Cisco Edge Intelligence: IoT data orchestration from edge to multi cloud

The next frontier of Internet of Things (IoT) is going to be won with the right applications. Applications deliver business outcomes that drive metrics for growth and profitability. However, the most common problem witnessed with these applications is getting clean and well-groomed data securely, reliably and consistently. Here enters IoT Edge Computing. It’s not surprising that a Gartner survey shows that more than 75 percent of data extracted will need edge computing. 

However, various challenges stand in the way of enabling this today:

◉ Geographically remote and distributed assets – The location of IoT assets vary from a dense urban area like traffic intersections to remote area like gas and water distribution where cellular connectivity is scarce

◉ Heterogeneous environments – IoT assets come from various manufacturers and no two manufacturers speak the same protocol or handle the same data model

◉ Multiple consumers of data – As the need for IoT data grows and the number of applications that can leverage data increases, making sure there are proper control and governance policies before the data leaves the network is an ever-growing challenge

◉ Complexity – Current approaches are often sub-scale and require custom software and integration of multi-vendor technologies that are overwhelmingly complex to deploy and manage

Cisco recently announced a new offering for IoT edge called Cisco Edge Intelligence. Cisco Edge Intelligence is a new IoT data orchestration software that extracts, transforms and delivers data of connected assets from edge to multi-cloud destinations with granular data control. It is a software service deployed on Cisco’s IoT Gateway (GW)/ Networking portfolio for easy, out-of-the–box deployments.

Cisco recently requested 451 research to conduct an analysis on the top issues with IoT deployment and the role of IoT edge. The research report helped validate the hypothesis of the problem and the solution that Cisco Edge Intelligence is addressing. 

Cisco is currently conducting early field trials/pilot projects with select customers such as voestalpine, Port of Rotterdam, AHT Cooling (Daikin), National Informatics Center – India and many more across roadways, water quality/distribution and remote industrial asset monitoring. Cisco Edge Intelligence will be available for public in 2Q CY 2020. Primary value proposition of Cisco Edge Intelligence is as follows:

Out-of-the-box solution  

Cisco Edge Intelligence comes out of the box working on most of Cisco’s IoT GW portfolio for plug–and–play operations, which is configured and managed using a SaaS or on-prem solutions. User experience is built grounds up after studying various industry user personas. Cisco Edge Intelligence has simplicity built into its core and makes data extraction, transformation, governance and delivery to its applications as easy as a click of a button. It can be deployed across thousands of gateways from a centralized location without having to worry about the underlying network configurations. 

Pre-integrated data extraction for specific industries 

Cisco has learnt that the hardest and challenging aspect of IoT deployments is consistently extracting data from various greenfield and brownfield assets. Cisco Edge Intelligence comes pre-integrated with a curated set of asset/device connectors based on specific industries that allow customers to onboard IoT assets seamlessly. Further, it provides an ability for customers to add meta data that helps normalize data across vendors.

Convert raw data to intelligent data  

Based on feedback received, Cisco has embraced tools for development and debugging which are widely accepted by the community. Cisco Edge Intelligence provides scripting engines that allow customers’ and partners’ developers to develop scripts that can convert raw data to intelligent data. The scripts could be simple filtering, averaging, thresholding of data or complex analytical data processing for cleaning and grooming of data. These tools enable developers to remotely debug on a physical IoT GW and deploy with a click of a button from the same development interface. 

Granular data governance  

As the promise of IoT is delivered with every small thing being connected, and as the number of applications that can make sense of the IoT data increase, the problem of N*M arises. ‘N’ things being source of data from multiple things from different manufacturers and ‘M’ applications being destination of data from multiple applications from different vendors. The goodness IoT brings, could become a chaos to deal with, if not addressed ahead of time. 

As this data deluge erupts, Cisco Edge Intelligence provides a fundamentally strong and holistic data control from the point of ingestion to consumption in a non-overwhelming way.

Pre-integrated with growing eco-system 

The last and a key step necessary to deliver data to applications requires Cisco Edge Intelligence to be integrated with a growing set of platforms and applications. It is currently pre-integrated with one of the leading cloud providers and other platform/on-prem providers such as Software AG and Quantela. Cisco Edge Intelligence also supports standards based MQTT and encourages partners who are interested in working with Cisco to leverage the same. Cisco will continue to grow this ecosystem of IoT platform/application partners.

