Thursday, 20 June 2019

The Cisco Unified Communications Manager Evolution–Only the Fittest Will Survive

It took humans thousands of years to evolve. It took centuries to get from the Iron Age to the industrial and now the information age. Now every decade brings more innovation. So, what is the rush?

The world is changing exponentially everyday with innovation and change in every corner of the globe. Competition for your business has never been tougher or more dynamic. Change is now measured in single digit years and even in some cases months. The pace of change is staggering, often unseen until it is too late. The power of newer more agile business start-ups, with new business models using the latest technology are quicker to get to market. They are quicker to respond to demanding customer requirements and changing market conditions.

Anything that slows your business or your people down exposes you to unnecessary risk. It means you are running the gauntlet of survival of the fittest. If it is not today, it might be tomorrow that someone steals your customers if you are not evolving your business at pace.

Let’s take consumers and phones for example. We all do it; we upgrade to the latest phones for the best in cool new features and functionality. We want to be more connected and productive with our time, integrated into our groups of friends and contacts on a multitude of apps and channels. Do you remember when cameras on phones were a novelty? Now they are indispensable and integrated with apps and functions such as submitting your expense receipts. It has to be faster, smarter and more intuitive every time we upgrade.

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Tutorials and Materials, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning

However, it is not just about the cool features. If we do not upgrade our operating systems and applications, we run the risk of losing our privacy, getting hacked, scammed or defrauded by others. Therefore, we spend our time constantly upgrading just for security reasons alone. In today’s world, there are daily alerts and very compelling reasons to upgrade individual apps and platforms. We all recognize we cannot stand still in this ever-changing world. Finally, yet importantly, the upgrade process has to be made simple and easy. Otherwise as consumers we quickly loose interest and move on elsewhere.

Overcome the Inertia and Build for Success


So why is it then for some their Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) deployment has stood still? Are businesses sweating their assets? Is the upgrade too much of a forklift exercise? Is it too complex? Do businesses have resource constraints? Is it not part of the business strategic initiatives? Are you waiting to move to the cloud? Are the features and functions offered not compelling enough or explained sufficiently? Are people wary of change or having to learn new interfaces and processes? Are the perceived costs of change to great? Maybe simply, “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it”?

Whatever your reason for every argument that suggests you want to maintain the status quo, there are many compelling reasons to upgrade today. This especially true for your Cisco Unified Communications Manager deployment. It is time for you to break the inertia and plan your evolution. At Cisco we have built very compelling features and enhancements at every major and minor release from early 9.x versions to the very latest in capabilities in release 12.5.

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Tutorials and Materials, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning

We have continued to enhance the solution, guided by the following principles:

◈ Delivering new, improved user experiences
◈ Simplifying administration and lowering the cost of ownership
◈ Enhancing security and compliance
◈ Connecting on-premises with Webex cloud collaboration capabilities

We have clear roadmaps to for customers wishing to move to full collaboration in the cloud. At the same time, we realize that many can not move and wish to remain on-premises. Our Collaboration Flex Plan enables you to plan transitions at your own pace; adding cloud-connected services like WebEx Teams and Meetings and offering options for hybrid deployment models. We are innovating and leading the development of intelligent systems that make the collaboration experience cognitive. We also want you to be able to take advantage of those capabilities as quickly as you can.
Either way we want to help your modernization journey and over the next few months. During this time, we will be sharing more detail on some of those compelling reasons to upgrade your Unified CM estate. In this series of evolution blogs, we will provide some compelling reasons to upgrade your Unified CM estate. The first of these has to be how we address the complexity and pain of upgrading on-premises systems.

Reduce Upgrade Effort by 50% With “One-Touch” Upgrades


So, we hear you! Our customers have been asking Cisco to simplify the upgrade process. In Unified CM 12.5 we did exactly that. We introduced “one touch upgrade” capabilities that reduce downtime and simplify the number of tasks you need to perform. This lets you ensure your network is ready to upgrade by spotting common problems and possible glitches that could cause your upgrades to fail. We are reducing and simplifying the steps you need to make to accomplish your upgrade. We have also optimized the upgrade and database replication process itself so that it takes less time and can be accomplished prior to your maintenance window. Watch this short video now to understand how “one touch upgrades” will give you an effective journey to quicker adoption of new releases, faster than ever before.


