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Shaun Kirby

Director and Chief Technology Officer

Cisco Consulting Services

As Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Consulting Services, Shaun Kirby is responsible for sensing and evangelizing the key trends that will disrupt and transform the business world. Working across industries, he incubates game-changing solutions to propel customers ahead of the curve, while leading the interlock between the field and Cisco Engineering and Research and Development.

Kirby’s current role is backed by years of deep industry experience. Prior to his role as CTO, he led Cisco’s Innovations Architecture Practice, which developed robust reference architectures for visionary solutions. These were powered by Cisco technology as well as client-specific architectures and roadmaps for implementation.

Before joining Cisco, Kirby served as the Chief Architect for Vitria Technology's Professional Services team. He spearheaded the design and implementation of complex, leading-edge information systems for Vitria's flagship customers and facilitated unique engineering and field team collaboration that yielded industry-shaping products and solutions. In this capacity, he played a key role in the visioning for a new technology space, Business Event Management (BEM). As Director of Client Delivery and Quality Assurance at Vitria, he established the standards, tools, and best practices that enabled world-class solution delivery.

Kirby has served as a trusted advisor to CIOs, CTOs, and other technology executives, beginning with his extensive experience as a management consultant at Deloitte. He has authored articles, presentations, and technology briefs on a wide range of topics, including sensor fusion, augmented reality, and contactless gesture interfaces. As an inventor, Kirby holds several patents pending in these areas.

Kirby holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Engineering Physics from Princeton University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology.

Articles

January 9, 2017

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

CES 2017 – Get Ready for a Smart New World

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) usually highlights important technology trends that could shape the future. This year, artificial intelligence (AI), the smart IoT sensors that fuel it, and increasingly powerful and seamless human machine interfaces (HMIs) topped the list for me. On the AI front,…

February 24, 2016

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY

How Retailers Can Chart a Path to Digital Value

Digital disruption is here. According to a 2015 survey from the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation (DBT Center), a joint initiative of Cisco and the Institute of Management Development (IMD), 47 percent of retail executives say digital disruption increases the risk of going out of bus…

January 26, 2016

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY

Feb. 2: NRF16 Wrap Up at Live CiscoChat

Retail’s Big Show offers ideas and insights into the ever-changing industry of retail. This year’s NRF 2016 drew a large and influential group of the most innovative retail leaders. Throughout the show, these leaders held extensive one-on-one conversations and hosted general sessions by some of the…

January 15, 2016

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY

Presenting a Roadmap for Digital Transformation at NRF 2016

Life in the Digital Vortex is challenging—especially for retailers. In an environment where averaged across industries four of the top 10 incumbents will be displaced by digital disruption in the next five years, retail ranks as the third most vulnerable out of 12. Retailers are also being squeezed…

November 10, 2015

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY

It’s Time for Dinner: Improving the Quality of Our Food with the Internet of Everything

It’s almost the holiday season and it’s time for your customers to host that special dinner party, where they can make memories and share stories with loved ones. What if they could also share the story of where that holiday meal came from? This is now possible using the power of the Internet of Eve…

September 14, 2015

RETAIL AND HOSPITALITY

The Next Step in Your Store Analytics Strategy: Sensor Fusion

Retail has entered an era of unprecedented competition and accelerated evolution worldwide. Retailers in every category, both brick-and-mortar and online, face larger and more unpredictable threats than ever before, from digitization of goods and distributed manufacturing to autonomous, near-instant…

November 5, 2014

NETWORKING

Internet of Everything (IoE) – The Key to the Next Leap Toward Frictionless Business

Fighting “Friction” in the Check-Out Line and Beyond You pull up to the gas pump, wait in a long line, and then fumble with your debit card and the touchscreen. Once at your hotel, you search mightily to find a parking spot before struggling with the ticket payment system. And then comes check-in, w…

August 4, 2014

NETWORKING

The Key to Success in Tracking Mobile Devices: Symbiosis, Not Espionage

As a shopper enters a store, the retailer uses Wi-Fi to track her movements, interests, and shopping habits, providing a treasure trove of insight valuable to merchandising and product development alike. And as advances in Wi-Fi promise increasing location precision and beacons promise pinpoint loca…

Video: the Super Sensor of the #InternetofEverything

A key advantage of the Internet of Everything (IoE) is the ability to “see” the world around us in unprecedented ways. One way to do this is through the millions of cheap, tiny digital sensors generating data from shoes, tires, shopping carts, jet-engine parts, medical equipment, and just about anyt…