The associated data influx of additional IoT devices could lead to network congestion and slow response times, affecting the performance and reliability of both the network and the IoT devices it supports. Moreover, IoT devices can be susceptible to cyberattacks. Is your network infrastructure ready to handle the expected IoT growth?

Imagine investing in interactive whiteboards to enhance employee collaborations, only to experience network congestion causing delays in sharing and saving content. This would lead to frustrated employees and upset clients.

Realizing IoT investment starts with a secure backbone

We recently expanded our Cisco Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio with 15 new models designed to meet your most demanding use cases. It enables you to deliver a flexible and secure end-to-end network at scale while managing it with ease and confidence. Here are some features designed to unlock new use cases while lowering deployment and operational costs:

• Secure networking across sites: extension of Adaptive Policy across all new platforms and capable of up to 1T physical stacking and stacking flexibility across models.
• Smart, sustainable spaces: 90W Universal Power Over Ethernet (UPOE+), 1,900W power supply option, and StackPower.
• Digital experiences and assurance: high-density mGig and fiber options and 25G/100G uplinks.

For more detailed information, please refer to the datasheet. Tune in to our latest Cisco Champion Radio episode and learn how these latest Catalyst 9300-M switches can help our customers solve the most challenging IT and security needs at scale.

Power more distributed, smarter, and sustainable spaces with UPOE+

The expansive corporate campuses of yesterday have given way to a new age of decentralized offices and hybrid work structures. A recent Cisco survey underlines this change, showing that 98% of meetings now involve at least one remote participant.

The new Catalyst 9300X-M 90W UPOE+ switching powerhouses can connect more power-hungry PoE devices securely to ensure application operations and frictionless user experiences, such as smart lighting systems, conferencing system, and smart cameras. The best part? All your Meraki devices across distributed locations can be managed centrally on the Meraki dashboard, unlocking dynamic topology and rich telemetry, enabling your team with a deeper understanding and control of the entire network for faster mean time to resolution and effective security management.

When converging network and power management, it reduces deployment and simplifies ongoing operations. PoE management on Meraki dashboard can also help you achieve sustainability goals.

For example, the Wrexham County Borough Council in the United Kingdom used Meraki sensors and Cisco Meraki switch port schedules to reimagine its IT infrastructure to reduce cost and carbon emissions across 70 schools. The council has been able to make significant energy savings of 10 metric tons of carbon and roughly $28,000 in electricity savings per year across its 70 schools.

Connect everyone and everything securely with streamlined security

The traditional VLAN-based security policy approach is insufficient, introducing skill gaps and challenges for your IT and security teams to maintain.

Adaptive Policy enables secure access to network resources by dynamically segmenting the network based on user identity and context. This approach reduces SecOps efforts and costs by eliminating the need for manual management of thousands of access control lists (ACLs) and re-architecting the network infrastructure when deploying policy changes.

It strengthens security by automatically applying appropriate policies to the correct users and devices. Back to the earlier example, it will ensure employees can access the interactive whiteboard without delays, while unauthorized devices such as smart cameras will not have access to business applications.

Simplify network operations with an agile, flexible platform

In a distributed IT landscape, Cisco Meraki provides a centralized end-to-end management experience, from wired and wireless, to security, to IoT. This comprehensive approach helps your team deliver secure network management at scale without a steep learning curve. Your network team can make configuration changes in one place and push to selected locations, eliminating manual processes and potential human errors.

Real-time application visibility and rich telemetry provide your network teams with proactive insights to optimize the network, ensuring a seamless employee experience. Furthermore, firmware updates are made effortless with Meraki. Simply schedule and stage them from the cloud, improving productivity for your team.

Resilient, secure networks start here

The Catalyst 9300-M switching portfolio, along with the scalable Adaptive Policy, can help you navigate this new influx of data and network requirements. For more information, please explore our page or contact our sales team.

The post Is Your Network Infrastructure Ready for More IoT Devices? appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

In this five-part conversation, Forbes and Cisco Meraki examine the tremendous value of a cloud-first approach and discuss how and why cloud-managed platforms have the power to transform and modernize organizations faster than ever before.

Rich Karlgaard, Global Futurist and Editor-At-Large, Forbes, interviews Lawrence Huang, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Meraki and Wireless

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

How Cisco Networking is simplifying IT

Rich Karlgaard:

Cisco announced a Networking Cloud vision at Cisco Live, your big conference in Las Vegas. Can you tell me a little bit about it and how it differentiates itself from other solutions in the marketplace?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah absolutely. The way I would articulate it, it is a response to what our customers want. The feedback that they’re looking for from Cisco is, how do you actually build things in such a way that your technology, applications, networks, and solutions work cohesively together as one? And really, a big part of what we’re delivering with Cisco Networking Cloud is a massive simplification and unification of the experience.

When you think about the rich portfolio that Cisco has, we have an opportunity to stitch together these different components in a way that we haven’t done in the past. That way, we can drive more consistent automation, we can drive more consistent analytics, and help our customers diagnose issues faster so that it doesn’t feel like you’re logging into many different solutions from one company.

Yes, cloud is the norm these days, but the power of what we have is the level of depth of our data—the number of customers, the number of networks, the quality of the data that we have to drive better insights, better analytics, and better intelligence.

The other piece to it is that we’re able to have partners build on top of our platform so they can extend the capabilities to solve bespoke use cases that may make sense for a given customer, but not broadly.

And then last but not least, it’s fair to acknowledge that Cisco, as a company with #1 market share in many of our markets, serves a breadth of customers, from on-premises to cloud to hybrid. If you think about what we announced, we said very clearly that our goal is to help our customers with the Cisco Networking Cloud—whether you’re fully on premises, you’re hybrid, or you’re fully cloud first—to be able to benefit from the simplification—this unification of our platform.

