Cisco Live Barcelona: helping our customers through digital transformation

Cisco is a global company that impacts every industry and nearly all walks of life. And given our commitment to enabling an Inclusive Future across the globe, we place a high premium on connecting not just networks, systems, and devices — but people.

Cisco Live is one of our best opportunities to confirm that connection on a direct human level — as well as share our commitment to improving the world in all kinds of ways.

That’s why I was so excited to be in Barcelona last week for Cisco Live 2020. We brought together an amazing group of 18,000 customers, partners, influencers, executives, innovators, analysts, and explorers of all kinds. Combine that with some of the best minds at Cisco — and some exciting new product and services announcements — and it’s a perfect opportunity to share our vision.

After all, at Cisco we’re creating the Internet for the Future. That opens a wonderful world of possibilities, but it also comes with a responsibility to deliver our technologies with the highest standard of trust and integrity.

Because, of course, we’re all in it together. Cisco Live is a chance for us to listen — and gain the all-important insights, feedback, ah-ha moments, and, yes, criticisms that help us to grow and innovate as an organization.

What we hear is that our customers are striving to gain the most value from digital transformation. But the challenges around security, compliance, and operating in a multicloud world are keeping them up at night.

At Cisco, we’re reinventing the network for this challenging future, by simplifying, securing, and automating it in profound new ways. For our customers that means unprecedented visibility and opportunities to innovate even further.

Our theme for Cisco Live 2020 Barcelona was You Make Possible. That’s because it’s our customers across all sectors, both private and public, small and large, who do amazing things with our technology.

And we’re laser-focused on creating the tools, solutions, and guidance they need to make it all happen — with the most advanced, flexible and secure technology platform available today.

Last week, our attendees heard a wealth of insights and announcements around how to do just that. Here are some highlights:

Sri Srinivasan from our collaboration engineering team led a discussion on how we’re using AI and voice intelligence to unlock the future of the workplace. It’s all part of the latest WebEx innovations, which promise a new era of cognitive collaboration. That means the platform becomes a virtual team member. It instantly transcribes and translates meeting notes and responds to requests to highlight or share topics across meetings. The AI capabilities will also be integrated into Cisco’s Contact Center experience.

Liz Centoni, who leads our Cloud, Compute and IoT team, spoke about how we are accelerating application delivery for the challenges of a hybrid, multicloud world. Our customers need to provide flawless performance across any domain. So our new multi-domain architecture combines AppDynamics and the Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer to deliver full visibility within the application, network, and data center, both on-prem and in the cloud. The ultimate goal? Enabling the full range of digital experiences that customers expect — and disruptive marketplaces demand.

As IoT endpoints, sensors and mobile devices proliferate, security challenges rise. So Liz also introduced cutting-edge solutions like Cyber Vision, Stealthwatch, and Identity Services Engine, all part of Cisco’s new industrial IoT security architecture. With this level of visibility, the network itself is the ultimate sensor. That’s essential in a world where every day a major company is breached, and critical data is captured at far-flung endpoints, across multiple clouds, and amid changing policies.

Another key theme was the integration of IT and OT. By providing greatly enhanced visibility across both environments, we protect the collection and extraction of data, while monitoring apps from the edge to the cloud. The result? Organizations drive new efficiencies, make millions of informed decisions, and accelerate digital transformation. All while enabling seamless convergence between IT, OT, the network, and apps.

And of course, Cisco Live is all about our customers. Anuj Kapur, responsible for strategy at Cisco, drilled down on our four pillars of customer success: accelerating your applications; securing your data; transforming your infrastructure; and empowering your teams.

All in all, it was an amazing week! As my colleague David Goeckeler said in his keynote: Digital technology is in its infancy. And we’re still on the journey.

Cisco Live Barcelona affirmed for me that our culture of curiosity, social responsibility, and openness to change will ensure an amazing future!