How Cisco Products are Shaping the Future of Technology – the Internet of Everything
With 30 years of experience in manufacturing, provisioning, and inventing networking equipment, Cisco today is building the future of technology ecosystem – the Internet of Everything. In my view, the company’s website portrays two indispensable aspects of a winning business model: intelligent product engineering and strategic marketing structure. These are what make Cisco the leader in enterprise networking and telecommunication equipment manufacturing in the world.
Cisco’s diverse range of products, services and programs are fragmented into three major architectures: Collaboration, Data Center and Virtualization, and Enterprise Networks. Its portfolio is designed to cater the needs of enterprise and service providers, midsize businesses, and small businesses.
Cisco’s enterprise network products include switches, routers, wireless, security, WAN optimization, and cloud and systems management. Cisco’s networking software which includes IOS, XE, XR and NX-OS are based on four core technologies: IPv6, onePK (One Platform Kit), Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) and Cisco Modeling Labs.
In a report entitled Enterprise Networking and Communication Scorecard published by Infonetics Research on July 2014, Cisco got perfect scores on 6 out of 7 criteria - market share, market share momentum, financials, solution breadth, technology innovation, product reliability and service and support. This helped the company retains its market leadership over a hundred plus competitors globally. 2014 was the second strongest year in the history of Cisco with revenue of $47.1 billion ($24.2 billion in 2013).
Cisco has a very broad vision in building the future of technology across all industries in all cities, states and countries. The company’s strategic business direction is heading towards cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Mobility, and Software Defined Networking (SDN). Here’s how Cisco is building its foundation on these promising trends in technology.
Cloud
Cisco’s cloud strategy is to connect private, public, and hybrid clouds into an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" – the “Intercloud”. To achieve this, Cisco is guided by the “Cisco Global Cloud Index” - a forecast methodology based on the growth of global data center and cloud-based IP traffic. According to Cisco:
Annual global data center IP traffic will reach 8.6 zettabytes [ZB] (715 exabytes [EB] per month) by the end of 2018…
Annual global cloud IP traffic will reach 6.5 zettabytes (541 exabytes [EB] per month) by the end of 2018…
With UCS Integrated Infrastructure, Cisco and its application partners are ready to build the next private clouds. With Cisco Intercloud Fabric, Cisco is already building more hybrid clouds.
Internet of Things (IoT)
Cisco has a wide-ranging IoT services portfolio. Some of its services include Business Transformation, Solution Design, Cisco SMARTnet, and IoT-as-a-Service. With its bold mission to connect people and things, the company is well-prepared in building robust and secure network infrastructure that are powered by advanced analytics, cloud computing, smart devices and intelligent applications.
In delivering its IoT products and services, Cisco is guided by their so-called “Internet of Everything Value Index”. Here’s how Cisco defines it:
This index enabled Cisco to measure the actual value realized (VR) by companies in 2013 as a share of the potential value at stake (VAS) available…
…the IoE Value Index shed light on executive sentiments about the trends, drivers, benefits and challenges inherent in their efforts to realize the maximum value of the IoE.
Mobility
Cisco’s goal of empowering organizations with mobility centers on these three key business insights: more productive employees, more engaged customers, and more connected apps. In order to fulfill this goal, Cisco offers its Enterprise Mobility Solutions consisting of BYOD Smart Solution, Mobile Collaboration, Desktop Virtualization, Connected Mobile Experience and Enterprise Mobility Services Platform.
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
For organizations that are ready to embrace the SDN approach in networking, they can have these benefits: 1) faster application deployment and delivery of business services towards end users and 2) automated provisioning and configuration of network infrastructure. Cisco is ready to provide two SDN solutions for these benefits to be realized by its client organizations. These are the Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Cisco Evolved Services Platform.
Cisco’s determination in shaping the future of technology can be summarized in this portion of letter to shareholders dated September 9, 2014 by its CEO & Chairman John T. Chambers.
In our view, the innovations that we have driven in fiscal 2014 in our business model as well as our portfolio – including new high-end switching and routing products along with developments in wireless, security, and collaboration – position us strongly in the future.
For more information about Cisco’s networking products, you may visit this link: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/enterprise-networks/product-listing.html