The power of a simplified platform experience

Skip to video at 2:23 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Not only is the IT infrastructure often for a hybrid company, we’ve got a mix of on-premises, a mix of cloud, and now the workplace itself is evolving into hybrid. COVID hit us like a lead anvil falling on us in the spring of 2020, and new companies have emerged. It just seems, you used the word “bespoke,” that almost every company and every industry is figuring out what the future of the workplace is going to look like.

Is it going to be back to work, is it going to be staying at home? Is it going to be a hybrid of some kind? How many days in the office? How many days not?

How on earth do you deal with customers coming and telling you these infinite varieties of workplace solutions that they’re working through right now?

Lawrence Huang:

First and foremost, hybrid work is something that every company, to your point, is figuring out. But I think it’s fair to acknowledge that what it was pre-COVID is not going to be the same going forward. Even with the changes in the macroeconomic conditions out there, where you do see some employers trying to pull back people to the office, they are voting with their feet.

The reality is that users of these office spaces, whether it is actually traditional office space or the office of one at home or something in between—what they’re demanding is a better experience bar none. So what IT infrastructure teams need to be able to deliver is a better experience at scale—at global scale.

Oftentimes what this means for them is that security is going to be front and center.

It’s going to be something where it’s not just a centralized architecture. It has to be something that they have to think very judiciously about, no matter where the end points, where the people, where the devices are that need to access the applications. A big part of what these owners of this infrastructure need to be able to do is do this in a way that makes sense—in a way that is simple for them to manage at scale.

What we’re asking here is what Cisco Networking Cloud is centered around: How do we unify the experience? How do we do things like provide single sign-on across our different platforms so that when you bring these different technology components to support hybrid work, you can do so in a way that makes sense where you’re not logging into different systems; that you can understand the policies end-to-end and see where there may be security risks more readily than if it was just bespoke solutions tied together.

Cloud-activated resilience is a business differentiator

Skip to video at 4:58 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Coming back to this idea of resilience, in April we had a Forbes CIO conference called the CIO’s Architects of Resilience, and the idea is that the world is moving beyond the pandemic—it is a different world. We’re not returning to the pre-pandemic world. We’re returning to a world where you need more than one supply chain. You need multiple options for your supply chains. There are more geopolitical risks, there are more monetary and inflation risks, and so the idea of resilience is that you’ve got to be able to create plans to deal with all of those contingencies without making yourself stiff and bureaucratic.

How do you think about resilience, what do your customers ask you about resilience, and what do you think contributes to resilience that works for Cisco Meraki customers?

Lawrence Huang:

Yeah, with your examples, especially over the past few years with the headwinds in supply chain or the changing dynamics with business conditions, resilience is a topic that is front and center with many of our customers. The best ones [customers] can treat resilience as a business differentiator if they’re able to do this well.

Oftentimes, when I think about conversations I have with our customers, they think of resilience as “how do I be more nimble and agile?” Whether it’s supply chain diversification or how do I shift my cloud workflows in a way that I’m leveraging more than one cloud provider?

But from an infrastructure perspective, there’s this concept of simplicity that we talk about a lot here at Cisco Meraki. Simplicity with our platform can be a core way to enable resiliency.

What we’re seeing here is, across the board, the way the infrastructures are being built and managed—it’s very different than it was in years past. Oftentimes what we see is that you have to be able to support employees no matter where they’re working. Whether it’s in the traditional office environment, whether it’s in the home, or somewhere in between.

It’s about simplicity of the experience. Imagine infrastructure at scale where you can actually deploy security policies end-to-end, and where you have visibility end-to-end—that is something that provides a foundation where you can then start adapting to changes in your business condition. This idea of a platform means that as your business needs respond, you can build on top of the platform to solve unique use cases for your business to provide greater resiliency.

From a people and team perspective, I believe that its also important to invest in the culture and the people. This is for many people a little more touchy feely, but i think its an important leg of the stool for how you build a resilient organization.

AI/ML and predictive automation: business development accelerants

Skip to video at 7:51 min

Rich Karlgaard:

Let’s talk about this new onrush of AI. AI’s concept has been around 50 or 60 years, and there have been false dawns of AI, but this dawn looks real for sure. Internet analyst Mary Meeker told me at a conference a couple of months ago she’s never seen anything come on as fast and scale as rapidly as ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI. And really, when you step back and you look at every significant technology advantage that has come along since silicon chips, [AI] has been really an accelerant. It’s an accelerant of the underlying metabolism of how fast business can be conducted.

When you think about all of these accelerants that are now in the marketplace, from cloud infrastructure to generative AI to mobility and connectivity everywhere, companies really need to have their act together and be organized around the speed of change. If they are not, they’re going to find that their lunch is eaten by their competitors or some company they’ve never heard of.

What are you seeing in terms of the sense of urgency that the latest accelerant, generative AI, is bringing to the marketplace? And what are some use cases where you’re seeing that companies are proving out early that there are some real advantages, whether its predictive analytics or machine learning and automation, or whatever that happens to be?

Lawrence Huang:

I think the more crass way to say it is, the gold rush is on. Everyone is trying to figure out what this next wave of AI means for them and their business and their customers. I think it’s fair to say that from a product development standpoint, there’s the internal, “Hey, can we use these tools to increase the productivity of our developers so we can actually get more capabilities out to our customers faster and more efficiently?”

From a customer standpoint, going back to your point about, “What are some of the use cases that we can use this technology for?” I think that a lot of it from our world is going to be centered around, “Can we make this idea of predictive analytics more powerful than it is today?”

