analys's conference at Cisco.

Cisco C Scape Conference - Field of Dreams

Based on the first day here, I'd say this is a really well done analyst conference. People are well looked after, and the WiFi access is pretty good. Cisco has mixed up the format and made things a bit more interactive and conversational, instead of straight up presentations.

The overall content has been fairly high level, but still some good takeaways. I only cover a small amount of Cisco's world, so I can't really comment on everything in detail.

I also got some photos and a video clip to post, but I don't have the tools with me to upload to my PC unfortunately. I'll get those up here when I get back on Thursday.

John Chambers gave the opening presentation, and he sure is fun to watch. He knows how to work the room, and roams all over, constantly moving, and never misses a beat. If you want to see for yourself, come back in a couple of days when I get my video clip posted.

If anyone can build a field of dreams - and sell you on the vision, it's Mr. Chambers. As you'll soon see, I mean this both literally and figuratively.

I try to keep an open mind where Cisco is concerned. Sometimes it's a struggle as I have close friends whose history with Chamber's dates back to Wang. They have unpleasant firsthand recollections, and they're people I trust fully.

But Jon is someone whose judgement I respect highly. And I'll confirm that Chambers does indeed know how to spin a yarn and sell a vision. The Telepresence vision is interesting, although I see it as a high end niche that most organizations will never touch. And I question Cisco's ability to deliver in market scale and sustain the early efforts. Time will tell.

Do go read Jon's writeup. Great insight into Cisco there.

It's All Unified, Or Is It
By J. Nicholas Hoover
Dec 14, 2006 at 11:52 AM ET

A food services company that integrated click-to-call into its ERP program. A bank centralizing call centers from 94 to one. A hospital whose nurses carry wireless phones that run location-based applications. Abducted child alerts being automatically text messaged to cell phones. None of those sounds like unified communications to me, yet Cisco Systems cited every single one of them at it's annual analyst conference yesterday.

Hoover's interesting point, which dovetails neatly with my personal experience with Cisco is - Cisco's muddying the waters a bit by describing all IP communications as unified communications.

Indeed, muddying the waters to their advantage and playing the FUD factor has always been a strength at Cisco. They too often create vision on the fly stringing together buzzwords and acting as if they invented the concept.

In fact, Cisco seems to put all IP communications under the unified communications moniker. During a session on the topic, Rick Moran, Cisco's VP of product and technology marketing for IP communications said there was potentially a $34 billion market in unified communications, but the slide he showed representing market potential included things like IP PBXes.

Putting all IP in unified communications is only natural for Cisco. Think about what they do. The subliminal message there would be without Cisco, there's no unified communications. They'd love to have that thought gain traction. It's not accurate, and Cisco's rank and file (and sales force) really don't understand the breadth and depth of what unified communications is. But Cisco is going to play hardball in an effort to dominate the space.

They're always interesting to watch. I've standing offers to do podcast chats with some very senior Cisco execs here, but interest is always lukewarm. Cisco has its own media machine and its own blogging team. I'd love to get some Cisco folks to interview here. I'll post a list and take another run at them.