Category: Sensors

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AI and IoT: Everything You Need to Know 

A (Re)introduction to AI and IoT

Intros may not be necessary—you’ve likely already met. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are increasingly infused into our lives. In fact, the better these technologies work together, the less likely we are to think about how they interact. When things work, they just work (thanks, UX design!).

Yet those interactions are more potent than ever. Transforming data and connectivity through the network, AI and IoT are fueling one another’s rapid growth. Together, they can unlock tremendous efficiency and innovation, but to safely harness their potential, it’s important to understand what AI and IoT can offer to organizations—and to one another.

What is artificial intelligence?

Applications of AI are advancing so rapidly that only the latest breakthroughs tend to capture our attention. Today, when someone mentions AI, it’s easy to think “generative AI”—but AI still encompasses a broad array of computer science and engineering that simulates a human’s capacity to learn, perceive, reason, and problem-solve. Using AI technologies effectively requires a deeper understanding of the distinctions between different types.

AI can be as simple as reactive machines that perform a narrow range of tasks. These basic systems follow predefined rules and patterns, but don’t learn from historical data or adapt. Early chatbots, for example, might offer a limited selection of responses, and only if the user phrased their question a certain way.

Machine learning (ML) systems, on the other hand, learn from historical data and are designed to improve over time. Using advanced algorithms, ML applications are skilled at optimizing. ML-powered recommendation engines are a key feature driving modern consumer interactions with digital content. This has led to greater personalization of user experiences across e-commerce sites, streaming platforms, and workplace dashboards.

Deep learning is a characteristic of more advanced AI systems that use inference and neural networks to analyze complex data and develop sophisticated processing models. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have shown deep learning’s transformative potential, enabling AI integration into diverse applications such as intelligent chatbots, financial trend analysis, and code debugging.

More sophisticated forms of AI often require more data. Large datasets help to ensure accurate parameters are set in complex models, contribute to a stable training process, and enable advanced AI to learn underlying patterns and capture nuanced features.

What is the Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things refers to a network of objects, such as devices, buildings, and vehicles. IoT connectivity is enabled by sensors, software, and technologies that allow these objects to collect and share data with one another using the internet. IoT sensors can also trigger transactions in response to the real-world data collected, such as climate or visual information. The process used to intercept and log traffic that passes over a digital network is referred to as packet capture. Data packets that are captured can then be analyzed to provide detailed insights and help diagnose network issues.

The decisions that an IoT system makes are determined in a control loop. Though similar to a reactive machine in the narrowness of its focus, an IoT control loop is a complex combination of hardware and software. Control loops leverage sensors, data processing units, actuators, and communication networks to manage things like temperature or lighting in complex environments. While not a form of AI, control loops can enable data-driven automation.

The potent intersection of AI and IoT

IoT technology is widely used to optimize energy usage, maintenance, and security in various settings. These include everything from smart factories and homes to traffic lights and hospitals. Different IoT devices and platforms communicate through application programming interfaces (APIs), which integrate data from multiple devices into centralized systems. APIs can also help manage the increased data load as more devices are added, allowing the network to scale efficiently.

There are several challenges in managing these interconnected devices, such as limited visibility for end users and complex network integrity. IoT devices generate massive amounts of data. While copious data is key for sophisticated AI models, it can become overwhelming to process—making network performance issues difficult to diagnose.

The network of devices also can become a vulnerable entry point for cyberattacks. As networks add complexity, attack surfaces proliferate. According to the 2024 State of Industrial Networking Report, mitigating against cyberthreats is the #1 challenge for companies running industrial infrastructure.

The combination of AI and IoT is helping to address some of the challenges in managing more complex networks. It’s also improving how devices interact and make decisions. Smart spaces and AI-enhanced data management systems are helping organizations digitally transform physical workspaces, gain control over environments, avoid costly disruptions, and protect individuals who access those spaces. Intelligent simulations are accelerating this transformation, compressing design cycles by applying AI algorithms to extract more insights from fewer simulations.

What are the benefits of combining AI and IoT?

AI helps to significantly simplify IoT network management and performance assurance. For instance, AI-driven channel planning uses advanced algorithms to monitor network conditions, tag severities, and avoid dynamic frequency selection (DFS) events that require frequency switching to prevent interference. AI can also help ensure compliance with local energy regulations by adapting transmission power based on range data and regulatory requirements.

AI also democratizes the power of IoT, allowing for more intuitive system interactions that use conversational prompts instead of highly technical queries. This allows administrators to quickly trigger packet captures, automate monitoring processes, and detect anomalies using preconfigured data from other deployments.

Used together, AI and IoT also enable simulations of environments to test virtual scenarios and optimize configurations. IoT systems can leverage the deep learning ability of AI to analyze vast amounts of data and predict outcomes, making those ecosystems and the components within them more adaptive and intelligent.

For example, smart cameras equipped with AI can analyze video feeds in real time, trained on models that allow them to detect and recognize anomalies, unusual activities, potential shortages, or even security threats. Surveillance systems that once required manual oversight and, in the case of incidents, laborious manual review of footage, are now transformed into proactive security solutions that can respond instantly. Triggers can even be set up to only activate threat response in anomalous conditions, such as when an RFID-tagged device leaves a designated area in a store.

The advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities of AI can be applied to data collected by these systems, offering nuanced insights that can improve interactions, refine resource allocation, and extend device life. Retailers can use AI and IoT cameras to track buyer sentiment through facial expressions and traffic patterns. Dwell time can be tracked using heat maps to inform improved equipment configurations and proper rotation.

The APIs that allow IoT devices to communicate with one another also facilitate custom AI solutions for IoT edge applications. AI that operates at the edge can be trained on highly relevant, real-time information, allowing it to quickly diagnose issues and pinpoint causes such as power outages, local environmental factors, connectivity problems, or user errors with a high accuracy and speed. By computing smart thresholds, AI reduces alert fatigue, providing more specific analysis and ensuring that resources are not wasted on misdiagnoses.

AI-enhanced radio resource management (RRM) can process and analyze 10 times the data of conventional methods—another boon for performance assurance. Optimizing radio configurations across multiple access points, RRM systems can help minimize or quickly resolve connectivity issues in complex wireless environments where any amount of latency can significantly impact the user experience.

Securing IoT and AI-based applications

Enhancing the security and performance of IoT networks with AI-based edge applications requires more agility and granular control over network traffic and device interactions than traditional virtual local area network (VLAN)-based approaches can offer. By dynamically adjusting security measures and resource allocation based on real-time data and contextual information, adaptive policy ensures that security protocols meet each device and application’s specific needs and behaviors.

By continuously monitoring network activity and device behavior, adaptive policies can identify anomalies and respond to threats with automatic segmentation and traffic isolation. Automating a segmented response minimizes the impact of security breaches and reduces the potential surface area for an attack.

Adaptive policies also help optimize resource allocation and performance by prioritizing critical applications, managing bandwidth efficiently, and dynamically adjusting to changing conditions and demands in the IoT ecosystem. This helps prevent bottlenecks and ensures that cameras, sensors, and other edge AI applications can function with low latency and high reliability.

What does the future of AI and IoT ecosystems look like? Less intrusive, for one thing. We’re already seeing the infrastructure efficiency in data centers being built to power AI computing. Informed by AI and IoT feedback and optimization, these new data centers require far less space than those of the past. As the use cases for smart and even autonomous IoT ecosystems abound, demand for elegant infrastructure could grow.

Whereas organizations once had separate systems to track people, inventory, and external threats, a platform environment is becoming more attainable than ever thanks to the integration of systems that AI and IoT are now making possible. As environments grow more personalized and complex, user controls should be simplified into a single dashboard experience that works so well you don’t even have to think about it.

Register for a free Meraki dashboard demo

The post AI and IoT: Everything You Need to Know  appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

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Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices?

From Wi-Fi 6E (and the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 technologies) to smart cameras, IoT devices are expected to grow by 50% by 2027. As organizations leverage more of these intelligent, data-generating machines to boost employee productivity and user experience, they may want to consider the impact on the network.

The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

  • Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
  • Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
  • Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

A Platform for Cloud Success

Reduced costs, increased scalability, and faster innovation are just some of the reasons why companies around the world are rapidly adopting a cloud-first strategy for their IT operations. However, with the rate of technological change today, businesses must be extremely strategic with their investments, and cloud-first is not a one-size-fits-all solution. How can tech leaders harness everything the cloud has to offer to produce optimal outcomes for their business?

In this five-part conversation, Forbes and Cisco Meraki examine the tremendous value of a cloud-first approach and discuss how and why cloud-managed platforms have the power to transform and modernize organizations faster than ever before.


Rich Karlgaard, Global Futurist and Editor-At-Large, Forbes, interviews Lawrence Huang, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Meraki and Wireless

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

How Cisco Networking is simplifying IT

Rich Karlgaard:

Cisco announced a Networking Cloud vision at Cisco Live, your big conference in Las Vegas. Can you tell me a little bit about it and how it differentiates itself from other solutions in the marketplace?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah absolutely. The way I would articulate it, it is a response to what our customers want. The feedback that they’re looking for from Cisco is, how do you actually build things in such a way that your technology, applications, networks, and solutions work cohesively together as one? And really, a big part of what we’re delivering with Cisco Networking Cloud is a massive simplification and unification of the experience.

When you think about the rich portfolio that Cisco has, we have an opportunity to stitch together these different components in a way that we haven’t done in the past. That way, we can drive more consistent automation, we can drive more consistent analytics, and help our customers diagnose issues faster so that it doesn’t feel like you’re logging into many different solutions from one company.

Yes, cloud is the norm these days, but the power of what we have is the level of depth of our data—the number of customers, the number of networks, the quality of the data that we have to drive better insights, better analytics, and better intelligence.

The other piece to it is that we’re able to have partners build on top of our platform so they can extend the capabilities to solve bespoke use cases that may make sense for a given customer, but not broadly.

And then last but not least, it’s fair to acknowledge that Cisco, as a company with #1 market share in many of our markets, serves a breadth of customers, from on-premises to cloud to hybrid. If you think about what we announced, we said very clearly that our goal is to help our customers with the Cisco Networking Cloud—whether you’re fully on premises, you’re hybrid, or you’re fully cloud first—to be able to benefit from the simplification—this unification of our platform.

The power of a simplified platform experience

Skip to video at 2:23 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Not only is the IT infrastructure often for a hybrid company, we’ve got a mix of on-premises, a mix of cloud, and now the workplace itself is evolving into hybrid. COVID hit us like a lead anvil falling on us in the spring of 2020, and new companies have emerged. It just seems, you used the word “bespoke,” that almost every company and every industry is figuring out what the future of the workplace is going to look like.

Is it going to be back to work, is it going to be staying at home? Is it going to be a hybrid of some kind? How many days in the office? How many days not?

How on earth do you deal with customers coming and telling you these infinite varieties of workplace solutions that they’re working through right now?

Lawrence Huang:

First and foremost, hybrid work is something that every company, to your point, is figuring out. But I think it’s fair to acknowledge that what it was pre-COVID is not going to be the same going forward. Even with the changes in the macroeconomic conditions out there, where you do see some employers trying to pull back people to the office, they are voting with their feet.

The reality is that users of these office spaces, whether it is actually traditional office space or the office of one at home or something in between—what they’re demanding is a better experience bar none. So what IT infrastructure teams need to be able to deliver is a better experience at scale—at global scale.

Oftentimes what this means for them is that security is going to be front and center.

It’s going to be something where it’s not just a centralized architecture. It has to be something that they have to think very judiciously about, no matter where the end points, where the people, where the devices are that need to access the applications. A big part of what these owners of this infrastructure need to be able to do is do this in a way that makes sense—in a way that is simple for them to manage at scale.

What we’re asking here is what Cisco Networking Cloud is centered around: How do we unify the experience? How do we do things like provide single sign-on across our different platforms so that when you bring these different technology components to support hybrid work, you can do so in a way that makes sense where you’re not logging into different systems; that you can understand the policies end-to-end and see where there may be security risks more readily than if it was just bespoke solutions tied together.

Cloud-activated resilience is a business differentiator

Skip to video at 4:58 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Coming back to this idea of resilience, in April we had a Forbes CIO conference called the CIO’s Architects of Resilience, and the idea is that the world is moving beyond the pandemic—it is a different world. We’re not returning to the pre-pandemic world. We’re returning to a world where you need more than one supply chain. You need multiple options for your supply chains. There are more geopolitical risks, there are more monetary and inflation risks, and so the idea of resilience is that you’ve got to be able to create plans to deal with all of those contingencies without making yourself stiff and bureaucratic.

How do you think about resilience, what do your customers ask you about resilience, and what do you think contributes to resilience that works for Cisco Meraki customers?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah, with your examples, especially over the past few years with the headwinds in supply chain or the changing dynamics with business conditions, resilience is a topic that is front and center with many of our customers. The best ones [customers] can treat resilience as a business differentiator if they’re able to do this well.

Oftentimes, when I think about conversations I have with our customers, they think of resilience as “how do I be more nimble and agile?” Whether it’s supply chain diversification or how do I shift my cloud workflows in a way that I’m leveraging more than one cloud provider?

But from an infrastructure perspective, there’s this concept of simplicity that we talk about a lot here at Cisco Meraki. Simplicity with our platform can be a core way to enable resiliency.

What we’re seeing here is, across the board, the way the infrastructures are being built and managed—it’s very different than it was in years past. Oftentimes what we see is that you have to be able to support employees no matter where they’re working. Whether it’s in the traditional office environment, whether it’s in the home, or somewhere in between.

It’s about simplicity of the experience. Imagine infrastructure at scale where you can actually deploy security policies end-to-end, and where you have visibility end-to-end—that is something that provides a foundation where you can then start adapting to changes in your business condition. This idea of a platform means that as your business needs respond, you can build on top of the platform to solve unique use cases for your business to provide greater resiliency.

From a people and team perspective, I believe that its also important to invest in the culture and the people. This is for many people a little more touchy feely, but i think its an important leg of the stool for how you build a resilient organization.

AI/ML and predictive automation: business development accelerants

Skip to video at 7:51 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Let’s talk about this new onrush of AI. AI’s concept has been around 50 or 60 years, and there have been false dawns of AI, but this dawn looks real for sure. Internet analyst Mary Meeker told me at a conference a couple of months ago she’s never seen anything come on as fast and scale as rapidly as ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI. And really, when you step back and you look at every significant technology advantage that has come along since silicon chips, [AI] has been really an accelerant. It’s an accelerant of the underlying metabolism of how fast business can be conducted.

When you think about all of these accelerants that are now in the marketplace, from cloud infrastructure to generative AI to mobility and connectivity everywhere, companies really need to have their act together and be organized around the speed of change. If they are not, they’re going to find that their lunch is eaten by their competitors or some company they’ve never heard of.

What are you seeing in terms of the sense of urgency that the latest accelerant, generative AI, is bringing to the marketplace? And what are some use cases where you’re seeing that companies are proving out early that there are some real advantages, whether its predictive analytics or machine learning and automation, or whatever that happens to be?

Lawrence Huang:

I think the more crass way to say it is, the gold rush is on. Everyone is trying to figure out what this next wave of AI means for them and their business and their customers. I think it’s fair to say that from a product development standpoint, there’s the internal, “Hey, can we use these tools to increase the productivity of our developers so we can actually get more capabilities out to our customers faster and more efficiently?”

From a customer standpoint, going back to your point about, “What are some of the use cases that we can use this technology for?” I think that a lot of it from our world is going to be centered around, “Can we make this idea of predictive analytics more powerful than it is today?”

And one of the things I’ll say is that I don’t think AI, in and of itself, is the end-all-be-all. Sometimes the right answer, quite frankly, is a better user workflow. But other times, using technologies like AI and machine learning, it’s actually the right set of tools because what’s normal in one environment may not be normal in another environment. Having humans and people trying to figure it out is not the best way to do it. That’s where you apply technologies like AI and machine learning techniques to help.

What I’m excited about is seeing the new opportunities around areas like sustainability and areas like being able to create new businesses out of these technologies. It’s early days, but the other piece to it is that privacy is going to be a big part of how customers think about how they use these tools. That’s one thing that, as a company like Cisco, we think very deeply about when we introduce these capabilities. Privacy is front and center, and not putting our customers at risk.

Be a transformative CIO: infuse innovation

Skip to video at 11:15 min

Rich Karlgaard:

One of the reasons Cisco is a trusted brand is that among C-suite executives, particularly CIOs and CTOs, people see Cisco as rock solid and trustworthy and a good partner to have, not only for their own companies but for their own careers.

In thinking about the future of the CIO, one of the things that we have at Forbes is this idea of the “CIO+.” The “CIO+” runs an impeccable, button-down, no-errors (or very small-level of errors), in terms of the IT infrastructure.

But they also do three other things:

  1. They understand the finances and operations of a company and they can go toe-to-toe with the CFO and speak the language of finance.
  2. They understand the revenue levers—what drives revenue, what drives profitability, what drives margin-expansion, and all of those things—so that they’re a partner there.
  3. And then they are a futurist. When they look at technologies like cloud infrastructure or generative AI, they are looking at it the way a venture capitalist would and organizing a portfolio of future projects.

From your perspective, as somebody who has worked with top-level IT people and served their interests and needs, do you have any comments on the changing nature of the CIO? How does the CIO or CTO get to that level where they’re a 90th-percentile CIO in terms of their ability to really drive transformational change at their company?

Lawrence Huang:

If you look at what’s happening across the industry, if you are not that transformative CIO and a team supporting the business, then quite frankly you’re a cost-center. You’re something that is necessary, but not strategic. The best CIOs realize that the way you actually drive real value is to turn your function into something that is strategic for the business.

Oftentimes, even with the example that we talked about with hybrid work, we know for a fact that across the board we are seeing shrinkage in office real estate. Across the companies that we work for, everyone is having a conversation about employees wanting a better experience when they come into the office. They need a reason to gather.

As a CIO and a team supporting that, how do I start working across different teams, whether it’s the real estate team or the facilities team, to create that better experience for them? What do we need to do differently to make these technologies that span across multiple teams and tie them together in a meaningful way so we can actually bring people together?

I think about the 3-30-300 rule, which is: The utilities of a given space and the square footage is roughly $3, and for real estate itself it’s $30, and for employees it’s $300. So there is this massive leverage that you get out of having productive employees. Everyone knows this, so how do you actually invest in a way to make them more productive?

The last piece to it is the innovation in terms of being able to respond to the business. When I hear the stories from our customers, when they’re looking at, “Hey I have stores,” as an example, “that through the pandemic were booming, and then after the pandemic were not … how do I make sure that I can actually build on the infrastructure that I invested in and layer on additional capabilities?” Whether it’s things like cameras and sensors to help, for example, my leadership team understands the productivity of my store employees better. How do I make sure that I deploy technologies in a way that can drive and support sustainability initiatives?

These are areas that really [top] 1% CIOs are helping their businesses transform to meet the needs that they have, whether it’s business headwinds that they need to go address or whether it’s net new initiatives to target sustainability net zero.

I’m really excited about what these top CIOs are doing within their organizations.

Rich Karlgaard:

Thank you for a very illuminating conversation!

Lawrence Huang:

Thanks a lot Rich, I appreciate the time.

Ready to be a transformational leader? Visit the Meraki platform page and explore how a cloud-first strategy can boost your business.

The post A Platform for Cloud Success appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Posted on

A Platform for Cloud Success

Reduced costs, increased scalability, and faster innovation are just some of the reasons why companies around the world are rapidly adopting a cloud-first strategy for their IT operations. However, with the rate of technological change today, businesses must be extremely strategic with their investments, and cloud-first is not a one-size-fits-all solution. How can tech leaders harness everything the cloud has to offer to produce optimal outcomes for their business?

In this five-part conversation, Forbes and Cisco Meraki examine the tremendous value of a cloud-first approach and discuss how and why cloud-managed platforms have the power to transform and modernize organizations faster than ever before.


Rich Karlgaard, Global Futurist and Editor-At-Large, Forbes, interviews Lawrence Huang, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Meraki and Wireless

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

How Cisco Networking is simplifying IT

Rich Karlgaard:

Cisco announced a Networking Cloud vision at Cisco Live, your big conference in Las Vegas. Can you tell me a little bit about it and how it differentiates itself from other solutions in the marketplace?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah absolutely. The way I would articulate it, it is a response to what our customers want. The feedback that they’re looking for from Cisco is, how do you actually build things in such a way that your technology, applications, networks, and solutions work cohesively together as one? And really, a big part of what we’re delivering with Cisco Networking Cloud is a massive simplification and unification of the experience.

When you think about the rich portfolio that Cisco has, we have an opportunity to stitch together these different components in a way that we haven’t done in the past. That way, we can drive more consistent automation, we can drive more consistent analytics, and help our customers diagnose issues faster so that it doesn’t feel like you’re logging into many different solutions from one company.

Yes, cloud is the norm these days, but the power of what we have is the level of depth of our data—the number of customers, the number of networks, the quality of the data that we have to drive better insights, better analytics, and better intelligence.

The other piece to it is that we’re able to have partners build on top of our platform so they can extend the capabilities to solve bespoke use cases that may make sense for a given customer, but not broadly.

And then last but not least, it’s fair to acknowledge that Cisco, as a company with #1 market share in many of our markets, serves a breadth of customers, from on-premises to cloud to hybrid. If you think about what we announced, we said very clearly that our goal is to help our customers with the Cisco Networking Cloud—whether you’re fully on premises, you’re hybrid, or you’re fully cloud first—to be able to benefit from the simplification—this unification of our platform.

The power of a simplified platform experience

Skip to video at 2:23 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Not only is the IT infrastructure often for a hybrid company, we’ve got a mix of on-premises, a mix of cloud, and now the workplace itself is evolving into hybrid. COVID hit us like a lead anvil falling on us in the spring of 2020, and new companies have emerged. It just seems, you used the word “bespoke,” that almost every company and every industry is figuring out what the future of the workplace is going to look like.

Is it going to be back to work, is it going to be staying at home? Is it going to be a hybrid of some kind? How many days in the office? How many days not?

How on earth do you deal with customers coming and telling you these infinite varieties of workplace solutions that they’re working through right now?

Lawrence Huang:

First and foremost, hybrid work is something that every company, to your point, is figuring out. But I think it’s fair to acknowledge that what it was pre-COVID is not going to be the same going forward. Even with the changes in the macroeconomic conditions out there, where you do see some employers trying to pull back people to the office, they are voting with their feet.

The reality is that users of these office spaces, whether it is actually traditional office space or the office of one at home or something in between—what they’re demanding is a better experience bar none. So what IT infrastructure teams need to be able to deliver is a better experience at scale—at global scale.

Oftentimes what this means for them is that security is going to be front and center.

It’s going to be something where it’s not just a centralized architecture. It has to be something that they have to think very judiciously about, no matter where the end points, where the people, where the devices are that need to access the applications. A big part of what these owners of this infrastructure need to be able to do is do this in a way that makes sense—in a way that is simple for them to manage at scale.

What we’re asking here is what Cisco Networking Cloud is centered around: How do we unify the experience? How do we do things like provide single sign-on across our different platforms so that when you bring these different technology components to support hybrid work, you can do so in a way that makes sense where you’re not logging into different systems; that you can understand the policies end-to-end and see where there may be security risks more readily than if it was just bespoke solutions tied together.

Cloud-activated resilience is a business differentiator

Skip to video at 4:58 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Coming back to this idea of resilience, in April we had a Forbes CIO conference called the CIO’s Architects of Resilience, and the idea is that the world is moving beyond the pandemic—it is a different world. We’re not returning to the pre-pandemic world. We’re returning to a world where you need more than one supply chain. You need multiple options for your supply chains. There are more geopolitical risks, there are more monetary and inflation risks, and so the idea of resilience is that you’ve got to be able to create plans to deal with all of those contingencies without making yourself stiff and bureaucratic.

How do you think about resilience, what do your customers ask you about resilience, and what do you think contributes to resilience that works for Cisco Meraki customers?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah, with your examples, especially over the past few years with the headwinds in supply chain or the changing dynamics with business conditions, resilience is a topic that is front and center with many of our customers. The best ones [customers] can treat resilience as a business differentiator if they’re able to do this well.

Oftentimes, when I think about conversations I have with our customers, they think of resilience as “how do I be more nimble and agile?” Whether it’s supply chain diversification or how do I shift my cloud workflows in a way that I’m leveraging more than one cloud provider?

But from an infrastructure perspective, there’s this concept of simplicity that we talk about a lot here at Cisco Meraki. Simplicity with our platform can be a core way to enable resiliency.

What we’re seeing here is, across the board, the way the infrastructures are being built and managed—it’s very different than it was in years past. Oftentimes what we see is that you have to be able to support employees no matter where they’re working. Whether it’s in the traditional office environment, whether it’s in the home, or somewhere in between.

It’s about simplicity of the experience. Imagine infrastructure at scale where you can actually deploy security policies end-to-end, and where you have visibility end-to-end—that is something that provides a foundation where you can then start adapting to changes in your business condition. This idea of a platform means that as your business needs respond, you can build on top of the platform to solve unique use cases for your business to provide greater resiliency.

From a people and team perspective, I believe that its also important to invest in the culture and the people. This is for many people a little more touchy feely, but i think its an important leg of the stool for how you build a resilient organization.

AI/ML and predictive automation: business development accelerants

Skip to video at 7:51 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Let’s talk about this new onrush of AI. AI’s concept has been around 50 or 60 years, and there have been false dawns of AI, but this dawn looks real for sure. Internet analyst Mary Meeker told me at a conference a couple of months ago she’s never seen anything come on as fast and scale as rapidly as ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI. And really, when you step back and you look at every significant technology advantage that has come along since silicon chips, [AI] has been really an accelerant. It’s an accelerant of the underlying metabolism of how fast business can be conducted.

When you think about all of these accelerants that are now in the marketplace, from cloud infrastructure to generative AI to mobility and connectivity everywhere, companies really need to have their act together and be organized around the speed of change. If they are not, they’re going to find that their lunch is eaten by their competitors or some company they’ve never heard of.

What are you seeing in terms of the sense of urgency that the latest accelerant, generative AI, is bringing to the marketplace? And what are some use cases where you’re seeing that companies are proving out early that there are some real advantages, whether its predictive analytics or machine learning and automation, or whatever that happens to be?

Lawrence Huang:

I think the more crass way to say it is, the gold rush is on. Everyone is trying to figure out what this next wave of AI means for them and their business and their customers. I think it’s fair to say that from a product development standpoint, there’s the internal, “Hey, can we use these tools to increase the productivity of our developers so we can actually get more capabilities out to our customers faster and more efficiently?”

From a customer standpoint, going back to your point about, “What are some of the use cases that we can use this technology for?” I think that a lot of it from our world is going to be centered around, “Can we make this idea of predictive analytics more powerful than it is today?”

And one of the things I’ll say is that I don’t think AI, in and of itself, is the end-all-be-all. Sometimes the right answer, quite frankly, is a better user workflow. But other times, using technologies like AI and machine learning, it’s actually the right set of tools because what’s normal in one environment may not be normal in another environment. Having humans and people trying to figure it out is not the best way to do it. That’s where you apply technologies like AI and machine learning techniques to help.

What I’m excited about is seeing the new opportunities around areas like sustainability and areas like being able to create new businesses out of these technologies. It’s early days, but the other piece to it is that privacy is going to be a big part of how customers think about how they use these tools. That’s one thing that, as a company like Cisco, we think very deeply about when we introduce these capabilities. Privacy is front and center, and not putting our customers at risk.

Be a transformative CIO: infuse innovation

Skip to video at 11:15 min

Rich Karlgaard:

One of the reasons Cisco is a trusted brand is that among C-suite executives, particularly CIOs and CTOs, people see Cisco as rock solid and trustworthy and a good partner to have, not only for their own companies but for their own careers.

In thinking about the future of the CIO, one of the things that we have at Forbes is this idea of the “CIO+.” The “CIO+” runs an impeccable, button-down, no-errors (or very small-level of errors), in terms of the IT infrastructure.

But they also do three other things:

  1. They understand the finances and operations of a company and they can go toe-to-toe with the CFO and speak the language of finance.
  2. They understand the revenue levers—what drives revenue, what drives profitability, what drives margin-expansion, and all of those things—so that they’re a partner there.
  3. And then they are a futurist. When they look at technologies like cloud infrastructure or generative AI, they are looking at it the way a venture capitalist would and organizing a portfolio of future projects.

From your perspective, as somebody who has worked with top-level IT people and served their interests and needs, do you have any comments on the changing nature of the CIO? How does the CIO or CTO get to that level where they’re a 90th-percentile CIO in terms of their ability to really drive transformational change at their company?

Lawrence Huang:

If you look at what’s happening across the industry, if you are not that transformative CIO and a team supporting the business, then quite frankly you’re a cost-center. You’re something that is necessary, but not strategic. The best CIOs realize that the way you actually drive real value is to turn your function into something that is strategic for the business.

Oftentimes, even with the example that we talked about with hybrid work, we know for a fact that across the board we are seeing shrinkage in office real estate. Across the companies that we work for, everyone is having a conversation about employees wanting a better experience when they come into the office. They need a reason to gather.

As a CIO and a team supporting that, how do I start working across different teams, whether it’s the real estate team or the facilities team, to create that better experience for them? What do we need to do differently to make these technologies that span across multiple teams and tie them together in a meaningful way so we can actually bring people together?

I think about the 3-30-300 rule, which is: The utilities of a given space and the square footage is roughly $3, and for real estate itself it’s $30, and for employees it’s $300. So there is this massive leverage that you get out of having productive employees. Everyone knows this, so how do you actually invest in a way to make them more productive?

The last piece to it is the innovation in terms of being able to respond to the business. When I hear the stories from our customers, when they’re looking at, “Hey I have stores,” as an example, “that through the pandemic were booming, and then after the pandemic were not … how do I make sure that I can actually build on the infrastructure that I invested in and layer on additional capabilities?” Whether it’s things like cameras and sensors to help, for example, my leadership team understands the productivity of my store employees better. How do I make sure that I deploy technologies in a way that can drive and support sustainability initiatives?

These are areas that really [top] 1% CIOs are helping their businesses transform to meet the needs that they have, whether it’s business headwinds that they need to go address or whether it’s net new initiatives to target sustainability net zero.

I’m really excited about what these top CIOs are doing within their organizations.

Rich Karlgaard:

Thank you for a very illuminating conversation!

Lawrence Huang:

Thanks a lot Rich, I appreciate the time.

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