Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and we wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to our wonderful customers and partners. We are thankful for all the wonderful people we get to work with every day!
This year was the second year we partnered with Shelter, Inc, a local nonprofit working to prevent and end homelessness for low-income, homeless, and disadvantaged families and individuals by providing housing, services, support, and resources that lead to self-sufficiency, donating over 25 bags of food for families in need this Thanksgiving.
Last year Cisco joined forces with Cincinnati Children’s and CBTS to bring Santa Clause to patients who were not well enough to leave their rooms. Using a video monitor and web enabled camera Santa was able to live chat with these patients without leaving the “North Pole”. See the video here.
Are you one of the many of us who are not able to spend Thanksgiving with your family? This year you can connect with your loved ones using Cisco WebEx and Cisco Spark technologies. Spark offers a free application for users who are looking to use the messaging, screen sharing, and video features.
Be prepared for high volumes of online traffic on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year online sales were at a record breaking high over Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US. With 154.4 million shoppers were reported over Thanksgiving weekend in 2016 by the National Retail Federation, and that number is expected to increase again this year. This year, it’s anticipated that Black Friday will see more online activity and sales than Cyber Monday. Security during Black Friday and Cyber Monday is especially top of mind this year for business owners. Are you prepared for the high traffic weekend? Here are a few tips to ensure you’re protected and prepared for this year’s busiest online shopping weekend:
- Re-prioritize bandwidth to customers, leverage the cloud to rapidly enhance capabilities for direct and meaningful interactions
- Optimize for mobile to provide personalized engagements with customers before, during and after they shop
- Make sure your systems are patched and your anti-malware software is up to date
- Secure your online data with software the enables encryption and digital data protection
With security features such as Cisco ISE, Umbrella, and Anti-Malware Protection Cisco networks can protect customers and businesses. A digital-ready network provides fast and secure speeds allowing customers to safely shop and improving customer’s shopping experience.
Squeezed between the two biggest shopping days of the year (Black Friday and Cyber Monday), and rounding out the Thanksgiving weekend shopping trifecta is Small Business Saturday. This Saturday is Small Business Saturday and we encourage you to “shop small” and support the local businesses in your area. There are 3.8 million small businesses in California employing approximately 49% of the workforce. Last year 112 million shoppers supported local small businesses spending $15.4 billion!
We want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!
