Accelerated IoT and Improved Security – Drivers for the New Era of Networking: Cisco Live Las Vegas Recap

Whether at the IoT and Industries demo showcase in Mandalay Bay or walking through the crowds on Las Vegas Boulevard, the buzz around the New Era of Networking cut through the scorching desert heat. This new, intuitive learning network which is powered by intent and informed by context, opens the way for enterprises to meet the business demands for transforming data into insight from a rapidly growing number of IoT devices and mitigate security risk in an increasing hostile threat environment.

Chuck Robbin’s keynote set the tone for the far-reaching industry impact of Cisco’s Digital Network Architecture, highlighting with Apple CEO, Tim Cook the increased security within the Apple ecosystem delivered by using DNA to enhance visibility and policy enforcement. David Wichmann, CEO, UnitedHealth Group shared his customer perspective from the healthcare segment on the need for using data more effectively to deliver improved patient care.

The spotlight on IoT continued with Tuesday’s keynote from Rowan Trollope introducing Cisco Kinetic, the IoT operations platform that helps companies accelerate their IoT initiatives by leveraging the network, automating management of their IoT devices, and extracting value from the terabytes of IoT data within the extended enterprise. Cisco Kinetic integrates three essential elements necessary for companies worldwide to maximize the value of their IoT data:

Connection management – leveraging the IoT network to recognize and authenticate devices, apply appropriate policies, and ensure data delivery to intended applications

Fog computing – processing data at the edge and executing IoT applications close to the action, when and where required by the business

Data delivery – maximizing the value of IoT data by making it easy to extract, normalize and securely deliver data, across all the participants of an ecosystem, based on rules defined by the data owner

Customers and ecosystem partners had the opportunity throughout the week to get a hands-on experience of IoT in action with a broad ranging set of demonstrations, tutorials and presentations at the IoT and Industries showcase within the World of Solutions. Highlights included:

Purpose-built IoT security – Cisco’s recently announced IoT Threat Defense solution for segmentation, visibility and analysis, remote access and tailored professional services

Secure connectivity for public safety – showcased through through a police car outfitted with Wi-Fi and redundant LTE data delivery for mission critical IoT applications

Low Power Wide Area network solutions – connecting battery-backed sensors across long range deployments with LoRa technology

Fog computing in action – demonstrated through edge applications from Cisco ecosystem partners including OSISoft and Telit

Operations centric management tools – demonstrating how Cisco Industrial Network Director helps drive up availability in manufacturing environments

Open standard time sensitive networking – highlighting the ability to used standard Ethernet for low-latency requirements in industrial IoT deployments

The conference was also filled with informative sessions and learning labs in addition to more announcements from ecosystem partners. Check out more photos and links to sessions by following @Cisco_IoT on Twitter. Learn more about the latest developments with Cisco IoT at Cisco.com/go/iot.