Reflections from Cisco Live US 2017

Just returning from Cisco LIVE US 2017. This was the most exciting & inspiring event since I started attending the conference a number of years ago. You could just feel the energy this year. It was electric.

Having spent a lot of time with customers & partners in the digital financial services demo area in the world of solutions and across the entirety of the conference, it was very evident that people are thinking differently about their businesses.

One financial services client from Florida said they’re already servicing their clients differently today and are actively looking at deploying new digital services. Working with Cisco they are offering remote expert services in their branches and are seeing utilization by their customers who are looking for immediate responses to service requests their branch employees can’t address. They are also modernizing their network infrastructure & partnering with FinTechs to deploy new services. Another IT leader said that they have never seen so much innovation in one place and that Cisco LIVE was an eye opening experience. They are now rethinking how they can apply technology to everything from guest services to logistics. Another customer simply said,

“With all of this innovation around me I have to reconsider how I keep up my tech skills.”

And, many, many more conversations like this occurred throughout the week. How are you reimagining your business and where are you placing your investments for the future?

Tons and tons of questions about Cisco Digital Network Architecture. This is where the big announcements were. The Network. Intuitive. New Catalyst switches with the world’s most advanced programmable networking processors, DNA Center that will allow you to design, provision and apply policy across your entire network & Encrypted Traffic Analytics to help sense malware in encrypted traffic. All game changing, making Cisco the only networking company that can help you manage the scale of network demands for today & tomorrow. With billions of things coming onto the network, banks and insurance companies are challenged with costly, legacy manual net ops processes that are consuming resources so, they need automation, programmability, segmentation, analytics, and security. CLUS showed attendees Cisco is delivering solutions today so your business is digital ready.

I think Rowan Trollope summed up what is happening across all industries best. He described the 3 factors that the leading tech companies have harnessed to change the game and how their astonishing market capitalizations reflect their advantages.

Data, Insights, Action and a close-loop process that continuously feeds back on itself to create more value.

They are the digital natives like Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. who have created massive businesses and in some ways are also becoming competitors in the financial services industry. From processing payments through messaging apps to venture arms funding disruption they may be the next gladiators in the financial services coliseum. Traditional financial services companies are not immune to the disruption digital natives will create. Along with deregulation gaining steam here in the US, we are likely to see more market entrants and speed of change will hasten. The question customers at Cisco LIVE were asking is – who will I partner with to arm us for success.

Finally, you can’t leave Cisco LIVE without seeing old friends & making some new ones like D’Auria Henry who runs our digital marketing for financial services.

Consider joining us next year. Even if you’re a business leader outside of IT, the conference will provide a different perspective for your functional focus. After all, the business of the future is a digital business. See you next year Cisco LIVE!

For more information about Cisco Financial Services please visit: www.cisco.com/go/financialservices

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