CTO Insights: The news from Cisco Live US 2023

Overall Cisco is on a mission to simplify IT and this message came across loud and clear at Cisco Live US: simplify, simplify, simplify. Cisco Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins said on the mainstage that for years it’s been a features game – now, the #1 feature our teams need to continue to focus on is simplicity. As Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking, put it, Cisco is leading a campaign against complexity with “radical simplification.” Our journey toward platform consolidation is about making it easier for our customers to use Cisco products and solutions, so their end users can benefit from more unified experiences.

Cisco is investing more at the place at which security meets the network, and two of the key announcements focused on Cisco Networking Cloud and Cisco Security Cloud.

Cisco Networking Cloud

Cisco Networking Cloud takes the same platform-driven approach as Cisco Security Cloud, which Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Security and Collaboration, Cisco, announced last year at RSA, and this approach comes directly from the feedback of our customers. According to Cisco’s State of Global Innovation research, 85% of IT professionals globally indicate they value simplicity in their IT systems. The report also includes data from Australia, and this outlines our opportunity as technology enablers.

Cisco Networking Cloud is a vision to consolidate the many management platforms we have (DNA Centre, Meraki Dashboard, Nexus Dashboard, etc.) and converge them into a single platform for managing all Cisco Networking products. The final goal will be to have a cloud and on-prem based management solution that can run individually or together in a “tethered” hybrid mode. This vision will give our customers the “single pane of glass” that many have been asking for.

As part of this announcement, we also started a rebranding exercise to consolidate our brands. DNA Centre has been rebranded as Catalyst Centre and our Cisco Viptela SD-WAN solution has been rebranded as Catalyst SD-WAN. Another key effort that has already begun is to unify the design language that our customers interact with when using any of the management dashboards we have (a common UI look and feel). Common fonts, colours, menus, workflows, etc. will be brought into those dashboards as part of the unification process.

Cisco Security Cloud

Since Cisco Security Cloud was announced we have seen a number of innovations being released to fulfil that vision. Cisco Secure Access is one – Cisco’s new Secure Service Edge (SSE) platform. It provides users with a one-click option to securely connect them to their cloud-based applications. It leverages many security functions in the cloud (secure web gateway, cloud-based firewall, cloud access security broker, data loss protection, and more) to secure the users’ connection.

There were a few other key security-focused announcements that also contribute to the Cisco Security Cloud vision:

Cisco Multicloud Defence, which is a new cloud-based FW/IPS (based on the Valtix acquisition) that provides a means to deploy a consistent security policy across multiple clouds

A new 4200 firewall that incorporates an artificial intelligence (AI) based analytics engine to help identify malware in encrypted data

New AI tools that can help parse and optimise large firewall rule sets that can eliminate duplicate rules and streamline the order to make the rulesets more efficient

Cloud Application Security (based on Panoptica) extends application-based security across the development lifecycle, from code development to application runtime.

Takeaways

Overall, when you look at the big picture, you can see the efforts we are taking to steer the big Cisco ship to a converged platform. Common silicon, unified hardware platforms, and a single management plan to administer and assure the end-to-end network that our customers need to manage. The world is changing fast. It’s time to simplify IT with unified experiences.

You can view the full news overview here:

• Cisco Showcases Vision to Simplify Networking and Securely Connect the World
• Cisco Shows Breakthrough Innovation Towards AI-First Security Cloud
• Cisco Launches Full Stack Observability Platform
• Cisco Accelerates Application Security Strategy with Panoptica
• Cisco Unveils Next-Gen Solutions that Empower Security and Productivity with Generative AI