A 6-year evolution of Cisco at Rockwell’s Automation Fair

Chet Namboodri, Cisco’s Director of Global Industries for Manufacturing and Automotive and long-time Automation Fair participant shares his evolutionary perspective.

https://youtu.be/x8MXgjqDHwo

Cisco and IP have transformed the way we do business.

Consider how IP has unified communication services – phone calls, faxes, voicemail, web conferencing can all be delivered to any handset.  IP lowers infrastructure costs by allowing voice and data to run over a single network.

In commerce, IP maximizes mobile user productivity by allowing businesses to support anytime, anywhere and any device access.

IP is now making an impact on industrial networking.  It’s allowing businesses to maximize their operational efficiency and quickly adapt to change. Cisco and IP (Internet Protocol) are helping industrial customers develop robust, secure, future-ready and cost effective EtherNet/IP (Industrial Protocol) for their distributed network applications.

The evolution of Cisco’s impact on industrial networking is evident in how our participation has changed and grown at Rockwell’s Automation Fair.

The biggest change is in customer engagements. Chet told me that when he first attended, customers asked “what’s Cisco doing at an industrial event?”  Today, industrial customers understand Cisco’s relevance and the business impact on moving legacy, proprietary industrial networks to IP.

Six years ago, Cisco had only a handful of people at Automation Fair. There are more than 50 folks there this year.  They’re all focused on helping businesses migrate to standards-based networks so they can improve efficiency and lower costs.

Rockwell’s “Manufacturing Perspectives” is a thought leadership event at the Fair.  Cisco has grown to become front-and-center at this event which is attended by members of the global trade media who want first-hand information about trends and issues facing global manufacturers and producers.

Maciej Kranz, Cisco’s VP and GM, Connected Industries Group and Sujeet Chand, Rockwell Automation’s Senior Vice President and CTO spoke to an audience of nearly 150 attendees at this year’s Manufacturing Perspectives.

And this year Cisco, along with our trusted partners, are providing many more demonstrations of how Cisco is relevant for the industrial environment.  Watch this blog for talk of those partners and for examples of those demos!