Interop Las Vegas: Where's the Jackpot?

The VAR Guy is watching Interop Las Vegas from the comfort of his home office this year. The Interop news wire appears a bit lighter than previous years. And the keynote speaker lineup — while impressive — lacks Cisco CEO John Chambers and other industry titans. Is Interop still popular? Sure. But competition from a different type of event may be stealing some of Interop’s thunder. Here’s the scoop.

Consider the situation at Cisco. The networking giant earlier this month hosted a massive partner summit in Hawaii. It was all-hands-on for Cisco’s Chambers and other top company executives. And in June, the Cisco Live conference will host thousands of customers in Orlando, Fla.

Money Matters

So, pretend you’re a chief marketing officer at a major networking company faced with the following options:

From where The VAR Guy sits, it seems as if some vendors are pumping more and more money into Option A, while continuing to carve out a decent amount of funding for Option B.

Solutions providers seem to be following that lead. The VAR Guy knows dozens of solutions providers that attended the Cisco Partner Summit earlier this month, but only a handful of his sources went to Interop.

The net result: Interop remains a solid stage and gathering place for the networking industry. And it’s good to see some new, fresh voices on the Interop keynote list. But vendor-driven, vendor-controlled events seem to be the rage.

Admittedly, The VAR Guy is going out on a limb here. He isn’t even at Interop. And some big news from big vendors could certainly surface at the event this week. But nobody ever accused The VAR Guy of withholding his opinions.