Cisco @CES 2018: Behind All The Gadgetry, There’s This Thing Called “Connectivity”

Amidst the clamor and crush of getting ready for the holidays, and closing out the year 2017, there’s this other big thing going on for many of us: Prepping for the 2018 International Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.

You may ask why a company like Cisco, not necessarily known for consumer gadgetry, goes to a show like CES, often described as the Super Bowl of consumer products. We go because we’re in the connectivity business — and just about everything in the (vast) landscape of consumer electronics gadgetry needs a connection at some point, in order to do whatever it was built to do.

Whether it’s a screen displaying a 4K movie, a fitness monitor gathering biometric data, an AI analytics engine crunching metrics, or any of the “things” of the Internet of Things, they all need a (wired or wireless) way to move their data, at some point.

Our focus at the 2018 CES is on our customers — service providers of broadband, video and connectivity — and what they need to succeed, next year and beyond. Like revenue growth, for starters, to offset the relentless growth of broadband consumption, which is already straining network investments.

Maybe you’ve heard this before, but it warrants repeating: We’re now three years away from a (2021) service provider environment in which IP traffic growth will have increased 3X, to 278 exabytes a month, according to our most recent Cisco VNI Forecast data. That’s more than 14 times all the IP traffic generated in 2010! And this traffic is flowing to and from and across more than 27 billion connections, 51% of them supporting machine-to-machine interactions, and 48% of them video-capable.

Getting there, in a reasonably future-proofed way, will require, in our view, massive amounts of network scaling, via cloud-native infrastructure. It will require a ruthless simplification of networking and operations, through workflow automation. And, it will require an architectural approach to security, so as to protect infrastructure, applications, and end-points.

We’re already starting to see some attractive outcomes in the field. Here’s some compelling numbers, as evidence:

A 10% lift in ARPU associated with consumer video, amongst customers using our cloud-based Infinite Video platform

A 60% faster speed to revenue creation, associated with Smart PHY automation

A 70% increase in operational efficiencies, amongst customers leveraging our automation and orchestration resources for networking and applications

A 50% reduction in mean time to repair/MTTR, amongst customers using Cisco Control Center to gain real-time visibility into, and control over, of service issues.

You can see all of this (and more!) for yourself in our CES suites at the Wynn. On the automation front, we’ll be demonstrating how automation ties into SD-WAN services, Smart PHY implementations, and a cloud-native CMTS designed to increase bandwidth and agility.

And, because CES is still very much a “video show,” we’ll be shining the spotlight on some advancements in our Infinite Video, cloud-DVR and mobile video platforms — like end-to-end latency reduction and cost optimization for ABR (Adaptive Bit Rate) video, as well as analytics and machine-learning enhancements to video experiences.

Our Cisco Jasper Control Center will be on display, illustrating how an automated connectivity management platform can link devices to global networks, customers, and back-end systems. That’s important when needing to address critical changes, without breaking the bank.

Last but not least, we’ll be showcasing our work on Cisco Kinetic, a first-of-its-kind IoT data operations platform designed to help enterprises to onboard and maintain the things of the IoT. It’s a great combination of connection management, fog/edge computing, and data delivery, in one platform, specifically designed for massive scale.

In closing, we’re going to CES because we’re big believers in connectivity, in all forms. We think the road to ruthless simplification is paved with automation, and we’ll have several examples on hand to share. And, as the largest security company in the world, we’re bringing resources that help to minimize known and unknown threat surfaces. Hope to see you there!