“When customers take advantage of both Cisco’s new Edge Intelligence running on Cisco’s GW and Software AG’s Cumulocity IoT running in data center or cloud, they will be able to bring IoT asset data from edge to cloud quickly and seamlessly,” said Yasir Qureshi, VP, IoT and Analytics at Software AG. “Keeping IoT simple with little or no coding has been a key to successfully unlocking the business value of the IoT on either edge or cloud-based applications.”

Cisco Edge Intelligence is a big step for Cisco IoT towards bridging the gap from where data is generated to where it is consumed. It offers an out–of–the–box, plug–and–play solution for everything in between.

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Improving Partner Performance with Black Belt

When you work with Cisco, there’s a lot to learn. About complex customer challenges, how our products solve them, and how you can set yourself apart from the competition. That’s why we at Cisco are always looking for ways to make it easy for you to learn about and sell Cisco solutions.

So we’ve put together a new Partner Performance team to help you do just that. Our goal? Simplify and improve your experience as a Cisco partner. For example, we’ll be rethinking the way we work, looking for places to cut down on the back-and-forth. All to help you stay focused on what matters most—driving new business and getting predictable results.

One key initiative is our Black Belt Partner Academy. This is a comprehensive digital learning framework that has been a huge hit in our Asia Pacific region and is now available to all partners around the world. When utilized effectively, Black Belt will help you build the skills foundation to differentiate and put a game plan in place to battle the competition. Here are a few highlights of what this framework can do for you.

Become an expert in Cisco solutions

In a nutshell, our Black Belt Partner Academy is a digital, self-paced training framework, customized for your role. You can take it to learn all about how to sell, deploy, adopt, and support Cisco solutions. The idea is to become more competent, confident, and connected with Cisco—and our customers.

Specifically, you’ll learn how to:

◉ Help customers transform their business with complete, connected solutions

◉ Be confident and compelling in how you engage with customers

◉ Have richer, deeper conversations with customers

◉ Stand out from your competitors

◉ Execute on your key sales priorities

Take training tailored to your role

We’ve customized each learning map for all major roles that are involved in selling and delivering Cisco solutions. This includes engineering, sales, business architects, and services. So, if you’re in sales, you can take the Sales Track, which lets you:

◉ Get the same sales training as our own Cisco account managers

◉ Stay up to date on the latest market trends, competitive advantages

◉ Explore learning maps for each architecture

◉ Get credit for continuous learning

◉ Earn incentives

You’ll learn things like how to:

◉ Sell the exact solutions your customers need

◉ Set yourself apart from the competition

◉ Craft compelling sales presentations

◉ Use social selling to reach out to the right people

◉ Get help from Cisco when you need it

To give you an idea, here’s a sample learning map for the Sales Track.

Get ready-made resources

Along with training, you also get a trove of ready-made resources for each track. For sales, this includes things like case studies, demos, architectural overviews, market trends, industry reports, competitive battle cards, and presentations.

Take it at your own pace

Another great thing about this framework—it’s all digital, available 24×7. You can take the training in your own time. And we’ve broken it out into three stages, so you can space it out and give yourself time to apply and digest. We estimate that each stage will take you, on average, 6 hours.

◉ Stage 1: Blue Belt – demonstrate learning

◉ Stage 2: Green Belt – demonstrate application

◉ Stage 3: Black Belt – demonstrate success

Earn your badge

In martial arts, black belts are often a coveted symbol that you’ve put in the time to become an expert in something. And it’s the same here. After you take all your training and exams, you get a badge for finishing the Stage 1 learning maps. If you want, you can then move on to the deeper Stage 2 and Stage 3 learning maps, which come with their own badges, but also require you to apply the knowledge you learned to your company’s business.  Only when you proved that you applied the knowledge and successfully close a deal will you be able to call yourself a Cisco Partner Academy Black Belt.

Then you can spread the word to your boss, your colleagues, and your customers that you’ve just earned the coveted black belt—in Cisco.

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Digital Green: Providing for those who provide for others

Smallholder farmers produce more than 80 percent of the world’s food. But they also make up 80 percent of the world’s poorest people, which means they often lack the resources to grow their businesses. Digital Green, a Cisco social investment partner, is using technology to change this equation.