Holding on to old and out dated versions and endpoints, means ultimately, you miss the latest cool features and benefits. It exposes you to potential security issues, and the reality is even with the long lifetimes we support that you cannot keep older technology forever. Eventually the software and hardware will expire, and older versions will have to go out of support as the markets and business requirements constantly evolve and develop.

There never been a more compelling time to get current and keep your business agile, responsive to market conditions and customer demands. By using the very latest in Unified Communications and collaboration, your staff can be more pro-active and agile at taking the fight to your competitors.

Wednesday, 19 June 2019

Relying on secure wireless in harsh environments

Cisco Certifications, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

We announced our next generation heavy duty industrial wireless platform, the IW6300. This Class 1, Div 2, IP67 rated intrinsically safe WiFi mesh access point capable of handling some of the most challenging working environments. These harsh operating environments are often found in open mine pits, refineries, paper & pulp manufacturing plants, oil platforms, factory floors, and chemical plants.

What’s new


Cisco Certifications, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials
Those familiar with Cisco’s industrial products will be quick to point out that the IW6300 isn’t our first wireless product to work in these harsh environments. In fact, our current HazLoc certified WiFi access points, the Cisco Aironet 1552 series, have been going strong for over eight years, including models that offer embedded industrial wireless protocol support from our industrial partners Emerson and Honeywell. The IW6300 builds upon the Cisco 1552 series capability of delivering rock-solid, secure WiFi connectivity to the harshest working environments by adding updated WiFi standards with improved throughput (802.11ac Wave 2), improved security (WPA3), better RF interference avoidance (Cisco CleanAir), reduced size & weight, improved temperature range, additional PoE options, future Cisco IOx edge compute support, and modular IoT expansion capability. This modular expansion capability is significant because it allows companies the flexibility of deploying WiFi coverage for connected worker solutions and later expand the solution to handle future IIoT connectivity modules, including the popular industrial wireless standards of ISA100 and WirelessHART, to support connected factory and connected plant solutions.

Connecting the unconnected


Reliable and secure WiFi has become the new normal in the carpeted office spaces, allowing office workers access to the corporate network and SaaS applications anywhere they go in the corporate offices, however, the non-carpeted spaces of factories, plants, mines and production facilities have remained widely unconnected, limiting the productivity improvements that connected workers are capable of delivering. The Cisco IW6300 heavy duty series access point will allow companies to deploy pervasive high-speed secure WiFi mesh connectivity to the non-carpeted spaces for both IT and OT connected worker applications with the flexibility to add industrial wireless support through an optional IoT add-on module. The ability for this platform leverage WiFi mesh, connecting remote mesh access points to the network without wires through the root access points, lowers the cost while improving the deployment time in areas with harsh environmental conditionals.

Simplify with new capabilities


While many industrial wireless protocols are capable of forming their own industrial wireless mesh, the ability to leverage a WiFi mesh network to backhaul sensor traffic just makes everything easier. By adding an Industrial IoT module to the IW6300, the industrial protocols see fewer “hops” in the industrial wireless network, have higher backhaul throughput, and all of the benefits of having the 802.15.4 IoT wireless gateways directly connected to the Ethernet network, without the cost of physically connecting them to the wired network. Another major advantage of leveraging the Cisco IW6300 to backhaul field device sensor traffic via the IoT expansion module is our ability to separate the IT traffic from the OT traffic. Many industrial and manufacturing companies follow industrial automation and control systems best practices for security, like those found in ISA99 and IEC62443, that segment ICS traffic from IT and end-user traffic. With an add on IoT module for the IW6300, we’re able to support these standards and keep WiFi user traffic segmented from IoT wireless sensor traffic.

Digital transformation is a journey and the Cisco IW6300 is the next generation industrial wireless platform to enable wireless connectivity in some of the most difficult to reach areas. I’m excited to see what kind of worker productivity, operational efficiency and improved safety outcomes our partners like Honeywell will be able to help our joint customers achieve through this next generation industrial wireless solution.

Tuesday, 18 June 2019

Cisco Vision Brings Data to Life at the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach

There is truly nothing more special than the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. The storied history; the incredible views; the atmosphere unlike any other. As the best golfers in the world face golf’s ultimate test, Cisco is delivering advanced data and analytics straight from the practice range all championship long.