And one of the things I’ll say is that I don’t think AI, in and of itself, is the end-all-be-all. Sometimes the right answer, quite frankly, is a better user workflow. But other times, using technologies like AI and machine learning, it’s actually the right set of tools because what’s normal in one environment may not be normal in another environment. Having humans and people trying to figure it out is not the best way to do it. That’s where you apply technologies like AI and machine learning techniques to help.

What I’m excited about is seeing the new opportunities around areas like sustainability and areas like being able to create new businesses out of these technologies. It’s early days, but the other piece to it is that privacy is going to be a big part of how customers think about how they use these tools. That’s one thing that, as a company like Cisco, we think very deeply about when we introduce these capabilities. Privacy is front and center, and not putting our customers at risk.

Be a transformative CIO: infuse innovation

Skip to video at 11:15 min

Rich Karlgaard:

One of the reasons Cisco is a trusted brand is that among C-suite executives, particularly CIOs and CTOs, people see Cisco as rock solid and trustworthy and a good partner to have, not only for their own companies but for their own careers.

In thinking about the future of the CIO, one of the things that we have at Forbes is this idea of the “CIO+.” The “CIO+” runs an impeccable, button-down, no-errors (or very small-level of errors), in terms of the IT infrastructure.

But they also do three other things:

1. They understand the finances and operations of a company and they can go toe-to-toe with the CFO and speak the language of finance.
2. They understand the revenue levers—what drives revenue, what drives profitability, what drives margin-expansion, and all of those things—so that they’re a partner there.
3. And then they are a futurist. When they look at technologies like cloud infrastructure or generative AI, they are looking at it the way a venture capitalist would and organizing a portfolio of future projects.

From your perspective, as somebody who has worked with top-level IT people and served their interests and needs, do you have any comments on the changing nature of the CIO? How does the CIO or CTO get to that level where they’re a 90th-percentile CIO in terms of their ability to really drive transformational change at their company?

Lawrence Huang:

If you look at what’s happening across the industry, if you are not that transformative CIO and a team supporting the business, then quite frankly you’re a cost-center. You’re something that is necessary, but not strategic. The best CIOs realize that the way you actually drive real value is to turn your function into something that is strategic for the business.

Oftentimes, even with the example that we talked about with hybrid work, we know for a fact that across the board we are seeing shrinkage in office real estate. Across the companies that we work for, everyone is having a conversation about employees wanting a better experience when they come into the office. They need a reason to gather.

As a CIO and a team supporting that, how do I start working across different teams, whether it’s the real estate team or the facilities team, to create that better experience for them? What do we need to do differently to make these technologies that span across multiple teams and tie them together in a meaningful way so we can actually bring people together?

I think about the 3-30-300 rule, which is: The utilities of a given space and the square footage is roughly $3, and for real estate itself it’s $30, and for employees it’s $300. So there is this massive leverage that you get out of having productive employees. Everyone knows this, so how do you actually invest in a way to make them more productive?

The last piece to it is the innovation in terms of being able to respond to the business. When I hear the stories from our customers, when they’re looking at, “Hey I have stores,” as an example, “that through the pandemic were booming, and then after the pandemic were not … how do I make sure that I can actually build on the infrastructure that I invested in and layer on additional capabilities?” Whether it’s things like cameras and sensors to help, for example, my leadership team understands the productivity of my store employees better. How do I make sure that I deploy technologies in a way that can drive and support sustainability initiatives?

These are areas that really [top] 1% CIOs are helping their businesses transform to meet the needs that they have, whether it’s business headwinds that they need to go address or whether it’s net new initiatives to target sustainability net zero.

I’m really excited about what these top CIOs are doing within their organizations.

Rich Karlgaard:

Thank you for a very illuminating conversation!

Lawrence Huang:

Thanks a lot Rich, I appreciate the time.

Ready to be a transformational leader? Visit the Meraki platform page and explore how a cloud-first strategy can boost your business.

The post A Platform for Cloud Success appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Here are key insights from the survey that will help you better compete and grow no matter your industry or the size of your IT team. 

Your digital transformation journey should lead to better experiences 

There are three milestones to successful digital transformation, as a recent survey from TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group highlights: becoming more operationally efficient, developing new data-centric products and services, and delivering better and more differentiated experiences for customers. 

A cloud-managed platform places customer and employee experience where it belongs—as a critical strategy to drive business growth. While boosting efficiency and innovation are key motivators for digitalization, it’s people and their experiences that are the underlying drivers of success. A cloud-based network enhances customer and employee experiences, creating visibility and connectedness across every step of their journey. 

“Cloud-enabled strategies to accelerate digital transformation and support hybrid work are differentiators that set businesses apart and enable a unified customer experience. Treating these concepts as key business goals integral to long-term growth is how I see executives leading their organizations to success.”  

Lawrence Huang, SVP/GM, Cisco Networking Experiences – Meraki & Wireless  

Many challenges, one cross-industry solution 

Embarking on a successful digital transformation journey can seem daunting. Business and IT leaders across industries face many of the same challenges that inhibit transformation, and the ability to overcome and solve for those challenges is often  guiding factor when deciding how to modernize business systems. Tech leaders face friction as they try to navigate IT complexity, meet security and compliance demands, and gain visibility into useful data. While these hurdles vary in height by industry, there is one unifying solution across industries: a cloud-first strategy. 

No matter your industry, breaking away from an outdated IT infrastructure can free your company from legacy systems and technical debt. A cloud strategy opens up new areas of opportunity by providing access to innovative new technologies and services that keep your company agile and resilient.  