The nonprofit began in 2008 with a vision of helping smallholder farmers improve agricultural practices and boost their incomes. They began by sharing information with farmers on how to increase their yields, producing thousands of locally relevant videos in more than 50 languages. But they realized that more needed to be done to boost farmer incomes. Just as important as growing food is having a place to sell it. That’s why Digital Green built the Loop app, which helps farmers aggregate their produce and get it to markets. It uses a learning algorithm to optimize vehicle routing so farmers get the best prices for their produce. With Loop, farmers can:

Investment from Cisco makes this possible. Cisco was the first donor to provide dedicated funding to support Loop. Farmers saw a gross increase in income of 17 percent as a result of using Loop. Our latest grant will help Loop spin off into a separate social enterprise. Through the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships, Digital Green and Cisco are helping farmers lift themselves out of poverty.

Digital Green is a Cisco partner in our social investment focus area of critical human needs and disaster relief, along with Destination: Home, Mercy Corps and many others. Our Critical Human Needs and Disaster Relief portfolio focuses on increasing access to essentials like water, food, and housing. We also invest in technologies that help people in crisis, from delivering humanitarian aid to providing relief after natural disasters.

Cisco’s research helps guide our grantmaking and related investments to make a meaningful impact. These investments in nonprofit partners enable them to use technology-based solutions to improve how they operate and reach underserved communities. And they support conditions for the communities they live in to thrive. Our approach is to invest in early-stage solutions. This is the stage where funding is most needed and where we can make the biggest difference. Funding from Cisco and the Cisco Foundation helps nonprofits apply technology to:

◉ Create innovative solutions targeting individual and community needs

◉ Implement proof-of-concept pilots to validate viability of solutions

◉ Improve the delivery, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their products and services

◉ Scale to reach more people

◉ Replicate to multiple geographies globally

◉ Validate social impact

◉ Make progress toward financial sustainability

◉ Use data for better decision-making

We also provide our nonprofit partners with ongoing consulting services, advisory support, and technical expertise in areas including:

◉ Governance and operational structure

◉ Organizational leadership capacity

◉ Business planning and strategy development

◉ Impact evaluation

◉ Financial sustainability planning

It is important to confirm that the solutions we invest in are making a difference. We work closely with the nonprofits we fund to measure their effectiveness and impact. This measurement also provides partners with insights on how to improve. We measure both breadth (number of people reached) and depth (the impact their programs are making). Depth is measured with a standard set of metrics for each of our three investment focus areas, as well as custom metrics specific to our partners’ social objectives. We also ensure that solutions serve communities that need it most. Grantees must validate that at least 65 percent of their programs’ participants are from underrepresented and vulnerable population groups. They also provide quarterly reports to share progress against targets that we agree upon, such as client satisfaction.

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Securing Industrial IoT

It’s hard to ignore the ubiquity of the internet of things (IoT). Even if you’re one of those holdouts that doesn’t own consumer IoT devices such as a smart speaker, internet-connected thermostat, or a smart watch, industrial IoT (IIoT) devices—a subset of the IoT landscape—are already playing a part in your daily life. From the delivery of water and electricity, to manufacturing, to entertainment such as amusement park rides, IIoT devices are part of more industries than not, and have been for some time. Gartner recently estimated that there were 4.8 billion IIoT assets in the world at the end of 2019, and expects that number will grow by 21 percent in 2020.

The biggest issue faced in many operational technology (OT) environments, which host IIoT assets, isn’t just this growth, but also dealing with older industrial control systems (ICS) that have sometimes been in operation as long as 30 years. Many of these assets have been connected to the network over the years, making them susceptible to attacks. These legacy devices were often deployed on flat networks, at a time when the need for security took a back seat to other priorities, such as high availability and performance.

The discovery of vulnerabilities in these systems doesn’t always mean that patches are, or even can be, rolled out to fix them. Patching many of these IIoT assets means taking them offline—something that’s not always an option with critical infrastructure or production lines that rely on high availability. So patches are often not applied, and vulnerabilities stack up as devices age, leaving attackers with a large swath of exploits to attempt in the pursuit of compromising IIoT assets.

And the number of vulnerabilities discovered in IIoT devices is growing, as is evident in research carried out by Cisco Talos’ Security Research Team, whose mission is to discover vulnerabilities before the bad guys do. During their look back at 2019, Talos pointed out that they published 87 advisories about vulnerabilities in IoT and ICS devices—by far the largest category for the year. In fact, there were 23 percent more advisories published in this space than there were for desktop operating systems, the second largest category, and historical mainstay targeted by attackers.