As the Official Technology Partner of the United States Golf Association (USGA) and its championships, Cisco is not only providing a first-of-its-kind course-wide Wi-Fi network, but we’re also deploying Cisco Vision – our dynamic content delivery system – in strategic locations around the course, from the Media Center to Fan Central to Cisco’s hospitality spaces, and most visibly on a large video screen on the practice range.

All week long, as players practice and finetune their games, Cisco Vision is displaying a variety of advanced statistics and data in real-time in collaboration with Toptracer, a third-party software provider. Toptracer’s technology tracks the flight of every golf ball hit on the practice range this week in a camera feed, analyzes key data points such as distance, apex, ball speed and more, and feeds it into Cisco Vision to be displayed to fans on-site at the range and those watching at home.

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Learning, Cisco Guides, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Learning, Cisco Guides, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

Over the course of the week, more than 50,000 shots will come to life on the big screen, capturing all the moments that the fans – and the players – want to see. Whether it is a booming 280 yard drive from two-time defending champion Brooks Koepka, or precision work from 2011 U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy, the players are just as engaged with the data as the fans, knowing that at the U.S. Open, the slightest edge can make all the difference.

And this is just the beginning. As part of our ongoing partnership with the USGA, we will continue to explore ways that data, analytics and technology can provide meaningful insights to allow players to advance their game, whether they are on the grandest of stages such as the U.S. Open, or at home on a local course.

Monday, 17 June 2019

Bringing Reality to the Cognitive Contact Center

Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Analytics, and Collaboration Create Cognitive Experiences in the Contact Center


Every interaction between your contact center agents and your customers is a reflection of your brand – positive, negative, or neutral. According to a study by PwC, in the U.S. one bad experience alone will drive 32% of your customers away – even if they love your brand. That figure increases in Latin America to 49%.

Cisco Certifications, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

We all want our customers to love our brand. So how do we avoid those bad experiences? How do we establish customer relationships and then grow and nurture them to make the next situation a better one – a more proactive, thoughtful, intelligent, and authentic one.

Our answer is by creating cognitive customer and agent experiences. This week at Cisco Live, my team and I will be spending time with our customers and partners demonstrating our solutions, discussing our vision, and sharing our ideas on what it means to have a cognitive and collaborative contact center.

Making it Cognitive


Cognition is what allows us to function as humans. Through cognition we’re able to better understand each other along with all the complexities of communication, evaluate and make judgments, reason our way through problems, and formulate appreciation. Our vision at Cisco is to change the world’s customer and agent experiences – and bringing cognition to those experiences is one of the best ways in which we can help you do that.

Empowering Your Agents


Three weeks ago I shared my view on the myths surrounding artificial intelligence’s role in the contact center. One misconception about AI is that it will replace people or eliminate jobs altogether. AI will likely have a greater role in augmenting, vs. replacing live agent assistance.

Your agents are the front line of your business and their daily interactions with your customers are essential to building meaningful and healthy long-term relationships. As with any relationship, your agents must demonstrate interest, understanding and empathy every time they interact with customers. They’re under pressure to turn potentially bad customer experiences into great ones. So investing in your agents makes good business sense. Companies are spending 1 trillion dollars worldwide a year, trying to understand and shape the journeys of their customers. However, what’s astounding is that companies spend 1000 times less on understanding their employees. Enabling artificial intelligence to work hand-in-hand with your agents is the best combination to helping them succeed.

Cisco Certifications, Cisco Guides, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

Let’s take a look at a medical insurance company. Customers interact mostly through the company’s web portal. When the customer engages via chat, the chat interaction is handled by a Bot which is used to provide self-service and qualify the request. When the Bot recognizes a word or phrase indicating the need for a human agent, the Bot escalates the chat to a team of agents in a team collaboration workspace. The first agent to respond “yes” gets connected to the customer chat by the Bot. The agents don’t have any medical experience; they’re not doctors. But they have enough training and skill to handle first line questions. During the chat, AI is listening, and automatically displaying for the agent relevant articles and other pertinent information such as medical term definitions in real-time. However, during the chat, the agent needs expert advice from a medical professional. Without leaving their agent experience, the agent can easily find and reach a trained professional and collaborate about the customer request, while still chatting with the customer. The agent is able to answer the customer’s question on the first contact, and the customer leaves delighted from their experience.

This is a perfect example of agent augmentation – not replacement. Background intelligence is working hand-in-hand to augment the agent’s ability to serve their customer well. The Bot offloaded the initial simple task from the agent. Then the agent received AI assistance and human assistance in order to complete the engagement with the customer.