Drive greater operational efficiencies for improved agility and resilience 

CEOs and tech leaders are choosing digitalization to prepare their organizations for economic unknowns and security threats. A thoughtful digital transformation strategy addresses the needs of security and compliance, infrastructure and operations, and workplace flexibility by offering resilience and a foundation for growth.  

Cloud-enabled technology like AI-powered network optimization and predictive analytics saves time and drives cost savings, operational efficiency, and productivity. A single unified cloud solution can simplify and modernize in the present while future-proofing for continued growth. 

“Organizations must be able to move quickly to seize opportunities ahead of the competition. Cloud services have an important role to play in making the business they serve more agile and, therefore, more likely to succeed.” 

Gartner, 6 Steps for Planning a Cloud Strategy 

Industry-specific use cases, like at-home patient monitoring in healthcare or seamless delivery services from digital storefronts in retail, are all made possible thanks to cloud-first digital solutions that empower organizations to automate and scale. 

Across industries, organizations can increase the productivity of workers with elevated capabilities that deliver enhanced experiences to employees and customers faster. Read the whitepaper for a more in-depth exploration of the benefits of a cloud platform.  

Make cloud-enabled advantages your differentiator 

A cloud strategy prepares your business for future risk and empowers your organization to move with agility and maintain a competitive edge. In a recent interview with Forbes’ Editor-At-Large and Global Futurist, Rich Karlgaard, Lawrence Huang, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Meraki Wireless discussed how cloud-activated resilience is a business differentiator. Implementing a centralized architecture where you can deploy security policies end-to-end, have data insights and visibility site-wide, and adapt to your customers’ needs with speed and efficiency provides a springboard for you to further define your own unique business differentiator.  

Infuse innovation with transformational change 

Transformational change at a company begins with decision-making during planning. Innovative CIOs, or to quote Karlgaard, a “CIO+,” will choose to infuse innovation into their IT strategy at the forefront, weighing important revenue drivers like employee and customer experience in their digital transformation needs. By selecting a cloud-managed platform from which to transform your IT infrastructure, you are prioritizing enhanced experiences and enabling operations that scale at the speed of your business.  

Read the ESG whitepaper, “Leveraging the Cloud to Gain the Benefits of Digital Transformation” for a more in-depth exploration into some of the benefits gained by applying a cloud-first strategy as part of your digital transformation journey. Visit the Meraki cloud-managed platform page to learn how we can help you get there. 

The post Your Competitive Edge Is a Cloud Strategy appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Recent customer feedback has directed us to focus on three key areas: the use of applied artificial intelligence in network management, improved access to network data visibility, and improved functionality for managing energy usage to help accelerate organization-wide sustainability initiatives. 

Applied AI for cloud management

The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) technology in our management capabilities is not new, but we are always finding ways to use the tech for even more exciting and innovative networking solutions. Two of these new solutions are the applied AI busy hour and channel-planning features. By harnessing the power of intelligent machine learning, our dashboard now optimizes network efficiency, automates management, and minimizes potential bottlenecks during peak usage. 

These features analyze historical data, learn network congestion patterns, and automatically adjust channel allocation to ensure seamless connectivity. With AI as a guiding force, network administrators can now optimize performance effortlessly and automatically, enabling them to focus on strategic initiatives.

Improved network visibility and access to critical data

Powerful AI-automation and data-aggregation technology is exciting, but without intuitive visibility it can lose some of its luster. With the introduction of new features like Roaming Analytics and Network Service Health, Meraki remains focused on empowering network administrators with unparalleled insights to inform intelligent decision-making. 

These new solutions serve as one-stop network data overview tools—enabling administrators to identify areas of potential improvement and optimize coverage. Specifically, Roaming Analytics provides an improved user interface (UI) and comprehensive visibility into client roaming behavior. 

The Network Service Health tool consolidates real-time data from various sources, offering a holistic view of network performance while proactively identifying potential issues. By leveraging these features, administrators can ensure optimal uptime and connection metrics for an exceptional user experience.

Empowering sustainability goals

Our dashboard solutions are always evolving, but you may be asking how these new capabilities can help your organization achieve actual, concrete goals. One function of our dashboard that has recently seen immense improvement is that it helps our customers accelerate their organization-wide sustainability initiatives. 

With port scheduling, for example, administrators can monitor and remotely power down switching ports that are not in use and set time parameters on port activity. This can lead to positive outcomes—we’ve seen customers attain 50% greater energy savings through effective port management. 

Recently, this feature has been improved upon with added port notification suppression features, limiting noise and allowing for a more focused management experience. Your network can now work quietly in the background to propel your sustainability initiatives—automatically powering down dozens of PoE devices and saving your org thousands of dollars and kilowatt hours.

The journey is not over

The ever-evolving Meraki cloud-management platform has been on a remarkable journey of transformation, elevating network management to new heights. Through the integration of applied AI, enhanced visibility functionality, and sustainability-focused tools, our dashboard automates, streamlines, and optimizes network operations. 

As we continue to push the boundaries of innovation, we invite our customers to join us on this exciting, constantly evolving journey. Embrace the power of Meraki and unlock the potential of your network. 

Learn more about these new features and many more with an instant demo of the Meraki dashboard.

The post The Network Management Journey appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Simplifying How Customers Unleash the Power of Our Platforms 

Organizations seeking to transform their IT operations are looking to new technological advancements to help improve connectivity, efficiency, and speed. While new technologies may solve existing challenges or provide a foundation for meeting growth goals, they often also introduce new levels of complexity to what is already a complex IT infrastructure.  