This isn’t all that surprising in a field that’s growing this fast. But it’s worth considering how adding new assets into a network, as well as securely maintaining the OT network where assets reside, presents new challenges and naturally increases the attack surface.

So, if you’re using IIoT assets in your business, what sorts of threats do you need to look out for? And how do you protect your devices?

Getting in

The good news is that most IIoT assets aren’t directly exposed to the internet, meaning attackers must rely on other methods to get to them. In essence, the same techniques used in other attacks are used to get to IIoT assets.

The most common vector for compromise—email—certainly applies here. An attacker can attempt to gather information about engineers, plant managers, and developers that have access to IIoT systems and specifically target them with phishing emails. Compromising a computer owned by any of these users can be the most direct path to compromising IIoT assets.

Unpatched systems, simple or default device passwords, and relaxed remote access policies for maintenance contractors all offer attackers avenues of approach. Weaknesses in any of these can provide ways for an attacker to move laterally and gain access.

The reality is that IIoT-specific threats are not that common of an occurrence. There are threats that have attacked general IoT devices en mass, such as Mirai and VPNFilter. And there are threats like Stuxnet, which specifically targeted PLCs. Of course such highly targeted threats are cause for concern. But it’s far more likely that an IIoT device will be compromised and reconfigured by an attacker than be compromised by a trojan or a worm.

Scorching the earth

Let’s say an attacker sets their sights on bringing a particular business to its knees. He or she begins by crafting an enticing phishing email with a malicious PDF and sends it to HR in the guise of a job application. The employee responsible for monitoring job enquiries opens the PDF, effectively compromising the computer.

The attacker works his or her way laterally through the network, monitoring network traffic and scanning compromised systems, looking for logins and authentication tokens. Without multi-factor authentication enabled for access, they encounter few issues in doing so. The attacker eventually manages to compromise a domain controller, where they deploy malware using a Group Policy Object (GPO), successfully compromising the entire IT network.

Due to poor segmentation, the attacker manages to eventually work his or her way to the OT network. Once in, the attacker performs reconnaissance, flagging the IIoT assets present. The attacker identifies vulnerable services in the assets, exploits them, and knocks them offline.

Production grinds to a halt and the business is effectively shut down.

Defense with an arm behind your back

So how do you defend your IIoT assets and the OT network as a whole against attacks, especially for high-availability assets that can’t readily be brought down to patch?

Network monitoring is often the most effective step you can take. However, it’s important to passively monitor the traffic when it comes to IIoT assets. Active monitoring, where traffic is generated and sent through the network specifically to observe its behavior, can result in an increased load on the network, causing disruptions to device performance and even causing them to fail. In contrast, passive scanning listens to the traffic, fingerprinting what it sees, rather than introducing new traffic into the OT environment.

Keeping a current inventory of assets on the network is also very important in protecting the IT and OT networks. Passive monitoring can help to identify assets on the network, including errant and rogue devices. With a comprehensive list of devices, you can create policies for asset groups.

It’s also very important to segment your networks. Having a complete asset inventory and policies in place will help when figuring out how to segment your IIoT assets and the OT network. While this may not prevent a determined attacker from crossing the boundaries between different areas of the network, it can slow them down, providing more time to respond in the case of an attack. Explore implementing zones and conduits as discussed in ISA99 and IEC 62443 within your organization.

However, it’s worth noting that many IIoT assets leverage broadcast and multicast network communications, where one or more devices will send traffic to all other devices on the network. This can pose a challenge when aggressively segmenting a network. To address this, having a complete inventory of assets on the network is important. Strong dataflow mapping is also helpful when it comes to knowing which assets are talking to each other and how they interact as a whole.

Patching IIoT assets as soon as possible after a vulnerability is discovered is highly recommended. But if it isn’t possible to take a device offline to patch, then visibility becomes critical. It’s important to know what assets you have and the network layout to identify what absolutely must be patched. It may also be worth exploring IIoT redundancy within your network, allowing you to take one device down while others pick up the load during maintenance cycles.

Being able to detect IIoT traffic anomalies is also very helpful. Look for behavior that falls outside of what is expected, such as two IIoT assets talking to each other that shouldn’t be, unplanned firmware updates, unexpected configuration changes, or other anomalies.

Finally, threat hunting is a great way to look for and weed out threats within your OT environment. Proactively looking for bad actors doing bad things, building playbooks, and automating them will go a long way to improve your security posture.

