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Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

Stephen Speirs is part of the Cisco Customer Experience Product Management team. This team is tasked with developing major new professional service offerings for Cisco. Stephen has worked on a range of technologies - 5G, NFV, Cloud, Data Center, SDN, DevOps and more. Working with customers and partners worldwide, Stephen has over 30 years industry experience in software development, IT, Data Centers and Service Provider Network Management.

Working with and building a 30 partner consortium, Stephen brought to life the 5G RuralFirst project - potentially the world's most ambitious rural 5G trial - winning part government funding to take 5G to Orkney and Somerset in the UK. Before joining Cisco Services in 2009, Stephen was senior manager, product management, in Cisco's Network Management Technology group, where he brought to market the multi-award winning Cisco MPLS Diagnostics Expert product. In Cisco Services, Stephen drove development of the Cloud Enablement Services - rated #1 by IDC in their 2013 client survey.

Stephen is based in Cisco's offices in Scotland, near Glasgow, and was "acquired into" Cisco in 2000 through the acquisition of Atlantech Technologies Ltd. Stephen has a BSc (1st Hons) in Applied Physics from the University of Strathclyde, an MSc in Digital Systems engineering from the University of Heriot Watt, and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde Graduate Business School.

Outside of work, family, cycling, running, and skiing keep him busy. Believing in "Giving Back" with work-related skills, Stephen also is a guest speaker on the Strathclyde University MBA program, a board member on Scotland Innovation Program (a Scottish Futures Trust/EE/academia collaboration to address internet access challenges across Scotland), and a student project mentor with Dundee University's Product Management BSc/MSc

Articles

March 21, 2017

DATA CENTER

There’s Never Been a Better Time for Cisco ACI-Enabled Data Center Providers #NeverBetter

I didn’t quite appreciate it, however over the years, I’ve become a data center geek!  My job doesn’t involved working daily in a data center, but when I do get to visit one, I find the facilities and energy design principles and practices employed absolutely fascinating! I jumped, then, when I had…

March 2, 2017

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

VNF Testing and Validation – With Cisco There’s Never Been A Better Time #NeverBetter

Virtual Network Function (VNF) Test and Validation initiatives are being touted by many vendors at the moment. Service providers have been challenged with the interoperability, scale and performance of the early generation VNFs.   There should be no question on whether software VNFs should be “…

February 20, 2017

DATA CENTER

There’s Never Been a Better Time …. to Reduce Your Data Center Software Costs with Cisco UCS #NeverBetter

Enterprise software licensing is complex, costly and easy to lose track of, especially in these days of servers on demand via infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and rapid setup and movement of virtual machines.  Many organizations are finding that vendor software audits uncover under-licensing resul…

February 16, 2017

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

Which Mobile Provider Will Win the UK’s Autonomous Car Race?

I had the misfortune recently to have a car accident.  Airbags deployed, two cars written off, scary stuff.  Thankfully, both the other driver and I both walked away, very much shaken, but unhurt.  And thankfully the crash happened at not too high a speed which contributed to what I will call our ‘g…

December 20, 2016

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

Service Provider Innovation: Bridging the Digital Divide and Bringing Broadband to the Back of Beyond

In Cisco Services, we are passionate about connecting the unconnected – so I’m always impressed when I see innovation aligned to this goal. And with service providers globally continually striving to differentiate their business, it’s also good to see how one person’s challen…

December 14, 2016

SP360: SERVICE PROVIDER

The #1 Reason to Choose your NFV and SDN Partner

Last year, in order to ensure we were delivering world class professional services for NFV and SDN to our service provider customers, we invested a not insubstantial sum from our services development budget in a market research survey, conducted independently by Ovum, to understand customer needs in…

November 30, 2016

1

DATA CENTER

Top 5 Takeaways from the London Gartner Data Center Conference 2016

Over the past few years, I’ve attended Gartner’s Data Center Conference in London (see 2013, 2014, and 2015 !). As always, it was a very informative couple of days with some surprises, and one or two “I knew that would happen” moments – we’ll I like to think that…

October 13, 2016

1

DATA CENTER

Buying New Gear? Have You Invested in Operations Management to Assure Your RoI?

Are you investing in new IT equipment – or for that matter, any IT services including SaaS/Cloud services?  If so, I wonder how much you have invested in your operations management people, processes, and tools? Or are your operations team left to catch up on their own when you introduce new equipmen…

August 24, 2016

2

DATA CENTER

Go Slow to Go Fast: Why Cisco Services Invests More Up Front

There are 2 questions I am asked from time to time: The first is related to my job – “OK I understand what’s involved in product development, but why do ‘service development’?  Don’t you just have really smart people turn up and do their [professional services] ‘stuff’?”    The second is, quit…