To overcome complexity, and for transformation to have the greatest chance for success, an environment of simplicity is needed. And simplicity is what IT stakeholders want: 85% of 18,400 CIOs, IT decision makers, and developers surveyed in a new global study commissioned by Cisco, state that simplicity is one of the most important values of technology management.¹ 

Simplify the Platform Experience 

Simplifying the platform experience is a core tenet of our Cisco Networking Cloud vision. One of the ways it seeks to reduce technology and network complexity is by creating a simple-to-use, unified platform experience. The result is a cohesive, consistent, and secure way to log in to all Cisco products via single sign-on (SSO) and quickly navigate between different Cisco cloud networking platforms through shared menus and more seamless integrations.  

For example, linking an API key exchange/repository with SSO, on top of this cross-platform connectivity, makes it easier to monitor across Cisco networking platforms at scale and exchange data through automation—which can help reduce friction and errors. Silos are eliminated and everyone can access the resources they need, wherever and whenever they need them.  

A unified platform experience gives everything the same familiar look and feel, terminologies, APIs, and workflows. This brings greater consistency and ease of use for IT staff to learn, operate, and leverage multiple networking platforms. A unified platform experience can also help streamline and scale complex processes, while increasing operational simplicity, efficiency, and reliability. This gives organizations even greater power and flexibility to transform the business. 

Simplify Visibility into Sustainability 

Another key aspect of the Cisco Networking Cloud vision is that it aims to simplify visibility into data center power consumption and energy distribution. With data centers consuming an estimated 1% of electricity worldwide, gaining visibility into energy consumption and being able to act on this information is a critical need.²   

Visibility into real-time energy usage—all the way down to individual power distribution units, circuits, and switches—can be used to gain insight into real-time and historical power consumption of single- or multi-site data center implementations.   

Imagine easily accessing statistics and trends to estimate the full energy footprint of data center operations, while being able to turn off infrastructure components, reconfigure switches, and move or visualize workloads depending on power usage patterns across racks, switches, and ports. You could even align peak workloads with the times of the day when managed rates for power consumption are at the lowest. Such insights can help inform the designs of more sustainable data centers.  

This isn’t just wishful thinking. Integrations with leading power management vendors and environmental APIs enable Cisco Nexus Dashboard to provide sustainability insights into the energy usage of a data center’s IT infrastructure, helping organizations optimize power consumption. In fact, 87% of respondents of our State of Global Innovation survey state that their organizations are already benefitting from innovative ways to make business operations more sustainable and energy efficient.³ 

Having access to actionable, real-time, and historical energy usage on data centers can help organizations transform enterprise-wide business processes, allowing them to refocus budgets and resources on strategic innovation. It can even help organizations shift their sustainability focus from risk and compliance to delivering new business outcomes—leveraging sustainability as a driver for differentiated, long-term value creation. 

Simplify AI/ML Networking 

Some of the most complex technologies that are in active development today center on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Most recently, some organizations have been looking to leverage generative-AI capabilities to help accelerate their digital transformations. This has put tremendous pressure on data centers to meet the high-bandwidth and complex, petascale-level computational requirements of AI/ML.  

This need to simplify the transport of AI/ML network data is what prompted us to create a new AI data center blueprint for networking. 

This blueprint enables automated, scalable, low latency networks with support for lossless transport, intelligent buffering, data/pipeline parallelism, and highly efficient network protocols. It provides a validated design that meets the requirements and traffic patterns of AI/ML workloads, with capabilities such as deterministic load-balancing, line-rate transmission, and congestion management. Our expertise with high-performance computing deployments and InfiniBand-to-Ethernet network migrations significantly influenced the blueprint. 

The blueprint also seeks to simplify visibility and telemetry into network behavior to help drive troubleshooting and improve transport performance. For example, Cisco Nexus Dashboard automation templates give organizations added visibility to more easily build and manage their data centers for AI/ML applications.  

In addition, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches have intelligent buffer management built in, making it easier to build lossless fabrics and craft new automated AI/ML network configurations with Ansible modules. The Cisco Nexus 9000 platform also includes telemetry capabilities, such as flow table events and streaming statistics to help analyze network traffic and provide insight into problematic infrastructure with predictive analytics. 

Achieve Measurable Business Value 

With Cisco Networking solutions delivering a simplified platform experience, data-driven sustainability insights, and improved AI/ML network performance, organizations have an opportunity to drive IT transformation and achieve measurable business value. A network as an innovation platform facilitates the next generation of work, business models, and transformation.  

This can empower organizations to move beyond technology silos and time-consuming integrations, with solutions that are simpler, converged, and outcome driven. This is why we believe our Cisco Networking Cloud vision enables our customers to connect everything, everywhere, without compromising on simplicity, even as new technologies continue to converge into the network space. 

To learn more:

• Read about how our Cisco Networking Cloud vision enables IT teams to achieve audacious outcomes.
• Read why the power of the network is about to take a significant leap forward with predictive automations and other features. 
• Learn how Cisco ThousandEyes helps IT preemptively identify network issues beyond the enterprise.

1 State of Global Innovation, Cisco, 2023. 

2 Data Centres and Data Transmission Networks, International Energy Agency, September 2022. 

3 State of Global Innovation, Cisco, 2023. 

The post Simplifying the Power of Our Platforms appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Matt Landry is Vice President of Product Management, Meraki Networking and Cisco Wireless
This article was originally published on Cisco.com.

From campus headquarters to remote offices, the enterprise network is an essential technology nearly invisible to the hybrid workforce. When people need access to an application or service, they expect the network to provide an excellent experience. The best networks just work, delivering applications with assurance. IT managers and network operations staff know that managing a tiered network with multiple outbound connection paths while optimizing application performance across the data center and public internet can be an incredibly complex challenge.

