As you all may know, in July I'll make a big career change. I'm not worried; I believe I'm still marketable. I'm a self-starter, I'm proficient in Microsoft Office. I guess that's it. Also I'm learning how to give money away.

With Cisco Systems' move into the SMB space, the growing popularity of social networking in the enterprise and a host of acquisitions, it's been a busy year for the networking vendor's channel partners. At the company's recent C-Scape press and analyst conference in San Jose, vice-president of worldwide channels, Edison Peres, sat down to discuss the way ahead.

Gartner research director for IT channels, Tiffani Bova, has some strong views about the evolving channel landscape. She spoke with ARN about the shift of power from vendors to partners and how the channel needs to break away from its transactional heritage.

As business needs change, so do the requirements for the business backbone. ARN looks at networking trends and technologies and reports on predictions for 2008 and beyond.

Like many gearheads, I've owned a lot of portable computers over the years -- and I've wanted to replace every last one with a smaller, sleeker upgrade, from the "luggable" Apple IIc onward. But most of those upgrades have left me disappointed: with the lack of software; with cheap, hard-to-use interfaces; and with "optional" add-ons that were in fact very much necessary to make the machine useful.