Cisco Live! - Boldly going where no LAN vendor has gone before

“[Datacentre] Space: The Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the enterprise networking firm Cisco. Its continuing mission, to explore new technologies, to seek out new markets and sell  premium-priced, proprietary networking kit. To boldly go where no LAN vendor has gone before.”

Cue the music.

You may wonder what this has to do with Cisco. Well, the networking giant's premier networking event – Cisco Live! - kicks off tomorrow and the 800lb gorilla in the market will be hosting the bash in Las Vegas.

The event will be book-ended by an opening keynote from Cisco chief exec John Chambers and a closing address by ex-Captain of the Starship Enterprise William Shatner. Ah yes, the penny drops.

What Shatner will be speaking about remains a secret.

The agenda gives a little more detail about Chambers' keynote. He “will paint a compelling picture of the future of networking and communication technology and the ways it will transform business practices, education, and social relationships.”

I think it’s a fair bet Shatner will be weaving together threads on future technologies. Although how he’ll tie in faster-than-light travel, faster-than-light communications, antimatter energy technologies, photon torpedo technology and matter transportation is anybody’s guess.

Not that Kirk was ever a specialist in those technologies.

If Cisco wanted the real deal on future comms technologies, maybe it should have gone for Nichelle Nichols – aka Lieutenant Uhura – who was the Enterprise’s comms officer.

It could be that Shatner is a closet networking geek, and he’ll be sending the audience to sleep with tales of network packet analysis, and arguing how Fibre Channel is still not a dead technology.

Stranger things have happened. And here I will cite the Star Trek episode Spock’s Brain, in which aliens nick the Vulcan’s large wrinkled walnut and install it in a purpose-built networked facility to run their planet’s utilities and infrastructure.

It ends with Dr McCoy having to reconnect Spock’s brain, after Spock’s body has been wandering around being run by a computer strapped to his head.

Whatever the topic of his talk, let's hope it engages the audience, lest Shatner is met with cries of "Beam me up Scotty" five minutes into his presentation.