Easing the burden

Protecting IIoT assets is arguably one of the more difficult tasks in security. There are a wide variety of devices, many of which operate in a very tailored manner and don’t respond well to disruption that could be caused by many security processes and procedures.

Fortunately, there are a number of Cisco Security products that can help.

◉ Cisco Cyber Vision gives OT teams and network managers full visibility into their industrial assets and application flows. Embedded in Cisco industrial network equipment, it decodes industrial protocols to map your OT network and detect process anomalies or unwanted asset modifications.

◉ Identity Services Engine leverages the asset inventory built by Cisco Cyber Vision to create dynamic security groups and automatically enforce segmentation using TrustSec.

◉ ISA3000 is a ruggedized industrial firewall appliance you can deploy in harsh environments to enforce zone segmentation, detect intrusions, and stop network threats.

◉ Stealthwatch is a security analytics solution that uses a combination of behavioral modeling, machine learning, and global threat intelligence to detect advanced threats. Integrated with Cisco Cyber Vision, this visibility extends deep within the IIoT infrastructure.

◉ AMP for Endpoints can be used to protect engineering workstations within the OT environment.

◉ Duo’s multi-factor authentication can be used to prevent an attacker from gaining access to systems on the network as a they attempt to move laterally.

◉ Cisco Email Security can detect targeted phishing emails aimed at IIoT operators and others, preventing malicious payloads from reaching their intended target.

Ultimately, a layered approach will provide the best security. For instance, Cisco Cyber Vision can automate visibility of industrial devices and secure operational processes. Integrated with Cisco’s security portfolio, it provides context for profiling of industrial devices in Stealthwatch, and maps communication patterns to define and enforce policy using granular segmentation via with ISE.

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The Not-So-New Role of the Engineer in Complex Change: Master of Transitions

The Age of Intelligence is here, and Cisco is in the midst of a transition — again. This transition is driven primarily not by AI and machine learning, but by the voices of our customers and their need to consume technology in new ways and digitally transform their businesses. While Cisco established itself in 1984 in the midst of a technology revolution, the need to continue evolving hasn’t slowed one bit.

Challenges Everywhere

In the 1980s, Cisco’s key product was the AGS Multi-Protocol Router, and alone it could solve a host of customer challenges. Today, our efforts to solve those challenges and provide the type of experience they demand has given way to multi-vendor and cross-architectural (multi-domain) solutions. These solutions are comprised of dozens of products and architectures across an array of companies.

The cloud has not alleviated the situation, as was promised early on. In reality, cloud has created additional complexity. Most customers are not only growing their business on-premises but also contending with the requirements of a hybrid-cloud environment. Interoperability between technologies and vendors adds yet another layer of challenges to be solved.

Security is paramount as no part of a corporate infrastructure can be left unprotected. The proliferation of personal devices into corporate IT also presents a new set of challenges. The mobile nature of today’s workforce requires wireless/mobility services that not only connect seamlessly, but also demand the same speed and reliability of hardwired devices. As corporate infrastructures continue to expand, the ability to manage multiple converged technology stacks has created even more complexity in the data center. The collision between software developers and network administrators creates challenges on how each side can complement each other to provide the best possible business solution for a customer or employer.

Clearly these are busy times! The questions I often hear from customers, are “This is crazy! Who can I trust to work with and figure this out? Who will put my best interests first and help me start down a path leading to my ultimate success?”

To make it work, you need people who thrive on complexity, problem-solving and change: the engineer.

Your Trusted Advisor: Systems Engineer

There has never been a better time to be a systems engineer (SE). With continuous change, it’s a good thing engineers thrive on complexity, and are comfortable being uncomfortable. Also, it’s a great thing that engineers at Cisco and our partners think about change in the context of customers and their ultimate experience. In fact, we hear from our customers who consistently note the Cisco SE as the individual they have the highest level of trust in to help them navigate these challenging waters. When customers are surveyed, they reference phrases like “put their interests first,” “honest/forthcoming,” and “Trusted Advisor.” When I speak live with customers it’s much of the same.

At Cisco within the global SE community we use a slogan to describe who we are, which I think captures things perfectly: “Masters of Transition since 1984.” That transition is alive 35 years later, and our systems engineering community is applying its skills very much as it did in the 1980s.

Have You Met Your Field Engineer?

