Cisco Live 2023 Synopsis

Last week, a group of SCC’s business representatives were fortunate to attend Cisco’s flagship European event in the beautiful city of Amsterdam. During this event, attendees had the opportunity to spend time with key Cisco executives, partners and customers while exploring the event’s main themes, which were based on: Simplicity, Security, and Sustainability. Simplicity was a central theme throughout the event, with Cisco rationalising their product portfolio including integrating ThousandEyes and simplifying their industrial IoT offering. Additionally, Cisco’s SD-WAN offering has been further developed, and there was a deeper focus on AI automation and threat intelligence. Security was a prominent topic, Cisco demonstrated how they are simplifying deployment, management, and visibility through telemetry across the end-to-end architecture. This includes everything from firewalls to connectivity, Risk-Based authentication, enterprise ready Single Sign-on, secure SD-WAN, multi-cloud, plus threat detection and response, which can be seen through Cisco Security Cloud. By providing organisations with the ability to understand business risk with application security and cybersecurity readiness reporting, Cisco is delivering real business use cases. Finally, Sustainability, with Cisco’s commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2025. This included offering refurbish, reuse, and recycling programs as well as illustrative energy-saving calculators to show tangible cost savings for customers. It’s also worth noting that vendors in the World of Solutions space did not offer plastic or unnecessary give-aways, demonstrating a conscious effort to support sustainability throughout the event. During the ‘Women of Impact’ sessions that I attended, individuals from Cisco, partners, and customers shared their experiences and perspectives on how we can attract, retain, and support diverse talent. It was eye-opening to learn that, out of the 15,000 attendees at Cisco Live, only 3% were women! A diverse workforce brings together individuals with unique perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds, which can lead to more creative and innovative solutions to business challenges, we all have a responsibility to nurture the talent pool and build a diverse workforce. I received valuable feedback from some of the other attendees from SCC, including Pedro Geromin, Matt Walker, and Loic Jones. They all expressed agreement that investing quality time in getting to know colleagues and customers was a significant advantage and as a result numerous ideas and thoughts have emerged to drive Cisco solutions, penetrate new accounts, and enhance collaboration with existing clients Matt highlighted Cisco’s major focus on sustainability that would be particularly beneficial for SCC, especially in Public Sector. Meanwhile, Loic noted despite sometimes having a higher price point, Cisco offers an end-to-end secure experience that effectively supports hybrid work. He was also impressed with Cisco’s sustainability initiatives and IoT use-case examples, including Penn1 in New York, where we had the opportunity to take a full VR tour. Pedro, on the other hand, approached the event from a technical standpoint, taking onboard Cisco’s clear messaging and vision for the future, as well as providing roadmaps and updates on all the areas and technologies Cisco offers. Overall, the Cisco Live event provided a valuable opportunity to learn about Cisco’s latest developments and strategies, while also connecting with key players in the industry.