To ensure optimal application experience, IT teams need network visibility and insights into massive amounts of telemetry from Wi-Fi onboarding times to multicloud connectivity statistics to global WAN/internet performance. Data across multiple internal and external domains need to be continuously monitored and analyzed to understand normal and abnormal behaviors. This analysis forms the foundation of predictive assurance; reassuring IT that the network is operating according to plan or alerting that corrective actions must be taken before the application experience degrades.

Predictability and Insights Simplify Network Management

Predictive assurance is just one of the innovations for IT on the journey to the Cisco Networking Cloud, our vision for a cloud-driven networking platform to securely connect the world. Cisco Networking Cloud will empower IT to deliver simple, secure, and predictable experiences that build bridges between technologies, workforces, and devices to drive business outcomes. At Cisco Live 2023, we are advancing our vision with new capabilities in predictive automations and cloud network management to simplify IT operations.

The Power of Predictive Automations

The power of the network is about to take a significant leap forward with predictive automations like Predictive Path Recommendations (PPR). Predictive automations are key to making the network more intelligent and IT more proactive by constantly analyzing telemetry data lakes for trends and outliers and automatically adapting the network to avoid disruptions. By integrating PPR, powered by Cisco ThousandEyes WAN Insights, with new closed-loop automations in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, Cisco helps IT proactively resolve network issues before they impact the application experience.

Incorporating advanced algorithms and predictive models into the SD-WAN fabric, Predictive Path Recommendations provide optimization suggestions—if performance falls below historical benchmarks or service-level agreements, corrective action is automatically taken. This minimizes potential network degradation before impacting workers and optimizes overall network operations. PPR replaces the traditional labor-intensive “hunt and seek” fire drills with predictive feedback and automation, freeing up valuable time for IT teams to focus on strategic projects for the business. 

This helps organizations achieve a perpetual optimization cycle of desired CapEx and OpEx outcomes. Predictive analytics enhance resource planning and network engineering, enabling organizations to maintain optimal capacity and thus driving CapEx efficiency. Proactive identification and resolution of issues maintain the workforce application experience with minimal IT intervention, delivering improved OpEx efficiency.

Increasing Visibility Beyond the Enterprise Network

Given the growing importance of direct internet access and public cloud networks as the middle mile for distributed organizations, IT needs deeper insights into those connections to proactively make disruption-avoiding changes.

Cisco ThousandEyes delivers internet and cloud intelligence, empowering IT teams with collective visibility into every segment of the enterprise network, including the internet. This enables enterprises to see, understand, and improve digital experiences from every cloud to every employee and customer.

The deep integration of Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco’s SD-WAN portfolio empowers IT to preemptively identify network issues outside of the enterprise before application performance degrades and the workforce notices connectivity disruptions.

Continuing to Simplify Access Visibility with Cloud Management

Last year, we announced the first phase of cloud management for Cisco Catalyst access devices. Almost 1,500 organizations have already turned to the Meraki cloud management platform to view, troubleshoot, and monitor their Cisco Catalyst networks.

This year, we’re expanding the control of cloud-connected Cisco Catalyst switches with visibility into command-line interfaces and device configurations through the Cisco Meraki dashboard. New capabilities include agile software image management and, coming soon, visibility into Catalyst access points managed by Catalyst wireless LAN controllers. These innovations ultimately give IT a more complete view across their access networks from anywhere via the Meraki dashboard.

Proactive Enterprises Run on Predictive Networks

The network has never been more essential to enterprise operations at scale, connecting the hybrid workforce and helping digitization projects to deliver the desired innovations. Our vision for the Cisco Networking Cloud will improve the application experience and redefine end-to-end assurance through advanced algorithms and predictive models with deep network visibility and proactive insights.

To learn more:

• Read about how our Cisco Networking Cloud vision enables IT teams to achieve audacious outcomes.
• Discover how simplifying the platform experience is a core tenet of our vision for the Cisco Networking Cloud.
• Learn how Cisco ThousandEyes helps IT preemptively identify network issues beyond the enterprise.

The post Fixing Things Before They Break appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

It’s no doubt that computer vision is transforming how companies function and engage. Yet, as computer vision firmly embeds itself into the IT mainstream, concerns are growing over its potential misuse.

Building ethical AI models for computer vision

Companies that use computer vision have a responsibility to consider how the AI models that drive it impact all stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, employees, and society as a whole. 

When building AI models for computer vision, some questions to be considered…

• What data can or may be included or processed?
• Who can view the data?
• How can we create algorithms that don’t make unethical or biased decisions?

Training with synthetic datasets

One way to mitigate ethical concerns is to use synthetic data creation processes to train computer vision machine learning (ML) models. 

Synthetic data is and can be anonymized and created manually or artificially apart from data generated by real-world events. Think: Sim-like 3D environments. This allows developers to produce millions of anonymized images needed for ML training at a relatively low cost, saving organizations from the costly and error-prone process of stripping personal information from collected data. 

Synthetic data creation also minimizes privacy risks and reduces the likelihood of data bias. 

Data anonymization

Even better, when capturing real-life data to generate insights, companies can take the extra step to de-identify individuals. This includes blurring faces on camera feeds, not recording or storing any footage, and removing any personally identifiable information (PII) from datasets.

At meldCX, we made a decision early on in our AI journey to not capture any PII by turning individuals into a tokenized anonymous persona—a random number in the system. More detail and depth is then added into the anonymized persona through objects, such as the clothes the person is wearing, and non-face behavior, such as movement and gait.

Segmenting user roles 

As a tool for communication and collaboration, computer vision analytics are at their best when all areas of a business can fully participate and glean value from them. 

