The 2nd Annual Larry Awards for Best of Interop Presentation

And the winners are ...

For the second year in a row I sat, stood and watched EVERY presentation that I could find on the show floor at Interop. Many people recognized me and asked me if I was judging them for my Larry Awards? It seems the word has got around! So many people put so much time and effort into their booths at Interop and were looking forward to the awards. Many sent me e-mails to remind me of the times of their presentations. So, without further delay, here are the winners.

Here are the categories for The Larry Awards” for Best Interop Product and Presentation:

• Cloud Networking
• Collaboration, VOIP, Video, Unified Communications
• Data Center, Storage, Infrastructure, Security, Virtualization
• Network Management, Monitoring
• Network Optimization
• Cellular, Wireless, Mobility

The Grand Prize winners are:
Cloud Networking
Spirent Communications
                A well-thought-out presentation and a staff who talks to you is good. Many others in this category had more employees in the booths but those folks were always checking their Blackberrys. I liked the different presentations Spirent gave and the follow up. I would suggest that they expand it for next year with live testing in all presentations.

Collaboration, VOIP, Video, Unified Communications
Vidyo
                While LifeSize had a great location and the upstart Vidyo did not, Vidyo's booth was always busy. The presentation and staff made for a great Interop for booth visitors. Once thing they could have done to really put them over the top would be to give out free desktop evaluations for Interop. Hand it out at the booth to get people more involved with the product.  I would not be surprised if they are purchased by a larger company very soon.

Data Center, Storage, Infrastructure, Security, Virtualization
Arista Networks
                The booth was always busy. They had nice presentations and live demonstrations with load testing of the product. Executive representation was always in the booth talking to whoever had a question to ask, the coffee bar was also a good touch for the morning coffee.

Network Management, Monitoring
iBoss Web Filters
                Now this might be a surprise pick for some but they did it for me. They had a good presentation and good follow up after. They were straight to the point and gave great real world examples. Many people liked others such as Barracuda or TriGeo but it was the same thing as last year which is getting a bit boring.

Network Optimization
Riverbed Technology
                I know this will come as no surprise to some but they honestly won me over with a "no bull" presentation and demonstration. Any time you can have real customers doing a presentation in your booth that gets my attention. I would suggest they use the other side of the booth next year for a full Cascade presentation at the same time. They could showcase the product better.

Cellular, Wireless, Mobility
Motorola
                The live demonstrations won me over when I saw the products; the staff took time and talked with people. They understood the products and could answer questions.

As you can see from my picks, the companies that spent the most money on the booths did not always win. If they had a corny booth or presentation, that didn't win me over. If they had a staff that could not answer even simple questions, but was just there to fill space up, they did not win me over. If you would ask me who had the worst presentation, I will not name names, but will just you some examples of some presentation faux pas I encountered

• If you sell teleconferencing and everything you sell connects to it, you might want to offer a teleconfernecing demonstration.
• The boxing ring seemed tiresome to me. (Note, my fellow Cisco Subnet blogger Jon Oltsik liked it).
• If you are a cellular carrier, booth employees really need to know the product. “I don’t know” on 4 of 5 questions I asked does not cut it.
• Two guys with fake mustaches does not make a good presentation.
• A video of a guy getting fired and then asking how he got fired just sad to me.
• If people don’t know what product you won Best of Interop Award for; that’s just wrong and you need to get a new marketing group. Live demonstrations are needed on all products you have at Interop.
• Don’t schedule a partner summit the same week as Interop, that’s bad business and many partners and customers were not happy.

A last note: Green is the way we all need to go next year at Interop. All vendors need to stop printing all materials to handout. They need to hand out USB’s with all the material on them along with contact information for people in the booth. We all need to do more.

I look forward to next year and the Third Annual Larry Awards.

• Cisco
• Arista
• iBoss
• Interop
• Motorola
• Riverbed
• Spirent
• The Larry Awards
• vidyo