Bernadette Wightman

Career so far I joined Cisco in August 1999 as a channel account manager. Since then, I’ve held numerous senior roles, including looking after the IT services channels in the UK, where I managed our IBM and HP partnerships and our outsourcer relationships with Accenture, EDS, CSC and CapGemini. I also led the Cisco team into BT Global Services and headed the combined BT Channel team from Cisco.

If you could be anyone else for a week, who would you be and what would you do? Minister for communications and implement broadband access for everybody in the UK.

What would you have as your last meal? It would have to be a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

What is the best corporate jolly you have ever been on/taken partners on? The partner summit in San Francisco in April 2010, with Phil Smith, UK & Ireland vice president on guitar and 60 partners singing “show me the way to Amarillo”.

Do you see the cloud as a threat or an opportunity? As a global technology company, it is our job to embrace emerging trends and find ways of working in new fields. For us, the emergence of SaaS is certainly a huge opportunity and we have long been delivering network and software infrastructure for what is now called the “cloud”.

Cisco has expertise in network-based communications and collaboration, security and media delivery, reflected in Cisco WebEx Collaboration Cloud and the Cisco Security Cloud Services. Moreover, we use SaaS to provide cloud infrastructure and service delivery platforms for enterprises, cloud service providers and core network providers.

Have any of your predictions come true this year? My prediction last year was about increased use of video in business and that’s something we’ve seen increase over the past 12 months. Over the next year we see datacentre and associated technologies such as virtualisation offering a significant opportunity for our partners going forward.

What do you see as the channel’s biggest challenge in 2011? Moving from being a channel organisation to being a partner organisation, where the customer can see differentiation and focus of every partner.

What is the best part of your day? Between 5am and 8am – open coffee slot from 7:30 for 30 minutes where I spend time with anyone in the organisation