While much of helping customers harness technology, and how it applies to their business, falls to the SE ranks, another group is becoming as critical to Cisco as the success of our customers. Field engineers (FE) have the deepest level of knowledge within technology disciplines across multiple vendors, help customers extract the value of the technology they’ve purchased, and work directly with customers to help train their employees to incorporate technology into the fabric of their work. The FE is the truest practitioner of technology expertise that exists within our industry. In short, if the FE isn’t successful then neither is the customer, partner, or Cisco. When customers ask, “who will see this entire project through with me”? I have a simple reply, “have you met your field engineer?”

Ultimately responsible for ensuring the customer is able to not only fully extract the value of the technology purchased, the FE also assures that customers are comfortable integrating it into their existing or new business. The FE is truly where the rubber hits the road, so to speak in terms of customer receiving — and benefiting — from the technology they have acquired. With this responsibility it’s no wonder why Cisco is investing significantly in our reseller and partner FE community so that our customers are not just purchasing technology, they are activating, adopting and benefiting.

Driving Success Forward

Threats are everywhere. Outages can potentially cost millions of dollars. Change windows are harder to secure. Technology updates bombard organizations non-stop on a daily basis. Your engineering teams carry the full weight and burden of how business can (and should) realize the benefits of Cisco technology.

With complexity at its highest, pace of change at its quickest, and threats lurking around every corner, this is without a doubt a new Age of Intelligence, and engineers can lead the way forward.

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2020 is Calling: Cisco UCM Cloud Momentum and Benefits

In a brand-new year where the market will continue to see calling as a linchpin of and strategic differentiator for enterprise digital transformation, Cisco is taking a unique approach. While other collaboration vendors are pushing their customers to the cloud without a viable migration path, Cisco is continuing to invest in our on-premise architecture while migrating our market–leading solutions to the cloud.

Read More: 210-250: Understanding Cisco Cybersecurity Fundamentals (SECFND)

The good news for Cisco on-premises customers is that traveling the path to the cloud (or to a hybrid state) does not have to take too long or be too treacherous. Cisco Unified Communications Manager Cloud (UCM Cloud) is the quickest, most natural migration path to cloud calling for customers who are looking to:

◉ Minimize disruptions with familiar user experiences

◉ Enjoy the latest UCM features

◉ Re-use existing Cisco endpoints and infrastructure

◉ Continue with existing PSTN service agreements and gateways

◉ Simplify procurement with a Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan

◉ Take advantage of generous trade-in incentives and migration programs

The UCM Cloud team is excited to communicate that we have expanded our global footprint, and our European data centers are now live, and we are actively working onboarding partners in the region. That is why our presence this year at Cisco Live Barcelona will focus on continuing to drive momentum as we expand globally.

Global Cloud Calling Momentum

Since the August Launch of UCM Cloud, we have seen tremendous global momentum with the expansion of the UCM Cloud service to Webex data centers in North America and Europe, with Asia Pacific scheduled to come online in Q1 of this calendar year. Our customers across the world can now buy their chosen service in their contract country with localization options that match our on-premises UC Manager product. These localized options include support for phone and gateway tones in 82 countries and a self–care portal in 50 languages and clients in more than 30 languages simplifying the cloud migration process.

The Benefits of Cisco UCM Cloud Calling

A recent Gartner Unified Communications forecast suggests that by 2023 there will be 167 million cloud calling and collaboration users on the planet, nearly twice as many as there are today.1

Moving enterprise calling workloads to the cloud can be a daunting prospect for organizations where daily business relies on highly customized collaboration workflows. Over the last several months, our customers have told us they need a migration path to the cloud without disrupting their business–critical day-to-day activities. These customers need the same features, functionality, third-party integrations, and customizations they have been using for years, and the desire to continue to use their existing voice and video endpoints to extend their return on investment for these assets. 

The need for a highly customizable cloud calling platform to maintain functionality is one of many factors that is driving Cisco enterprise customers to our UCM Cloud calling solution.  Our enterprise customers are not alone in this request. Recent research done by MZA shows that a majority of organizations with more than 1,000 seats are interested in a private instance cloud calling solution.

The Advantages of Cisco UCM Cloud

Addressing the needs of our customers looking for a highly customizable calling platform was one of the primary drivers behind the development of UCM Cloud. The service offers the same familiar, award-winning Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) features and user experience providing an ideal migration path to the cloud for enterprise customers with on-premise UC Manager  deployments.

