On August 22, 2016 Chris Dedicoat, Cisco’s Executive Vice-President of Worldwide Sales, took to the main stage at #CiscoGSX in Las Vegas and told the entire Cisco Sales force to “demo with dCloud!”. What happened next? I can tell you exactly what happened next, because I had duty at the dCloud booth. A lot of people who had never used dCloud stopped by to ask us how they could get started with dCloud.cisco.com
This is #dCloudSteve & the definition of #authenticity – play to your strengths #CiscoGSX #NeverBetter time to DEMO pic.twitter.com/HkVBpZARFY
— Ron Ricci (@RonRicciCisco) August 24, 2016
Even more satisfying than the sudden interest from hundreds of new users (sparked by the invitation from the boss to use our services) was getting to celebrate the successes of sales leaders who were already winning with dCloud – smart, hard-working people like Scott Hanson, Jeremy Bresley and Brian Narcum, who already knew about Cisco’s best kept secret.
Cisco dCloud is a cloud-based self-service platform that provides Customers, Partners, and Cisco employees with a powerful way to experience Cisco solutions. It is mentioned as a cost-saving, sales-accelerating, innovative platform in Inder Sidhu’s book “The Digital Revolution”. Other examples of iconoclasts referenced in this book are Tesla and Airbnb. dCloud is featured in a chapter packed with ideas on how to save companies money during the selling process. We make demos and provide content to help you, your Partners, and your Customers build your own labs, so you can experience the best of Cisco anytime, anywhere.
Have you heard of “Digital Transformation”? That is what we do.
Some of our best friends are Systems Engineers. This “special relationship” is built on years of providing the digital tools the Field needs, in order to be successful. More recently, we have branched out on social media, to increase our real-time listening efforts. We have a world-class Support team, and we pride ourselves on internal and external service delivery excellence. But we also want to partner with you before there is a problem. That is why we welcome your ideas on our social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine; YouTube.
As part of our digital community activities, we are partnering with Cisco’s Systems Engineering #CiscoSE Organization to host the October 26 (9:30 a.m. California time) #CiscoChat, guests include:
Doug Good, VP Americas Systems Engineering, @dgood68
Ben Martin, Systems Engineering Manager, @benmarti35
Michael Lipsey, Consulting Systems Engineer, @ccie42683
Fareed Fakoor, Systems Engineer, @cciepending
Come hear about best practices and winning examples that you can share with your Partners and Customers right away!
“dCloud has had a tremendous impact on giving time back to our SEs. No longer do they need to scrounge for equipment and spend time installing applications and operating systems. Instead, they can almost instantly access a wide variety of demos, training, and other resources. dCloud has also changed the way that we train our SEs, as we do more SE bootcamps. Rather than shipping gear between offices, we now leverage dCloud!“ – Ben Martin
Remember what Chris said: This is our year to go #FullSpeed with Cisco #dCloud. Join the #CiscoChat to let us know how you’re already winning.
The impact of taking someone from the world of “tell me” to “show me” is enormous, and #dCloud enables exactly that customer experience.
It’s easy to be an advocate for both the dCloud group and the platform they have built when it delivers so much value.
Thank-you team!
Thank-YOU, Scott. We value your thought-leadership, and dCloud advocacy. YOU make us a global team.
As a consultant in a Gold Partner, dCloud is one of our top tools for training / demos and testing new products. We are also trying to get our Sales team to use it more often.
Keep up the great effort!
We appreciate your partnership, Eduardo! Looking forward to seeing you again at Cisco Live Europe #CLEUR
#dCloud has helped my engineer and I quickly demonstrate solutions to our customers without the need to wait on physical hardware. This greatly improves the experience for everyone!
We are all about the Customer Experience #CX, internal and external. We’re here for you, Rob!
We live in a time when we can’t afford our #techies to spend a week in a datacenter, to build a solution for showcasing it to a customer, for a 30 minute demo. This is the real power of dCloud, it gives the #techies the chance to show real life scenarios with a click of a finger and share it with the customer or partner. This creates more time the #techie can spend with the customer to understand what business problem they are trying to solve. #dCloud rocks!
Thanks for always asking the right questions, Alex. You keep us focused on the Customer Experience! #CX
#dCloud was always a wonderful tool and is becoming more powerful day by day to demonstrate technologies across architectures. Justification- Being as a part of field earlier, we used to run behind the partners for dCloud adoption, now they run behind team and asking for more new content 🙂 🙂
Exactly! They are asking: “What else can I do with dCloud?” So many options.
Nicely written article Silvia. At dCloud, we are happy to be leading the way in helping people experience Cisco solutions instead of just reading about them.
Your name comes up a lot, Joe. Our community knows and values the great work that you do. Keep it up!
I would say that the benefits of using dCloud for demonstrating our technology and for our own learning are well known by now, so I want to rather use the opportunity to recognize the great team you have.
Just yesterday I had to deliver four demos with a team mate, and we were going to do so using dCloud. While preparing, somehow two of the four demos were experiencing problems, some bugs got into the datacenter and we were struggling and sweating trying to figure out the issues. So I contacted Anne, who is always ready to give us a hand —thanks for that Anne!. She talked to people in her team, I worked with them directly, and within an hour we were up and running again. These were two completely unrelated bugs, and I worked with two different people, and within an hour everything was ready for us to deliver the demo to our customer.
The other day I was trying a little experiment to adapt a demo for a specific use case. Again, I just contacted support, and in an incredible sample of Cisco-team spirit, one of the developers adapted the demo to fit my needs. Going far and beyond what we should expect from the dCloud team in terms of support.
I think all I can say is #WeAreCisco, and it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, you always find a fellow colleague ready to give you a hand, and the dCloud team is a prime example of this.
Teamwork, indeed! Thank you so much for taking the time to thank Anne and our Development and Support teams. I’ll make sure they see this!
#dCloud allows our customers and partners the opportunity to see and touch Cisco solutions without the need for cumbersome physical hardware. Which would be a better experience, carrying a suitcase full of pennies around or a debit card? #dCloud is that debit card, providing an easy peasy experience for our customers and giving them the ability to experience so much more of what Cisco has to offer since they aren’t limited by physical hardware. One again, you’ve done an outstanding job, Silvia!
Thank you, Zina! And once again, I feel like asking you for money. Your suitcase full of pennies versus debit card example is a great illustration of an improved User Experience #UX.
That’s SUCH a great analogy, Zina! A suitcase of pennies or a debit card – I’m going to use that!
What can I say, dCloud and the entire team is excellent! With business teams moving so fast, dCloud is a valuable resource that enables teams to get back to what their actual mission is and saves time.
I am also (selfishly!) excited that Cisco DevNet and dCloud are working together with our Collab Sandbox in dCloud, check it out: https://dcloud2-lon.cisco.com/content/demo/133143
Way to go dCloud team > you guys rock!
You and me both, Janel! Developers who are interested in anything Cisco should get to know #DevNet and #dCloud learninglabs.cisco.com
Certainly, without any doubt, an excellent transformation, to change the way we were doing things before digitization and then after. A great tool that changes the way to present concepts, and ideas, to deliver them to our customers, partners or team works in our own environment, it fits greatly to our thin clients platform. Yes indeed Cisco, you made it once again.
Stay tuned for even more content and features on dCloud.cisco.com
dCloud is the future of demo!!! Glad to be a part of it!!! #dCloud4Life