MWC19 Hot Topics: Cisco Customer Experience Recap

MWC19: When the world’s leading Service Providers get together with the Cisco Customer Experience team, the paths to making future technologies a reality materialize.

5G

The hottest topic by far, (following folding phones, of course), was 5G. Our CEO Chuck Robbins was joined on the main stage with Rakuten Chairman, CEO, and founder Mickey Mikitani to discuss this next era in mobile technology. On stage, they announced an innovation blueprint to build the world’s first end-to-end fully virtualized, cloud native mobile network, ready for 5G.

Jonathan Davidson (General Manager, Service Provider Business), Michael Glickman (leader, Global Service Provider Segment) and I led an analyst panel discussion around the race to 5G.  With more devices being able to connect at once, including connecting things like sensors and smart devices, SP’s see increasing revenue opportunities through new services creation.

Segment Routing, Automation and Software-based Solutions

We made an exciting announcement with Etisalat UAE, the Emirates telecommunications company, who is now working with Cisco to deploy the first segment routing technology in the region. Leveraging our advanced automation and segment-routing framework they will enable software-defined intelligence, closed-loop automation, a self-healing network and intent-based networking.

The move to 5G is also seeing our customers move to more software-based solutions.  To be successful, SP’s are going to need the right set of skills to manage these transitions. Analysts and customers alike welcome the expertise, skills and training that our Customer Experience teams bring.  With this global expertise, along with proven methodologies we enable service providers, media, and web companies to reduce cost and complexity, secure their networks, and support their revenue growth.

Partnerships

A particularly interesting topic was the theme of partnership. We saw it when the head of GSMA proposed a regulatory framework to boost security and bring to fruition an era of intelligent connectivity. We saw it when Vodafone’s CEO said “there should be much more collaboration between operators.” And we saw it during the keynote where Chuck Robbins discussed the partnership between Cisco and Rakuten that delivered in record time what was considered nearly impossible less than eight months ago.

Cisco is no stranger to the value of strategic partnerships; our global partner ecosystem is one of the reasons we’ve been so successful. We understand that when you pair great minds, you can truly change the world for the better.

Customer Experience in Action

That’s why our Customer Experience organization stands ready to provide industry experts to help our service provider customers monetize their networks faster, save money through faster time to innovation, and de-risk network transformation with proven, differentiated methodologies. Our team serves as an extension of yours to create a partnership where the mutual objective is to help you reach your goals even faster.

Check out our new e-book for more information on how we can help you accelerate your network transformation.

You can see our Customer Experience capabilities featured in various places across MWC19, including:

Digital Transformation Assessment: We demoed this assessment to help customers get a benchmark of where they are on their digital transformation journey relative to their specific peers. At the end of the demo, you’ll find a report with guidance on steps to improve your journey

Demo: End-to-end 5G network lifecycle demo (watch a one-minute overview of what we showed at both Cisco Live EMEAR 2019 & MWC19)

Facebook Live: Hear how Cisco Customer Experience can help you accelerate to operational excellence

Additional recordings of sessions, keynotes, and more are coming soon from GMSA, the organizers of MWC19. In the meantime, enjoy some photos from the show. We hope to see you at the next one!

Cisco Booth at MWC19 Barcelona

Cisco 5G Architecture

CNBC’s interview with Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins