Introducing PnP Connect

What is Cisco Network Plug & Play?

Cisco Network Plug & Play (PnP) is a secure and scalable solution for simple day-zero provisioning across all Cisco Enterprise platforms (routers, switches and wireless access points). The PnP application runs on top of Cisco Enterprise SDN Controller – APIC-EM.

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VGA Cables and WiFi Access as Cloud Adoption Predictors

I spend most of my time educating channel partners, most of them Value-Added Resellers (VARs) on how Cisco CloudCenter can help them help their customers with a hybrid cloud strategy.  What I’ve noticed in my first year at Cisco after being part of the CliQr acquisition is that selling cloud services is very different than the traditional VAR box sale.

Instead of a large influx of capital funds that a salesperson can use to retire quarterly quota, cloud selling is much more about planting seeds in multiple accounts, some of which will grow exponentially and continue to feed revenue streams in perpetuity.  That lets a VAR build relationships with lots of different people within their accounts and there’s plenty of opportunity for hardware drag and services revenue in the short term, but it’s that long term relationship a VAR is really trying to build.

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Cisco SD-WAN Networking Service for Public Clouds

Enterprises across all verticals are migrating their applications to public cloud (IaaS) services and taking advantage of the great cost savings on compute hosting. But the cost benefits shouldn’t affect security, scalability or customer experience. Enterprises require the same level of secure network access, control and visibility in the cloud as they do with on-premise networks. Cloud providers offer basic network functions like IPSEC VPN, BGP routing, NAT. It’s a good enough solution to build a simple site-to-site VPN network with some routing, but enterprises could quickly face these challenges:

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017: Part 2

Hybrid Services – Integrating cloud services with existing on-premises customer care services is currently a hot topic, not just in the contact center domain but throughout Unified Collaboration and other IT groups.   Hybrid Services architectures allow our Cisco IT teams to deploy some of the latest cloud technology, while knowing the investment made in the present premise environment can be leveraged.  Currently here in Cisco IT we’re exploring several options for our internal contact centers.

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Protecting Innovation: Update on ITC Enforcement Action

Opening statements for the ITC ‘944 investigation enforcement hearing began this afternoon, and the full evidentiary hearing should be complete tomorrow. In the ITC’s final decision last summer, Arista was found to infringe three Cisco patents, including our SysDB patent. While Arista claims to have redesigned its products to avoid Cisco’s SysDB patent, they declined to present the redesign to the Commission for review. The ITC now will determine in the enforcement proceeding whether Arista’s redesign continues to infringe Cisco’s SysDB patent and, if so, what the penalty should be for the ongoing infringement.

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Ten Technologies to Consider for Contact Centers in 2017

The line made famous by the Rolling Stones, “Time waits for no one”, is especially true for technology. A little over two years ago I wrote a blog titled “Ten Things to Consider for a Better Contact Center”. While all of the items mentioned are still relevant, the Contact Center technology space has gained significant investment in new capabilities since that blog was published. Contact Centers have expanded their technology reach and with that comes the importance of understanding how new technology improves customer service. Properly understanding and implementing the various new offerings may help to greatly improve the widely held corporate goal of increasing customer service, both quality and satisfaction.

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Cisco Distribution Sales Visibility: Another Step toward Ease of Doing Business

Last year, Cisco launched Distribution Sales Visibility (DSV) and began deploying it, country by country, across our distribution channel. Distis in Canada and the US are all now using DSV.

A Step toward EoDB

The whole point of DSV is to make Cisco easier to work with for our distributors and for the resellers they support. In most cases, it reduces the crediting of bookings to the Cisco sales team to hours vs. days, and removes the $100k order minimum. It also helps distributors leverage existing inventory and deliver the value-added services that give partners a competitive edge. It replaces Channel Bookings Neutrality (CBN) – a welcome change for many of us – and puts distribution ordering on equal footing with direct orders.

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