Cisco Live 2018 recap: A rookie’s perspective

Jun 21, 2018

2 minutes

Last week I had the pleasure of attending Cisco Live in Orlando with our fantastic IntelePeer team. For us, it gives us the opportunity to meet with our Cisco partners and customers and network with thought leaders we met in sessions and at our booth. For me, as a “Cisco Live rookie”, I was excited for the chance to hit the exhibit floor, attend the sessions, and be immersed in all things Cisco!

This year’s theme was “Imagine Intuitive,” a nod to the week’s focus on application development, programmability, analytics, and intent-based networking. In the opening keynote, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins emphasized the company’s shift from hardware to software-based solutions underlined by intent-based networking and the ability for partners to develop applications for their customers on top of Cisco’s network.

The Technology Keynote on the second day further elaborated on this with live demos of how Cisco’s intent-based networking is making it easier to not only monitor your network but have it proactively adjusted to your business needs and processes. Susie Wee, VP and CTO of DevNet at Cisco, told the audience “You are a developer! Yes, every single one of you” to further drive home the point that Cisco was making: anyone should be able to program and build on their open platform.

Cisco is also making the way people work and interact with each other more intuitive. For the workplace, it’s all about bringing Cisco and Broadsoft’s product portfolios together with offerings to fit any business size and stage of moving to cloud communications and layering additional functionality on top, such as mobility and AI. A few of the sessions I attended focused on how Cisco is transforming teamwork with what they call “cognitive collaboration.” An example of this is Webex Assistant, which uses machine learning to understand the intent of the user to carry out tasks rather than exact commands. For instance, you can say “let’s get started,” rather than “Webex, start meeting.”

The sessions were informative and engaging, and reinforced IntelePeer’s position and approach to the market: providing communications that our partners and customers can build on and use to improve processes and customer experience.

In our World of Solutions sessions presented by Pete Neal (Sr. Solutions Engineer) and at the IntelePeer booth, we explored these topics with partners, customers, and new friends that stopped by. We demonstrated our new offering, Atmosphere Messaging for Webex Teams, while sharing how we support hybrid deployments of Cisco products and pull in customer interaction analytics. Frisbees were tossed around as easily as ideas.

Cisco Live brought together a great mix of people and collaboration, and the Appreciation Event at Universal Studios was the perfect way to end the event.

Overall, my first Cisco Live exceeded my expectations and I’m already looking forward to next year in San Diego!

Knowledge is power.

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