If you ever attend a Cisco Live event, you may feel like you are in a boxing match with “The Greatest”. Yes, it’s that overwhelming. But in the good way, of course. So much to learn, so many people to meet, so many announcements, all packed in a couple of days.
Overall, the last edition was an excellent event. Very impactful announcements, ranging from continued efforts to gain relevance on security, to maintain or speed up innovation, sustainability goals, and a new and strong effort to jump on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) bandwagon. Those were the main themes to me, of course each one cascades into many smaller announcements. Another set includes Collaboration / Customer Experience (CX), of course.
The most impactful phrase, by Jeetu Patel, EVP & GM, Security and Collaboration Business Units: on security, the good of the society should be above commercial interests, so more collaboration should be the norm and fighting “the bad guys” the priority (it’s not an exact quote, but I hope the essence is correct).
More details could include:
-HyperShield, the Splunk integration and observability, including AppDynamics, Microsoft Azure, AI, etc. To me, the most interesting and powerful. Most things will take a bit to be available, but these look like products that solve problems, now and in the near future.
-A good chunk of Collaboration and CX announcements. The “Distance Zero” concept was the most salient. Incremental improvements mostly, but you can’t radically change everything all the time.
-AI investment fund: we’ll still have to see if such investments prove fruitful but seems like a good move. And this fund coupled with internal innovation (Outshift by Cisco), seems like the right, combined approach.
As you can imagine, I’m leaving out a ton of stuff. One-on-one meetings, discussions with Cisco customers, demos, technologies deep-dives, and more. But this round is over!