 With UCM Cloud You Get: 

◉ A dedicated calling application instance hosted and operated by Cisco in Cisco Webex Data Centers

◉ A customizable calling platform with all of your favorite Cisco UC Manager capabilities along with an API strategy that enables deep third-party application integrations

◉ A large-scale, flexible architecture that can adapt quickly to new growth requirements

◉ A robust, secure platform, with a FedRAMP authorized version, cloud-enabled Cisco Unified Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) features, e911 capabilities, and other key UC Manager enterprise security modalities embedded within the platform

◉ A familiar user experience that speeds migration to the cloud and bypasses the need for employee re-training

◉ A unified client for calling, messaging, meetings and team collaboration that is usable across all device types

◉ Compatibility with Cisco’s full portfolio of phones, gateways, and video devices

◉ Hybrid deployment capabilities as UCM Cloud represents the quickest path to the cloud for Cisco on-premise customers

How Cisco UCM Cloud and the Webex Single Platform Advantage Fit

UCM Cloud is a strategic component to the Webex Single Platform Advantage, helping provide Cisco customers with a cloud calling option that manages security and streamlines risk, improves scalability, and reduces costs—well–known challenges for today’s business and IT leaders. We have integrated UCM Cloud with the Webex Platform, connecting services and integrating experiences to deliver consistency regardless of which workload—calling, meetings, messaging, devices, or contact center—you use or where—desktop, mobile, or devices—you collaborate. Our single platform approach is grounded with a focus on enterprise–class security, IT control, and visibility, which helps our customers solve their digital transformation challenges.  

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Modeling an inclusive digital future

We live in a digital world. Digital technologies are advancing at a rapid pace, connecting people around the world and creating new and exciting opportunities. More than any time in human history, people have greater access to knowledge, services and resources as a result of technological advancements. The impact of automation, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is felt almost everywhere, in all countries, industries, and everyday life. However, while the impact of digitization is widespread, the benefits it yields are distributed unevenly. It is important to understand a country’s digital readiness to help create a more inclusive future for all, which is the objective of Cisco’s 2019 Global Digital Readiness Index.

To uncover key insights and build our understanding on what it means for a country to be digitally ready, a holistic model was created that includes components beyond technology, such as basic needs, human capital development, and the business and start-up environment. Although having access to technology and the infrastructure to support digital technologies is critical, if individuals’ basic needs are not met (e.g. access to clean drinking water or lack of education or job opportunities), a country cannot fully take advantage of digital opportunities. This holistic model allows for an understanding of a country’s level of digital readiness and what interventions and investments could help countries advance in their readiness.

In this second iteration of the study, it was found that globally, countries’ scores vary on digital readiness with three stages emerging: Activate, Accelerate, and Amplify. No country scored perfectly. For countries in the lower stage of digital readiness (Activate), a focus on basic needs and human capital development is especially important. As technology is consistently advancing, there is a continuous need for developing skilled talent with the most current employable skills for the job market and creating new digital innovations. In addition to these foundational interventions, countries in the middle stage of digital readiness (Accelerate) would also benefit from investing in enhancing the ease of doing business. The study revealed that, no matter the stage of digital readiness, human capital development is essential to build a workforce capable of utilizing and creating technology on a continuous basis.

At Cisco, we believe it is important to contribute research to help the continuing dialogue on technology’s future impact. We hope to serve as a catalyst for driving an inclusive digital economy. To do so, we conduct research to gain a better understanding of what it means to be digitally ready and what would be the most beneficial to help individuals and countries thrive in the digital world. We use these insights to ensure the relevance of our key Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) investments, such as our Cisco Networking Academy program, where over two million students worldwide gain foundational digital and entrepreneurial skills that improve their career prospects and help fill global demand for technology professionals.

To help take advantage of the opportunities technology can bring, we are working toward empowering global problem solvers – individuals who are innovators and entrepreneurs – who will be key to fueling an inclusive digital economy. Jobs of the future are not fully understood and will change constantly, but individuals who learn innovation and entrepreneurship skills using technology to solve problems will be prepared no matter what the future holds.

We can use research to design our programs and investments to develop and support global problem solvers who apply digital solutions to address social problems and foster economic development. We have a bold goal to positively impact 1 billion people by 2025 through digital solutions.

If we empower global problem solvers and prepare them with the right skills, we can help them participate in the global economy and create economic opportunity for all.

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