Next week (July 8 - 12) should be exciting (hardly the summer doldrums). I'll be at Cisco Live in the fast part for their annual analyst event. It's going to be illuminating to hear what the story is now and how it's changed since they hit rough waters. In addition to problems in the core switching business, a lot of the organizational changes recently were motivated to fix the problems done with the goal of optimizing innovation. So there is no easy answer: the core business has issues, and innovation is more important than ever.
Then, on Tuesday, VMware is making a major announcement about the next release of VCloud. Last time, the new additions in security came at some cost to their ersatz security partners. Presuming that this release incorporates additional "adjacent" functionality, it will be fascinating to see the new implications for the partner ecology. And you have to be curious about why the announcement is now rather than capping the upcoming VMworld meeting.
And on Monday Citrix is going to be talking (at least to the analyst community) about the Cloud. You have to wonder whether this is to keep from appearing reactive to whatever VMware is going to say.
Anyway, it should be an interesting week!
