One Thousand and One Nights (of Digital Transformation)

High stakes can ride on the telling of a story. In One Thousand and One Nights, the legendary Persian queen Scheherazade tells 1,000 stories on successive nights to save her life from the vengeful sultan. She ensnares his imagination. Her words took him to places and times he’d never witnessed, constructing wondrous realities from distant visions. A captive to the power of narrative, the sultan transforms his rule to reflect the shadow world of myth. Legend fades backwards into reality.

To many, the Internet of Everything (IoE) and Digital Transformation are no more than legend, at best a whisper of a distant future. They sound good in theory, skeptics say, but they do not really exist. More of a marketing pitch than a measurable reality. Maybe in 15 or 20 years. As for the $19 trillion value-at-stake? Somewhere between wishful thinking and a mirage in the macroeconomic desert.

At Cisco, we have hung our hat on the reality of Digital Transformation and the Internet of Everything as a pressing business reality – THE pressing business reality. As Vice President of Internet of Everything, I see this every day as I work with our partners and customers to build the future. But it’s not some vague mirage or distant vision. It is a tangible reality, and the transformation is already underway. We want you to see that, too. And so, like Scheherazade, we look to the power of narrative to show you that the castles in our minds are built with stone and mortar. I am incredibly excited to unveil Digital Transformation with the Internet of Everything – a collection of 100 real customer stories of digital transformation in action. Our team worked tirelessly to bring together this anthology of stories cutting across industries and regions. To show how real these accounts are, we made a book. A real page-turning volume you can download today.

These stories are accessible online. We have set up an interactive site where you can explore them freely. Both in the book and online, we have cross-referenced these stories by industry and region, so you can look and see what real organizations are doing to make the IoE a reality in your region or your industry. From education to transportation to mining, from for-profits to non-profits to governments, we have stories for everyone. To give you a little taste of what you will find, here are three of my favorites:

State Bank of India is using the Cisco Remote Expert solution to meet the mobile connectivity needs of a new demographic of customers as India’s population grows younger (check out my blog on how digital transformation creates opportunities in the banking industry).

The Denver Broncos employed the Cisco Connected Stadium Wi-Fi solution to extend the fan experience to parking lots and fan zones and to engage fans with targeted content. New digital branding and advertising flexibility has also increased concourse sponsorship revenues at Sports Authority Field by 50 percent.

Sichuan Province in China partnered with Cisco to launch the Connecting Sichuan project, which digitizes health care delivery and schools to improve accessibility for rural populations and aid recovery following the devastating 2008 earthquake.

Unlike Scheherazade’s tales, these stories are not built on myth or speculation, but on evidence. Businesses, non-profits, and governments across the globe are seizing unprecedented opportunities for innovation and growth, each carving out a piece of that $19 trillion pie.

The success or failure of your organization will be determined by your attitude toward digitization. Not in the future. Now. Let us show you what that looks like. Add your story to the mounting wave of digital transformation sweeping across every industry and business, every country and city.

The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Visit the interactive Digital Transformation with the Internet of Everything site to see all 100 stories. Or contact us here to get started on your digital transformation today!