Here's what channel partners need to know about Cisco's new services portfolio unveiled on Tuesday.

"When you attach a Polycom device -- both video and voice -- to [Microsoft], we're seeing a twelve-times increase in consumption," said Polycom's Nick Tidd.

HPE President Antonio Neri -- the master architect of the company's software defined hybrid IT strategy -- spoke with CRN about the HPE's plan to roll out artificial intelligence capabilities in the form of Nimble InfoSight to its high-end 3Par storage portfolio and the impact on competitors including Dell EMC, Cisco and Pure.

The tech community, which frequently holds major conferences in Las Vegas including this week, offered thoughts and prayers to all those impacted by Sunday's shooting tragedy.

Although Cisco is still the dominant player in the networking world, both its switch and router market share declined several points during the second quarter of 2017, according to research firm IDC.

The networking giant is expecting to cut approximately 310 positions next month, the company confirms to CRN.

Hyper-converged startup Springpath has been acquired by Cisco for $320 million in the networking giant's latest move to revamp its data center portfolio.

Jon Groves, CEO of Alexander Open Systems, says Agility -- which was built with help from Cisco -- quickly moves from proof of concept to purchase in conversations with customers.

The networking giant unveiled Cisco Intersight on Wednesday to simplify data center operations by delivering systems-management-as-a-service.

The hyper-converged infrastructure market is expanding and showing signs of maturity as at least two vendors get acquired in the first half of this year.

The consortium aims to set the standard for an open-source blockchain protocol and will enable alliance member partners to develop their own suite of applications and services to deliver to a broader ecosystem.

"This is solving the bigger picture of customers wanting to achieve a business goal and tying it to the technology regardless of what the product is," said Cisco services leader Tejas Vashi.

'The solutions work with other products and other vendors. … Clearly, the pieces together, the fabric together, adds tremendous value, but individually there's also a lot of value as well,' says Aruba's Larry Lunetta.

'It is time for Cisco to move on to its next generation of leadership, including at the board and chairman level,' Chambers wrote in an email to Cisco's board of directors.

'I think one of the things that a lot of partners don't realize because we've grown so quickly in such a short amount of time is actually how big Palo Alto Networks is,' CEO Mark McLauglin tells CRN.

Dell EMC and Supermicro solid good growth; HPE led all vendors with $3.3 billion worth of servers sold in the quarter for a 21.3 percent share of the total market.

For the week ending Sept. 8, CRN takes a look at the companies that brought their 'A' game to the channel.

At the NFL season opener at Gillette Stadium Thursday night, Extreme Networks Ed Meyercord tells CRN why he believes there's never been a better time to partner with the company.

Arista Networks sales and import ban isn't promoting "fair and free competition," according to Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP.

New incentives, tools, training and product bundles from Cisco aim to help partners go-to-market more quickly and drive consumption of Cisco infrastructure to support public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.