This powerful combination of AI, APIs, data analytics, contact center, and collaboration technology is the unique value Cisco brings to our customers.

A Compelling Portfolio


One more thing. I’m excited to announce that we’ll be joining the industry-recognized Webex family by renaming our cloud-based Customer Journey Platform solution to Webex Contact Center. Webex is our native cloud collaboration brand worldwide known for its reliability, scalability, security, and innovation – exactly the characteristics of our Webex Contact Center solution. This unique portfolio provides our customers a complete unified collaboration suite with calling, messaging, meetings, team collaboration, devices, and now contact center.

Sunday, 16 June 2019

Cisco Webex – Building and Maintaining Trust with Collaboration Administrators

Collaboration Administrators have an unenviable job. Not only do they have to cater to demanding end users who want the best experience, they also have to deal with other functions in a typical IT organization – such as – legal, security and compliance. Often, requirements from those functions are at odds with providing the best user experience. Making these trade-offs is very hard. Our goal is to make sure collaboration administrators do not have to make those trade-offs.

What makes Collaboration SaaS trustworthy


For a Collaboration SaaS platform to garner trust – it needs to be reliable, high performing, secure and compliant with laws and regulations. Further, the platform must provide simple and efficient administration, rich business insight and powerful troubleshooting tools. Administrators need to consider what the tools are being used for and how they can use it securely and within boundaries.

Why Admins Trust Webex


Reliability and Performance

At the core of trust is reliability and performance. Collaboration services are the lifeline of organizations. When these services are not available – work stops! And even when these services are available, if the quality of audio and video experience is poor, it hurts user productivity. At Webex – we understand that. Providing a highly reliable service with high quality is and will continue to be the highest priority. We make sure to make reliability and performance a focus and its no wonder why Webex products are the best choice for online collaboration. Stay tuned for more details in the upcoming blog series.

Security and Compliance

Collaboration services are used for sensitive communications – whether via Messaging or Meetings or Calling. Webex has industry-leading security features to provide IT admins peace of mind in protecting Enterprise data and best end-user experience to drive adoption and productivity.

Keeping customer data safe and confidential even while it’s in our cloud in a top priority. In order to deliver on this promise to customers, Webex Teams is the only cloud service that offers end to end encryption (using a customer-owned) key with the option for enterprises to manage their own keys on their own premises. Teams end to end encryption is not just encryption in transit or at rest but keeps data encrypted even in-use e.g. when users search for content. Every message that is sent is encrypted on the client so that any intermediary or even Webex cloud engineers cannot see clear customer content. This is delivered without compromising end user experience while also giving legal and compliance teams eDiscovery and Legal Hold capabilities.

Security You Can Trust

Cisco Webex, Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Guides, Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Learning
Cisco Webex – Building and Maintaining Trust with Collaboration Administrators
Webex Meetings also has industry leading security features as detailed here. What is important to note —Webex Meetings encrypts media by default —unlike some of our competitors. With other features such as SAML 2.0 Single Sign-On support, broad support for all Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), Role Based Access Control, Admin audit logs to mention a few —Cisco Webex has the most well-rounded compliance features.

Compliance Certifications

Cisco Webex has wide ranging compliance certifications from SOC-1, SOC-2 Type 2, SOC-3, ISO 27001/27017, ISO 9001 and Cloud Computing Compliance Control Catalog (C5). Webex also complies with GDPR and various cross border privacy standards such as EU-US, Swiss-US and APEC. For Healthcare – Webex will participate in HIPAA compliance through a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

Analytics and Diagnostics

One of the key functions of administrators is to ensure that they are getting their money’s worth with wide adoption and engagement across their user base. To do that, measuring service adoption and resource utilization with historical trending as well as ability to drill in to specific areas is necessary. Webex Analytics allow administrator to do exactly that. With rich trending, drill-in, drill-out, drill-down and filtering capabilities, administrators can zero in on specific issues that are potentially hindering adoption of Teams, Meetings or proper usage of Webex Devices.

Cisco Webex, Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Guides, Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Learning

When users experience quality or performance issues – administrators need a quick way to diagnose problems so they can easily address issues within their control. Providing near-real time meeting diagnostics with insight into environmental factors and rich quality of service metrics over time is key for administrators to self-diagnose problems. In the past few months, Webex has provided several key features – such as per meeting per participant quality metrics. Webex is doubling down on enhancing these capabilities by adding additional metrics in the next few months.

