From the United States, where our brave Germano Rizzo is following the International RFID Convention in Dayton, Ohio, to Istanbul, where the Motorola European Partner Conference is taking place, Aton is steadily becoming more and more international.

Your faithful reporter will once again make his voice heard, this time from the bordering region between the Islam and the Western world.
In fact here I am in Istanbul, outstanding city featuring over 10 million inhabitants, traditionally regarded as the bridge between East and West. Nowadays it is a definitely modern capital and one feels one might be in any other big European metropolis.

The appointment is prestigious, both because of the tremendous effort Motorola has made to organize it all as for the fact that this is the only annual occasion to synthetize the on-field activities.
The dominating colour will be blue, as a homage paid to the host city, with its splendid Bosphorus, and the symbol introduced will be that of the atom, to identify Interoperability between applications and technologies. The video contributions are increasingly pervasive. Few messages on RFID. But we are ready and steady, so GO!

Introduction and welcome by Marco Landi 

    
We are all present: Partners for the Radio Division, Partners for the Wireless Network Systems and Partners for the Enterprise Mobility Solutions. The desertions by the big American bosses (President Gene Delaney & Mark Moon, Worldwide Sales Chief, who remained in the US due to business exigencies) as well as the European one, Manuel Torres (ill) do not seem to affect the determination of our hosts. 

The first day begins, as usual, in a drumming way: music shooting from a video screen and introducing us to the themes of this important appointment, which we can summarize as follows:

1) Motorola is big and powerful, well organized and full of extraordinary prospects;
2) Partners are their Word;
3) The Market its celebration
 
Marco Landi, smart and sharp host of the event, declares to be happy and satisfied about the splendid just completed 2010. Incredible growth, made even more outstanding by the everlasting economic stagnation. Marco states a further 15% growth for the Networking sector, a 25% for the radio, and in fact a further 27% for our beloved EMB sector (practically the Mobility sector). This is translated into an extraordinary cash availability, the highest ever. The American channel plays a 50% in the business game, while in Europe, traditionally indirectly-oriented, we are at a 66%, decisively running towards the 75% target. The schedule for 2011 foresees exceeding the one thousand million dollars for EMEA. Great attention to ES400, strategic product for evolution, as it implies the right compromise between the PDA exigencies and those of the Smartphone, being able to integrate audio-digital functionalities. Since last autumn, when it was launched, tens of thousand units have already been ordered. Well done!!!
Telephone carriers forcefully enter Motorola Sales strategy. The paradigm – if we can call it so – is summarized in the graph below:

The Radio/WNS/EMB Convergence is at last a reality (it has been since May 2007 when the Partner Conference took place in Cape Town, that we have been expecting this declaration). Partners helping each other by exchanging Customers and opportunities in order to offer a sharper profile in the market have been guaranteed an economic bonus. Among the diverse slides showing Opportunities, I find the one on the United Nations especially striking. More Partners for a more aggressive penetration in the 40 agencies by routing out opportunities and applications to be developed. Great emphasis on Field Mobility, rightly defined as an application other than vertical, able to embrace several usage areas. The expository area – the so-called “Solutions Fair” – embraces a 70% partner presence on Radio & WSN and then ISV on Mobility, not only applications, but also platforms  for information dispatch or its organization in portable devices. The working day finishes with the Breakout Sessions (thematic areas to further deepen technical and innovative contents to be applied to the reference markets). An enjoyable and fanciful dinner on an island in the Bosphorus completes the operations of the first day, mainly directed to the creation of a work team.

CNN Newcast by Michelle and Marco

The second day begins with the CNN Newscast: a spectacular and entertaining sketch set up to describe the products from the different divisions in a light-hearted way. Marco Landi and Michelle Gautier become presenters of an improbable technological newscast. By imitating the most serious and prestigious news channels, they show us the novelties for the different divisions, getting inspiration from foreign politics to then move onto current affairs, not forgetting weather forecasts or sports. We have so learned about the strength of Motorola in the various markets (identified as sports like cycling, car racing or football), to then conclude with the weather forecast (which has provided us with the Sales previsions in the geographical areas covered by EMEA). Compared to the usually boring technological presentations, we have all appreciated this demystification of the most technical and less attractive area.
Then Gary Aitkenhead, new Services Chief, after illustrating the position of Motorola Services in the business with partners (not completely convincing), moved on to expose the Motorola strategy for Managed Services, different from those by Aton in that they are limited to devices and environment, while Aton reaches the final user and his problem areas – even psychological. Roger Leverhagen, Chief Officer for the Channel Strategy, further stated what already anticipated in Chicago during the Advisory Partner Meeting last October, that is, the evolution of the Channel Program from the by now obsolete Partner Select to the new Empower. This will come into force in 2012 and implies a revolution with a high level of sophistication in the relationships between Motorola and its partners.
Lastly, Massimo Sangiovanni, EMEA Marketing Manager, after having explained the procedures governing the Marketing Cooperation Funds and the commitment to take part in events, has exposed the impressive communication policy, in which the most important recommendation is to move onto solutions (not by chance “Motorola Solutions”), increasingly insisting on solutions divided into vertical markets and therefore Industry (like Oil&Gas, Retail, etc.) or Public Safety (like Emergency Preparedness, United Nations, Defense & Government in general), etc. The solutions issue is presented by means of Case Histories narrated (Story telling) by means of amazing video contributions which highlight the contribution of the Motorola technologies even in dramatic contexts like humanitarian crises, natural disasters and, in general, big international events like the G8 or the various United Nations forums, for which business is governed by Travis Heneveld. The last evening, as usual, gala dinner, this time in an ancient palace rehabilitated for the organization of events, taking us back to the Ottoman period with its ritual spectacles and the inevitable belly dancing.

The belly dancing of the last evening