Enterprise Mobility and the Award-Winning Cisco Prime Service Catalog

We are proud to announce that the Cisco IT internal implementation of Cisco Prime Service Catalog, dubbed the Cisco IT “eStore”, was honored (and ranked #25) in the InformationWeek Elite 100 awards this week – as one of the most innovative uses of business technology in 2014. You can read more about the awards here.

(If you haven’t heard about Cisco IT’s eStore, be sure to check out my recent write-up about eStore. You can also read the case study here, and read more from Adel du Toit who blogged about Cisco IT’s initiative here last June.)

The Cisco IT eStore was also nominated as a finalist for a Consumerization of IT in the Enterprise (CITE) award. Stay tuned as the award winners will be announced at the CITE conference at the end of this month.

We are thrilled to see Cisco IT being recognized for it’s internal Cisco Prime Service Catalog deployment.  It’s a great testament to the innovative partnership between our product engineering teams and our internal IT organization.

That’s not all … This week at Interop Las Vegas, adjacent to the InformationWeek Elite 100 awards ceremony, was the announcement of the new Cisco Mobile Workplace Solution – where Cisco Prime Service Catalog serves as the unified IT storefront for mobility services (you can read a great overview of the new solution from Jonathan’s blog post here). We showcased a live demo of the award-winning Cisco IT internal implementation of the Cisco Prime Service Catalog: the Cisco IT eStore.

As enterprise IT organizations adopt and implement their mobility strategies, they are learning just how much their end users expect and need in today’s increasingly mobile environment. For example, they need a simple, easy-to-use, and automated solution for ordering all of the mobility and other workplace services an IT organization may offer – rather than having separate portals for requesting smartphones, tablets, mobile apps, desktop software, laptops, or BYOD services. A unified service catalog and single access point for all IT services increases workforce productivity, with a better employee experience and improved satisfaction with IT.

As Jonathan describes in the blog post linked above, organizations typically begin from a device-focused approach. IT often focuses on corporate-liable devices or employee owned devices, providing an easy way to onboard these devices and access basic services. Then, organizations progress to the application-focused phase, where the enterprise leverages mobile applications to provide productivity and empower employees.

The third and final step in the enterprise mobility journey is experience-focused. After having fulfilled the initial device-focused and app-focused stages, organizations are becoming experience-focused and prioritizing service automation to improve the employee experience and provide an easy-to-use, automated self-service experience.

Cisco Prime Service Catalog provides that employee-focused IT shopping experience with self-service and automation for mobility services – be it smartphones, tablets, applications, and more. By implementing Cisco Prime Service Catalog, IT is able to provide a simple one-stop shop through which employees can order mobility services (ranging from device registration to mobile apps) as well as other BYOD services, desktop services, collaboration, communication, employee onboarding, or any type of IT service.

You can register here to view our new TechWiseTV webcast and learn more about these challenges for enterprise mobility, with a demo of both Cisco Prime Service Catalog and the Cisco IT eStore.

In related news … Steria Group, who recently implemented Cisco Prime Service Catalog for their “Workplace On Command” service to support BYOD, just celebrated their 5 year anniversary as a Cisco UCS customer.  Watch Steria’s CTO Eric Fradet discuss Steria’s UCS deployment in Didier’s blog post here. You can also read the Steria “Workplace on Command” case study here.

Make sure you follow @CiscoUM, @CiscoIT, @CiscoDC and @Cisco_Mobility for the latest updates in these areas. And visit cisco.com/go/service-catalog for more information on Cisco Prime Service Catalog.