Ease of Administration

Today’s administrators demand consumer grade ease of use and mature APIs. Webex Control Hub is the single place for administrators to go to for administering their products. If you have been using Webex Site Admin – you can link your site to Control Hub to start using it. Another great benefit of site linking is to use Webex Common Identity platform – which is the single place to manage all identities.

Webex also provides a fantastic developer ecosystem with APIs for administrators to integrate Webex to their tools. For example, the Events APIs can be used by Compliance teams to not only integrate with their choice of CASBs but also to provide additional insights to ensure full compliance with laws and regulations.

Trusted Collaboration Service

Building and maintaining trust with administrators without compromising end user experience is a key focus area for Cisco Webex. If you are a collaboration administrator for any enterprise – large or small – our goal is to provide you with a service you can trust.

Saturday, 15 June 2019

Beyond Segmentation: A Practical Approach to Securing OT Systems

As an oil and gas operator, you function in a target-rich environment for cyberattack. But are your fears over unseen threats preventing you from leveraging the full power of Digital and the Internet of Things (IoT) in your facility? Or hampering your development of a sound security strategy?

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Exam, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

It’s true that cyberattacks against energy infrastructure are becoming more common. And at the same time, attackers are evolving their strategies to cause more damage. But the cost to the energy sector is also evolving.

No longer is it just limited to production being taken offline. We are now finding that cyberthreats can impact other areas important to your operations, including the health and safety of your employees and intellectual property theft.  And as IoT based systems and devices increase, the issue will increase in complexity. Plus, add in the costs to fix it all (and any fines involved from failing compliance), and the damage to your reputation could be severe.

Moving beyond segmentation


The cyber threats facing operational environments are evolving faster than ever before, and a security strategy that depends solely on segmentation can’t defend against things like malware and advanced persistent threats (APT).  Your strategy must include cyber security capabilities beyond just segmentation in order to keep up with cyber adversaries.

That’s why it’s critical for energy leaders like yourself to implement a rock-solid strategy that addresses the industrial control systems (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems found in your OT networks. But be sure it is one based on end-to-end protection that empowers tools for rapid incident response, plus these two key capabilities:

■ Enabling deeper visibility into operations.
■ Securing touchpoints at points of ICS/SCADA interaction.

You’ll also need to make sure that your OT security strategy aligns with any industry standards (like IEC 62443 and NIST 800-82). Oh, and remember to do it all in a way that will help your eventual OT shift to the cloud.

I imagine you’re thinking that all sounds like a tall order. Well, you’re right. Developing a sound OT security strategy isn’t easy for any industry, especially energy. But, in a strange way, that’s where the easy part starts: partnering with an industry leader. This does a few things for your organization. First, it takes a lot of the stress off. Secondly, it empowers innovative solutions and support. Both are critical if you are short of staff or expertise and can serve as rocket fuel for your security strategy.

Deeper visibility for OT cybersecurity compliance


At Cisco, we start by enabling deeper visibility and better detection of anomalies. Just as in everyday life, the greater your awareness, the more information you have; and the better your decisions and outcomes are.

Cisco Study Materials, Cisco Exam, Cisco Learning, Cisco Tutorials and Materials

It’s the same in cybersecurity. That’s why enabling deeper visibility into your ICS and SCADA networks is so critical. This is the starting point that can give your team the data they need to create a baseline of operations including OT devices, applications, users, and associated traffic flows. It enables faster identification of suspicious behavior and can be done using:

■ Cisco Firepower® Threat Defense (NGFW)
■ Cisco 3000 Series Industrial Security Appliances (ISA)
■ Cisco Stealthwatch® analytics
■ Industrial Ethernet (IE) switches with NetFlow
■ Deep packet inspection for Modbus, Ethernet/IP, and DNP3.


Secure touchpoints for better OT security management


We then move on to the second critical step in developing a sound OT security strategy: protecting vulnerable touchpoints. Specifically, those where people and their devices interact with your ICS/SCADA systems. This helps reduce cyberthreats that can enter your network from online malware, email or USB devices. Plus, it can improve your time to detect (TTD) and your time to respond (TTR), working as a beachhead against an attacker by reducing their time in the system to do damage.

