I will be digesting the Cisco announcement over the next few weeks in an effort to get “my angle” out there. Outside of today’s Cisco is competing with partners message, there is a bigger picture going on. The word unified is interesting. In the past I’ve been dissappointed with the Unified Communication message and now we have Unified Computing. My friend Greg Ness has been talking about Infrastructure 2.0 and that is where I see things going.

To me Cisco is thinking bold with this announcement. Specifically, the world is changing and the definition of the network is changing. In the old days (when Cisco was founded) they used to have a saying “Cisco Networks Networks”. Today’s announcement has that same feel except that today’s networks are different and complex. This is where I hope we can see more conversations. Certainly the Cisco thing today was a love feast of sorts and an example of open transparent social media, but the quality of this announcement will be telling in the coming weeks and months. (note: this Cisco Unified Computing press release was great – tons of info)

Note: I was encouraged by the presence of Doug Gourlay and his team on Twitter (follow Doug on twitter @dgourlay). Nice job Doug and Omar. Many of us have known about this announcement for some time and it was great to see Cisco leverage an open social approach to getting the news out. It certainly was effective. Keep it rolling.

Here is John Chambers speech on the announcement. John tries not to talk up the competition issue but instead talks about an evolution – very interesting. I have to say the vision is intoxicating. Now lets see it.