With much anticipation, the first Cisco Live in-person event since 2019 was held in June. The gathering took place in the Mandalay Bay Convention Centre in Las Vegas and it’s safe to say that it was a huge success.
Each year, the event showcases the latest Cisco news, products, keynotes, and technical sessions, and this year was no exception.
There were three key themes at this year’s event, and it’s no surprise that hybrid work was a stand-out topic. Another focus was on user experience and giving businesses the power to manage and secure their own apps. And staying true to Cisco’s core values, network security and optimum uptime were also major topics.
Cisco’s stake in the future of hybrid work
In the business world, it’s widely accepted that hybrid working is a long-term paradigm, and no matter what form it takes on from organization to organization, Cisco is uniquely positioned to help businesses adapt.
"Hybrid work doesn't work yet, because too many employees are stuck with uncomfortable and bulky connections that harm productivity and drain their mental energy."
Jeetu Patel, Exec. VP, Cisco Security and Collaboration
Cisco’s Executive VP of security and collaboration says hybrid working still has a long way to go before it works seamlessly. But as always, Cisco’s comprehensive and expanding portfolio of collaboration hardware and software seeks to make unified communication flawless, user-friendly, and adaptive.
Their aim is to:
- Continue to enable flexible workstyles by providing users with the collaboration tools they need to adapt to their respective hybrid working platforms
- Reimagine workspaces by creating safe, secure, and supportive places to work
- Boost security, manageability, and performance on a global scale
- Enable the creation of engaging hybrid events by blending in-person and online event experiences
Cisco believes that the need to focus on creating purpose-built devices to ensure that everyone can engage with the work experience no matter where they are. For example, Cisco is adding a number of AI-driven upgrades to its Webex suite.
Creating equitable experiences
Another key topic at the event was managing collaboration spaces. The idea is to leverage their AI-driven initiatives to improve the experience for both in-person and remote attendees of hybrid meetings by making it look and feel as though everyone’s remote. In other words, creating an equitable experience for every participant.
"As the collaboration landscape continues to broaden and evolve, our focus is on helping more customers simplify complexity and enable seamless collaboration experiences from anywhere."
John Ruthven, CEO, IR
IR’s CEO, John Ruthven, agrees it should be a priority for organizations everywhere that complex hybrid working situations are managed more effectively. Our customers are demanding it.
The focus on end-users
Liz Centoni, Cisco’s Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager of Applications says that we have entered an ‘app economy’, because of the ease with which we can use application interfaces to leverage services from anywhere and everywhere.
For example, to help IT teams to operate in the hybrid working world, Cisco has released two new applications, Calisti, the Cisco Service Mesh Manager, and Panoptica, the Cisco Secure Application Cloud.
Cisco has always placed great importance on end-user experiences for both customers and employees, and these developments show a continuing commitment to this cause.
Uptime, all the time
Cisco’s core business was originally as a producer of routers, switches, and other networking technology (fun fact: its annual conference was originally called Networkers before it became Cisco Live!).
Cisco’s enthusiasm for the networking space has increased throughout the years, and the introduction of WAN Insights — under the umbrella of its subsidiary ThousandEyes, which it acquired in late 2020 — was described as the first step in Cisco’s broader vision of delivering “predictive networks” technology.
The AI-driven technology doesn’t just analyze something that went wrong, but actually tries to predict what might go wrong in the future.
Network security
The company also took the occasion to talk up its new Cisco Security Cloud, originally unveiled a week earlier at the RSA Conference.
The aim is to provide a security platform that delivers prevention, attention, response, and remediation capabilities at scale from the cloud and with unified management. This includes AI and machine learning delivered insights, as well as Security Cloud, which is a Cisco version of security access service edge, described as a “multiyear strategic vision for the future of security.”
IR and Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance (PCA)
IR has been a Cisco preferred solutions partner for almost 20 years. As a Cisco R & D sponsored development partner, IR continues to place significant investment in developing solutions to support Cisco platforms.
By now, everyone is aware that Cisco’s PCA monitoring and diagnostics tool has been discontinued and is facing end of life in October 2024 when it will no longer be supported. IR has teamed up with Cisco to support your migration from Cisco Prime to IR Collaborate.
Find out more by watching the webinar