To maintain the security of data, computer vision platforms should have flexible and customizable security permissions that allow for an appropriate balance of collaboration and control. 

For instance, permissions can be set to restrict everyone from viewing videos except the Security Lead, and granting access to the Marketing team to view only non-video data output from the platform dashboard.

Regulatory bodies promoting ethical AI

Globally, the industry is heading toward ethical AI regulation across the board, not just for computer vision. 

All 194 member states of the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have unanimously adopted a series of recommendations on ethical AI. These recommendations aim to realize the advantages of the technology while reducing the human rights risks associated with its use. 

Additionally, companies such as TrustArc provide third party independent assessments and certifications to companies such as meldCX to ensure that technology providers adhere to privacy regulations such as GDPR and ISO/IEC 27001.

Businesses can leverage these tools and resources to ensure their computer vision systems meet the highest standards of ethics and to get ahead of compliance before regulations go into effect. 

A collective responsibility

In this information age, data is power, and with that comes great responsibility.

Computer vision is a powerful tool, and it’s up to everyone to address tough ethical questions to establish best practices that uphold human dignity. 

All teams—from research and data science to executive levels—are equally responsible for making sure that ethical and privacy standards are top-of-mind. This process begins from ideation and continues all throughout the entire product lifecycle.

The post Putting Ethics and Privacy at the Heart of Computer Vision appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

You may feel confident that your product is better than your competition and your customers know it. But competing at the margins means it’s not enough to only have the best product. Even the most recognized national brand of coffee shop can lose customers at the local level because the café across the street has better Wi-Fi (and an app to order in advance to boot!).

We’re all familiar with hype cycles in the tech space. Markets go crazy for the latest gadget or solution, expectations become inflated, early adopters become disappointed, and then the pragmatists swoop in to realize tangible benefits.

To those level-headed business and IT leaders who hesitated to jump on the bandwagon—don’t worry—your secure ride up the slope of enlightenment is boarding. Here’s what you need to know.

What do we mean by cloud-first networking?

We defined cloud networking in a previous blog post as a network where management and provisioning of network devices—as well as the storage and handling of most data—is done over third-party servers.  

But what do we mean by cloud-first networking? Simply put, when your organization is cloud-first it means that the majority of your network is cloud-based. This difference matters because many organizations have been taking a piecemeal approach to cloud networking, only migrating certain parts of their network infrastructure rather than making cloud networking the backbone of the entire enterprise.

To be clear, becoming a cloud-first enterprise is a journey where the most sensible way forward for many organizations is to start where they feel comfortable. But leaders should not lose sight of the end goal—a cloud-first network that delivers efficiency, automation, security, and intelligence at scale. 

What are the benefits of a cloud-first network?

Your legacy network and on-site data centers may be giving you warm feelings that come with the perception of control. But the reality is that your dated network is doing less favors for the enterprise than you think. Here are some of the key benefits that you may be missing out on by delaying a cloud-first strategy.

Efficiency and automation

Your IT staff likely manages geographically dispersed network devices, requiring a large distributed team or extensive travel between locations locally, regionally, or even globally. That’s costing you a lot in worker hours that could be better utilized.

With a cloud-first network, your team can manage all network devices from a single location via a cloud-based dashboard. With access to APIs, your team can build in automation so routine updates and maintenance can be done literally while they sleep. Provisioning and setup of new locations can be done remotely via the same tools, you just need one person at the other end to plug everything in. With all that time saved, your IT professionals can focus on innovating toward better experiences for your customers and employees. 

As an aside, cloud-first networks can leverage IoT devices and automation to better regulate energy usage in data centers—directly improving bottom-line costs and helping organizations meet sustainability goals.

Security and reliability

Your on-site network isn’t safe just because there’s a 24/7 security detail. In fact, networks built on old infrastructure have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, and keeping all of your data at just one or two sites poses inherent risks from physical threats. An outage or breach is only a severe storm or hacker away.

Compare that to the baked-in security and reliability of a cloud network. The best cloud vendors provide redundancies and fail-over across many data centers so that an outage at one site doesn’t impact your operations. They also commit to uptime service level agreements, so if you lose access, they lose money.

When it comes to security, the best vendors protect your data through a variety of means—segregating data by user, providing granular access control, 24/7 automated intrusion protection, IP- and port-based firewalls, etc. They also meet the most stringent security and compliance standards in the world, such as PCI DSS, ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II, and FIPS. Vendors should also never be able to see your data, only the telemetry data needed to run your network. 

The bottom line is that keeping your network secure in the cloud doesn’t have to be difficult. Similar to financial institutions, cloud vendors are held to higher standards and scrutiny due to service expectations and regulations. You leave your wealth to the experts, so why not your networks?

Intelligence

To take the money metaphor further, think about the way that financial institutions are able to leverage your money to grow your wealth. In the same way, cloud vendors provide the tools and resources that enable you to get the most out of your network. Essentially, they make your network intelligent.

There are two main ways that a cloud-first network provides intelligence. First, network administrators are able to use built-in health tools that leverage machine learning (ML) to provide meaningful insights and trusted recommendations. This enables administrators to make informed changes to better optimize a network.

Second, the best cloud-networking vendors include as part of their offering a broad ecosystem of custom applications that provide additional tools, integrations, automation, configuration, monitoring, and reporting capabilities. These applications take the troves of data traversing your network and make them actionable so you can make intelligent decisions that increase revenue, performance, and productivity.

All of the above, at scale

The best cloud networks are easily scalable. The previously mentioned ease of provisioning and automation means adding new locations is a breeze, giving you the flexibility to quickly respond to market demands. That same technology makes it easy to quickly scale globally, add new capabilities, or change directions to meet customer needs. You can even combine IT and IoT to unify experiences across your operations. 

