Cisco Empowers Partners to Accelerate Their IoT Business

There’s no better time to be in IoT than now! I’m thrilled to be here in Las Vegas at Cisco Partner Summit to share stories I hear from our customers about how IoT is changing their businesses. And to tell you – our partners – what we are doing here at Cisco to accelerate those IoT opportunities.

Let me start by announcing the exciting news that IoT is now a recognized architecture at Cisco. What does that mean for you? Now, Cisco offers you a dedicated IoT specialist team, with more engineering support and a dedicated sales force. It also means comprehensive training, certifications, and resources to help our partners thrive. It’s a clear indication of Cisco’s commitment to the IoT business – for customers, Cisco, and our partners.

We’ve also unveiled focused sales plays and resources to help you sell Cisco IoT solutions.

More for IT

As customers look to extend their connectivity beyond office spaces to warehouses, parking lots, roadways and transportation hubs, Cisco is likewise extending Intent-Based Networking (IBN) into these non-carpeted spaces with purpose-built gear for IoT connectivity and use cases. Both you and your customers can take the “Extended Enterprise”– your familiarity and knowledge of our networking and security products– into these new spaces.

We’ve been hearing more and more from our partners who are leveraging the Extended Enterprise approach. Logicalis, a Cisco UK-based partner specializing in managed services and global IT solutions, offers Cisco IoT solutions to help grow business with existing customers. According to Rüdiger Rath, Head of Europe, Logicalis Group, “Many customers need to connect things at warehouses, transportation hubs, and plant floors. They are excited that Cisco has a full suite of switches and routers purpose-built for this need – and that they can simply extend their enterprise network into these new spaces – and administer these new connections with the same management tools and security policies they use now.”

A Bridge to Operational Technology (OT)

Our IoT solutions open the door to new opportunities within your accounts – specifically the OT sides of your customers’ businesses. Our bundled solutions help enable customers to securely connect their remote and mobile assets.

A great story of delivering OT results comes from Swisscom, a Cisco partner and the largest service provider in Switzerland.  Swisscom is responsible for the operation of the St. Gallen Police Department’s network.  The St. Gallen Police Department has extended their network and deployed an integrated IoT solution so officers can now access Wi-Fi from their police vehicles and seamlessly connect to critical business applications. Whether police officers are working in an office, in the department, or out of their police vehicle, they get the same level of secure connectivity to perform their operational duties.

Computing at the IoT Edge

Increasingly customers want to leverage the telemetry and data that their assets generate at the network’s edge to improve their business operations. With this in mind, Cisco has a rich portfolio of IoT edge-ready productsand an edge compute software framework to help ISVs and partners to enable real-time data collection and action at the edge.

A great example comes from OSIsoft, who have tested and validated their Pi Connectors running on Cisco’s edge compute framework and IR829 with great results. Tim Johnson from OSIsoft said, “The Cisco edge computing platform is a great complement to OSIsoft’s operational data infrastructure as it provides our mutual customers the ability to securely install, update and manage our real-time data connectivity software running on Cisco devices in the field and manage the devices from a centralized, cloud-based dashboard.”

Training and Certification

To help our partners maximize these opportunities, we’ve built an all-new IoT training and certification program for partners designed to help you accelerate your IoT practice with the skills you already have.

Italtel, a multinational information and communication technology Cisco partner based in Italy, utilizes the integrated combination of Cisco IoT hardware and software to help customers securely connect devices and help get the data where it needs to go. According to Ascione Camillo, VP of Strategic Alliance & CTO of Italtel, “Our customers are eager to derive real value from their industrial sensor data to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and accelerate their growth. Cisco’s IoT portfolio provides the foundation we need to support their IoT initiatives – and grow our own business.”

Development and Integration Resources

We have also introduced a dedicated IoT DevNet site with more advanced software development resources and new data practices. As you continue to grow and innovate alongside your customers, you can leverage the rich set of resources at the DevNet site to integrate network and software into IoT solutions for them.

Winning Together with IoT

Cisco remains committed to helping our partners succeed in selling IoT solutions. I encourage you to leverage the skills and knowledge you already have to extend your customers’ enterprises now. Enroll in our new IoT certification and training program to gain new skills and uncover new opportunities from OT buyers. Learn about our new IoT offerings so you can show customers how to deliver real business value with IoT. Together we can continue to capitalize on this huge IoT opportunity! Here’s to a great end of year and 2019!

Learn more about Cisco IoT.