This week I’m in Barcelona at Cisco’s Marketing Velocity conference learning about Cisco’s marketing strategies for the year and better ways to get new technology content to our customers. In today’s digital era, businesses have become completely borderless. With so many competitive solutions, customers aren’t just buying a product or service, they are buying an amazing experience. So much so that 53% of buyers choose their vendor based on buyers experience according to CEB. It’s up to us to provide our customers with quality solutions, experiences, and a relevant human experience.
In the last year Cisco had 44 new releases! With that many new releases it’s important for technology vendors and distributors to prioritize what will benefit and resonate with our customers most. With a focus on Security, Data Center, Multi-cloud and collaboration I thought it would be nice to share some highlights from the solutions we are seeing taking the industry by storm.
Network Intuitive
Last year Cisco launched the Network Intuitive campaign centered around their Digital Network Architecture (DNA), or intent-based networking. This new network is focused on business outcomes and how quickly and efficiently businesses achieve these outcomes. It removes the complexity of the traditional, time-intensive manual approach, introducing one that is automated, intelligent, and highly secure. With an automated network, you can connect billions of devices, identify them almost instantly, know what’s trustworthy and what isn’t, and draw exponential value from the connections – and you can do it in hours instead of weeks and months. The Network Intuitive provides some great benefits for customers:
- Network automation: customers can fully automate the network infrastructure with Software-Defined Access, and can easily set and apply policies across the entire network.
- Advanced analytics: device, application, and user data is collected by the network allowing customers to predict issues before they happen through predictive intelligence.
- Data security: newly developed Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) is a self-protecting network that can identify encrypted malware anywhere on the network.
- Software-based subscription licensing: customers can purchase only what they need and can now leverage flexible network consumption.
Security
Cisco understands that in today’s world data is where the money is at, and that it’s our job to protect that valuable asset for our customers. Security is not longer just about prevention. With the continually evolving threat landscape it’s about prevention, detection and response. An effective security posture needs to be simple, open and automated, and should protect the network, endpoints, and cloud. Cisco’s breach readiness and response helps organizations prepare, respond to, and recover from incidents quickly and effectively with an annual subscription-based service. Their security portfolio is comprised of a multitude of solutions to protects across the entire network regardless of where your users are or what devices they are using. The products we are getting questions about most often include:
- Cisco ISE: Identity Services Engine is the Next-generation secure network access, providing awareness of everything on your network and consistent and efficient access.
- AMP for Endpoints: Cisco’s Next-Gen Endpoint Security detects, contains and remediates malware on the endpoints as a last line of defense
- Umbrella: Secure Internet Gateway provides users secure access to the internet wherever users go, even off VPN as a first line of defense, using both DNS and IP Layer enforcement to block threats.
- Firepower: Block more threats and quickly mitigate threats that breach your defenses with the industry’s first threat-focused Next-Generation Firewall with hardware and software options that combine the industry’s most effective next-gen IPS and advanced malware protection.
- Stealthwatch: Cisco Stealthwatch provides pervasive network visibility and sophisticated security analytics for advanced protection across the extended network and cloud.
- Stealthwatchcloud: Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud provides behavioral analytics across your network to help you identify advanced threats faster and achieve a stronger security posture in the cloud
Collaboration
Last month announced the technical convergence of Cisco Webex and Cisco Spark to create a new, simplified collaboration experience on a single platform. Yesterday they launched the new Webex campaign, a more intuitive way to work. This campaign features all the updates to the Webex platform, which went live yesterday as well. These updates include the convergence with Spark and break down into:
- Webex Meetings: Video conferencing made as simple and seamless as meeting in person.
- Webex Teams: The app for continuous teamwork with video meetings, group messaging, file sharing and white boarding.
- Webex Devices: Webex devices are designed to help teams communicate clearly and efficiently regardless of where or how they are meeting. The new Webex devices include room devices, desk devices and the Webex Board.
- Webex Assistant: The Webex Assistant (formerly Cisco Spark Assistant) essentially functions as a Siri for calls and meeting management and will now be available on more devices and will have more functionality
This year’s Marketing Velocity has me excited for the amazing technologies we are able to offer our customers and the great tech-stacks built into the portfolio. It also has me excited for what’s to come in just a few weeks at Cisco Live in Orlando!
Written By: Eden Reid, LookingPoint Marketing Manager