[Editor’s Note: Ken Camp was one of the first to turn in his reflections and predictions posts here at SiliconANGLE, but he and his wife Sheryl Breuker wanted to sit down and talk at greater length about what they thought was coming up this year.

It’s a fascination conversation that we aimed to cap off at ten minutes, but ran nearly forty.  Definitely worth watching all the way through.  Below is the embed and notes, as well as the MP4 link. –mrh]

The Severe Two-Year Beating of Cisco

Early in 2009 I predicted it was going to be the year Cisco took a big black eye. I agree, that didn’t happen. Instead they’ve taken a light bruising all year long. 2009 was a year when Cisco excelled at absolutely nothing that mattered in the market in my view. They were vanilla custard and simply didn’t matter in the market. They got off easy, and in 2010 they won’t. I said a black eye in 2009. I’ll predict a savage beating in 2010, the likes of which they’ve never felt before. I bet you’re curious where, aren’t you?

First in unified communications and VoIP space. I’d say Cisco is going to get their lunch eaten by multiple players. The Cisco solution set is pretty decent (Call Manager and the like), although their phones are forgettable. It won’t matter. I think they’ll get beaten repeatedly by Lucent, Asterisk, Mitel, and others. Even IBM, yes IBM, will cause pain for Cisco. 2010 will be the year Cisco learns how much they don’t know about telecommunications. It will be a bitter pill to swallow.

They bought Pure Digital for the Flip and they’re about to get a bunch of hype for the new Flip with built-in WiFi. I give that buzz six weeks and then they’ll take a good old fashioned, bare knuckles ass-whuppin’ from the likes of Kodak’s Zi8 and a handful of others. More importantly, the current generation of cameras built in to mobile phones, notably iPhone and Blackberry, are likely to shift up taking another huge bite out of the whole dedicated camera market.

Then there’s Cisco’s core business – switching and routing. Coupled with some repercussions of the recent Starent acquisition and Juniper getting serious about the market, I expect some big moves in this space. Juniper will play big and strong. The big dog, Cisco, is going to get rocked back on their heels in some major networking deals in 2010. People will start to think about other options more often before simply choosing Cisco.

Oh, and John Chambers, the Rupert Murdoch of networking, will finally move on. I’ve seen his leadership at Cisco as ineffective in recent years and I expect him to move on, flying off with his golden parachute.

Yahoo and the The Continued Quest for a Brand

Then we have Yahoo. The worn and beleaguered Yahooligans will continue trickling out the door at every opportunity. There’s still a lot of talent at Yahoo and they are ripe for the picking. They don’t have that many execs left from the old days. Jerry Wang’s departure was really good for Yahoo. Replacing him with Carol Bartz was, IMHO, not a good move. Other than trying to prove her balls by swearing, she’s done nothing that I’d expect from a CEO leading a company. She needs to go. I believe in 2010 she’s out the door. She can take the flying monkeys with her too.

Social Media as a Buzzword is Waning

Social media is one of the most abused, misused, inaccurate terms ever coined. Most of what we see is social marketing, not social media. In 2010 we’ll see more social, less media. More marketing with marketers starting to call it what it is. They all want the hype, spin and buzz. There will, unfortunately be more chaff, but there will be more meat. As reputable firms begging to figure it out, there will be more overall goodness in this space. But there will be more stupidity too.

In 2010, real expertise will win out and the independent advisors will get some real recognition as the mouthpieces and tools in the industry get noticed for what they are. For example, Sheryl coined the phrase engagement specialist almost two years ago. She and I have talked about the criticality of reciprocity and engagement for a long time. That isn’t fluff any more, and as we survey independent advisors, the value they bring to business is being seen. Businesses understand that old school, whether it’s marketing, PR, mailing lists (spam) or marcoms simply isn’t effective in the world of NOW media.