Changing the World Together

As I returned to the Bay Area after Cisco Live U.S. (CLUS), it occurred to me that Cisco and our partners are on a journey of a different kind. Together we are embarking on the road to a digital transformation, and CLUS is but one stop along the way. Cisco will lead some of the time. Other times our broad ecosystem of trusted partners will be in the driver’s seat as Cisco products, solutions, and developer environment become the foundation for our customers’ innovations to enable their own digital transformation journeys.

Cisco Partners Shine in Las Vegas

CLUS was an amazing showcase for demonstrating how far we’ve come already. Cisco partners were visible everywhere leading countless sessions, presentations, and labs, as well as playing an integral role at events like IoT Day and Cloud Day. Over 250 partners were featured at the World of Solutions alone within its Cloud, Security, and Collaboration Villages. The solutions demonstrated by our world class partner ecosystem varied in focus across all of our customer segments, from Telcos to Small and Medium Businesses.

CLUS News

For me, the best part was seeing and hearing so much partner buzz around Cisco announcements. Cisco unveiled security services and integrated cloud-based solutions for customers to secure their digital assets, and Cisco DNA enhancements to help prepare the industry for the transition to digital-ready networks, as well as new technologies to span the gap between digital networks and security. We continued to provide more clarity on our Cloud strategy with sessions led by our CTO, Biri Singh.  Whether our customers need help with their digital transformation or are focused on managing security vulnerabilities, our partners are uniquely qualified to recommend strategies and offer tailored solutions to achieve their desired business outcomes.

Cisco Live Key Takeaways

Here are the items that stand out in my mind:

Partners are ramping up to help customers with their digital transformations, and Cisco is helping evolve the ecosystem to accelerate this transition. After years of building hardware-centric solutions, Cisco’s 70,000 channel partners are evolving to software-driven networks and helping customers transition their networks, practices, and staff to new digital business models.

New Cisco security offerings are architected to be integrated, automated, and simple to use as customers take on growing security challenges. They will help partners design solutions for customers to build and manage their security infrastructures for a digital world as more users, devices, and applications are brought online.

Our partners are helping to differentiate our portfolio and position Cisco as our customers’ best foundation for their digital transformations with the key attributes of connectivity, security, collaboration, automation, and analytics.

During one of the CLUS events I was speaking with a pre-sales engineer who, due to his achievements in our Cisco Shogun incentive program for partner SEs, was attending as a VIP. He shared with me how he felt that the power of these solutions, coupled with our enablement support and their passion for Cisco, is a recipe for success to win and help our customers with their digital transformations.

Truly, there’s never been a better time to change the world together.