Threats emerging via endpoints can be reduced using advanced malware detection and prevention. That’s why we developed:

■ Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) for Endpoints and AMP for Networks
■ Cisco Talos™ global threat intelligence.


Wrapping it up


As your OT cybersecurity strategy unfolds, making sure it aligns with industry standards is also easier with the help of a partner like Cisco. Since we deal with such issues on a regular basis, we’re very familiar with industry compliance issues, giving that due consideration in our solutions. And as software for OEM, third-party data analytics and machine maintenance move to the cloud, having an industry-leading partner can help your team be ready as well via tools like Cisco Umbrella™, Cisco Cloudlock™ and Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud.

By partnering with Cisco, energy producers around the world are already enjoying this level of end-to-end cybersecurity as part of their OT security strategy and protecting their critical industrial systems. Now it’s your turn. If you happen to be at Cisco Live in San Diego the week of June 10th we welcome you to stop by our Oil and Gas area in the Industrial Showcase and let us know your thoughts on securing your OT environment.

Friday, 14 June 2019

MCE: Enabling Customer Success in an Increasingly Connected World

Organizations need to be agile, flexible, and visionary. Now with My Cisco Entitlements (MCE), you have a platform that can help you achieve this.

I am proud to share Cisco’s official introduction of My Cisco Entitlements (MCE) for our customers and partners. MCE is a comprehensive lifecycle management platform that is robust, unified, and secure. Based on Smart Accounts and ISO Compliant Application Programming Interfaces, MCE provides customers and partners the flexibility to self-manage all Cisco IT purchases. We anticipate that MCE will rapidly lead the way in how our customers and partners manage their post-sale Cisco IT assets and entitlements.

Helps Organizations Maximize their ROI and Minimize Risk


This innovative new platform empowers organizations to maximize their return on investment, reduce risk and protect investments. It provides real-time insights into all Cisco services, subscriptions, licenses, and devices throughout their lifecycle. With a comprehensive view, IT and network administrators have the visibility and control they need to make well-informed, cost-effective,­ and compliant decisions.

IT Teams Drive Improved Business Operations


By generating MCE’s dynamic analysis and reports, IT teams have access to valuable information to drive improved business operations. For example, the last day of support (LDoS), renewals, and subscriptions are effortlessly identified by using sort and filter features.  As a result, cost is optimized and risk is reduced as they proactively plan usage and renewal of products and services.

Customers Manage Investments With Cisco More Effectively


Customers can also maximize the return on their investment by leveraging products and services usage insights. This customer-based platform simplifies how end customers manage their investments with Cisco effectively. In the future, Cisco partners can build and monetize asset and entitlement management practices for their customer base.

Taking Smart Accounts to the Next Level – One Unified Platform


As you may recall, Cisco introduced Smart Licensing and Smart Accounts to simplify and streamline software purchases, transfers, and activations for our customers. Built on the foundation of Smart Accounts, MCE takes this same concept to the next level with the integration and management of all licenses, devices, services, and subscriptions on one unified platform. MCE offers customers crucial insight into what they own and how to manage their assets even more effectively. Even better, it provides secure and consolidated user access.

The unified platform has been in pilot for the last five months, with more than 400 customers participating in beta testing. Since we began the pilot program in February, based on customers’ feedback, we’ve been able to uplevel MCE’s capabilities to better serve end users needs. Now, MCE is available to anyone who signs-up via this survey and has a Smart Account with Cisco.

Customer feedback from our pilot users has been incredibly positive. The most common feedback is that they love the one-view dashboard, sort, and filter features, and how key information, such as the last day of support and service coverage, is consolidated into one view. MCE simplifies the way information is managed.

We continue to integrate future release features and capabilities to enable our customers to be successful in an increasingly connected world – with security as a top priority. We can expect the increased use of telemetry in the coming year will provide proactive device health information and drive automation to workflows as needed to avoid delay and overhead.


My Cisco Entitlements connects your Smart Account, licensing, asset management, entitlement management and services to drive your digital business. As customers continue to find new ways to maximize ROI, reduce risk, and protect investments, MCE is poised to lead the way in the digital transformation era.

In the coming years, it’s imperative that every leader in every industry and organization is lock-step with the quickly shifting landscape of technologies to be competitive, increase revenue streams, and meet the needs of their customers. MCE is our solution to help meet these needs as technologies become even more and more complex. This solution offers our customers and partners a new way to protect their valued investments and minimize risk.