Cisco's Techno Biz Mastermind quiz to select best channel partner

Cisco Systems began its hunt for the best channel partner in India from New
Delhi. The Regional Technobiz Mastermind Quiz was held in New Delhi on 15th
January and in Mumbai on 18th January. The last regional quiz was held in
Bangalore on 20th January. "It is a unique practice of Cisco to allow our
channel partners to show their talent and knowledge. It is equally beneficial
for us, as we also got to know about the knowledge and awareness level of our
channel partner."

The winners of all these three cities will get to go to Jaipur to attend the
partners conference and be a part of the final quiz there. They will get to go
there with another person they would like to go with. And the final winner at
Jaipur gets to go to a destination of his choice at any place in south Asia.

Around 40 channel partners of Cisco turned up for the event in Mumbai as well
as New Delhi. The winners in New Delhi were Data Craft´s Gaurav Saini and Bipin
Dubey. While in Mumbai, Utkarsh Joshi and Dhanesh Kumar Sethi of Tata Infotech
emerged the winners.

At the start of the quiz in Mumbai, there were 22 teams. "These teams
are selected from the diamond, gold and silver partners of Cisco," said
Srikanth Natrajan, Channels Account Manager, Cisco. Of them, three were
short-listed on the basis of a set of Cisco-oriented technical questions and
some questions related to the IT field in general. There was a crossword to be
solved. These three sections were time-bound. Once this part was over, a panel
of five people from Cisco itself corrected the papers. The three teams
shortlisted were Network Solutions, Wipro and Tata Infotech. The quizmaster for
the evening was Srikanth and he designed questions as well.

The quiz was divided in two broad categories in New Delhi and Mumbai. Once
again, technical questions were shot out at the participants. One of the
questions in Mumbai was, 'How many switches can be stacked using Cisco's
Stack Wise Technology?'. The teams were unable to answer the question, while
one of the audience team answered it correctly as nine. The questions were
picked up mainly from Cisco's website. Another question, which the teams
answered was 'Which protocol does ODR routing feature use to learn neighbors?'
The answer to the same was Cisco Discovery Protocol.

Moving to the lighter side, the next round was on corporates. These were
questions based on current events with an IT angle to it in various fields like
sports, brands, banking and other fields. Most questions were answered by the
participant teams, except some. One of them was, 'Which bank set up the world's
first floating ATM?'. The correct answer to it was State Bank of India. At the
same time, compared to this tricky question, there were simple questions like,
'What is L&T Cement now known as?'. Participants as well as the audience
knew the answer to be Ultratech Cement.

The third round of questions was the visual round, wherein some prominent
personalities like Rustom Pallonji Mistry and Mcdonald's CEO who passed away
this week - Charlie Bell were asked to be identified.

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