Cloud networks provide the agility needed to thrive in any business environment while also automatically responding to occasional traffic spikes, so your customers and employees can always access the online tools they need no matter where they are in the world.

Whether you’re in the business of selling shoes, making cars, loaning money, or providing healthcare, a cloud-first network provides benefits that can reduce costs and increase efficiencies across the board—giving you a better chance at achieving success.

Cloud networking without the hype

Part of the reason many enterprises have stalled in committing to a cloud-first strategy is because they or someone they know were burned by early vendors who over-promised and under-delivered. Packaged, one-size-fits-all solutions were doomed to fail from the get-go because each enterprise has different needs and is at a different point on their cloud journey. 

The right partner is one that will join you for the long haul. They will be a trusted partner that will meet you where you are and guide you through the incremental changes toward a successful implementation. 
Read our whitepaper to learn how the Meraki platform is the first step toward your cloud-first future—without the hype.

The post Why Cloud-First Networking is the Future appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

But now your old console cable is gathering dust in a drawer, and for good reason. Cables—by and large—became a thing of the past when businesses started moving to the cloud, famed for its ability to deliver innovation and efficiency.

The cloud is great, we love the cloud, however, that love comes with a need to manage increasingly complex IT estates. Today’s networks are filled with tens of thousands of devices, if not more. Deploying, managing, and monitoring each of these applications and devices can quickly become cumbersome and disorganized. That’s where our Meraki APIs come to the rescue.

Business is easy as pie with the right API

With APIs, companies big and small can intelligently manage and monitor their infrastructure with speed and efficiency—regardless of application, device, location, or logistical hurdle. But, where Meraki APIs truly shine is in helping teams handle the more tedious tasks quickly and easily. 

Meraki APIs enable enterprise-wide automation. This allows organizations to make large-scale changes with just a few clicks. They can optimize network and device migration efficiently and with minimal human error, and monitor, configure, and report—all from one place. 

With this kind of management at scale, the possibilities are endless. With the Meraki dashboard API, you can manage tasks like provisioning, bulk configuration changes, monitoring, and role-based access controls—often in a matter of seconds. 

Like retiring the old console cable, we’re doing away with repetitious manual network processes.

APIs in the real world

For real-world applications, it isn’t enough to simply automate. You have to know what’s happening, which is why our APIs go beyond day-zero provisioning to provide insights for workflows and drive the analytics behind better business decisions.

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. In fact, the most popular uses for the Meraki API cover the full range of network operations use cases:

• Adding new organizations, admins, networks, devices, VLANs, SSIDs
• Provisioning thousands of new sites in minutes with scripting
• Automating the onboarding and off-boarding of employees’ teleworking device(s)
• Powering custom dashboards for store managers, field techs, or unique use cases
• Delivering real-time location analytics data to inform branch staffing models

How to kick-start your Meraki API journey 

We’ve barely scratched the surface of APIs here, but we have plenty of resources for you to dive into. Here are the top three ways to engage with Meraki APIs:  

The best way to get started is to visit and browse our comprehensive Meraki Developer Hub. There, you’ll find a wide array of APIs that are free to use and easy to integrate into other applications. For those ready to dive into the API deep-end, try our Cisco Meraki Marketplace, where you can browse and demo hundreds of partners and apps built on Meraki APIs.

The post Rise Above Complexity with APIs appeared first on The Meraki Blog.

Creating more connected communities in these changing currents requires overcoming obstacles that range from properly monitoring distributed locations with lean IT teams to managing new hybrid workplaces and combating persistent security threats.

Addressing funding, access, and connectivity challenges demands an all-hands-on-deck approach to governing localities and requires establishing a solid, reliable crew through partnerships, IT teams, and employees. 

Once you’ve assembled your crew, you are ready to set sail, but you’ll need a map to reach your final destination.

All aboard to the land of IoT

IoT devices keep communities agile by providing solutions for various security, safety, and visibility issues—all while collecting data to plan and navigate better, smarter responses. Additionally, location and environmental sensors and smart street lights and traffic sensors enable governments to provision and provide constituents with the services and infrastructure planning they need.

With the influx of federal stimulus funding, governments have the opportunity to scale up infrastructure-related IoT systems, including ones connected with municipal utilities like water. 

Don’t forget to cross the digital divide

The availability of high-speed internet access is a necessity, not a luxury. Addressing the digital divide impacts almost every aspect of constituents’ lives- in education, in work, health, and even in voting.  

In fact, 34% of CDG survey respondents said their jurisdictions are currently working to address the digital divide—bolstered by unprecedented federal funding to address broadband gaps.

Onward toward the changing workforce 

The transition to remote work happened seemingly overnight, as IT departments worked towards solutions that successfully allowed service continuity in the face of stay-at-home orders.

With the continued transition and evolution to hybrid work models, the task for governments is to build on early efforts in hybrid work in more sustainable ways while also embracing the benefits of change. 

One benefit from this sea change in the work model has been agencies’ ability to address previous grievances while hiring and retaining talent. In addition to providing more flexibility to current staff, jurisdictions can expand the search radius for new talent. Workplace flexibility can mean the difference between hiring IT within the capital to hiring within the state.

While there has always been a challenge in competing with the private sector, it’s important for government leaders to stay abreast of the opportunities to provide additional services that candidates and current employees desire. This must also be managed against the necessity for in-person citizen services and meet the expanded scope of connectivity and security—particularly within government IT. The days of pensions and stability are not always enough, and whether it’s through workplace flexibility, technology modernization, continued education, or offices of the future, agency IT leaders must consider all the tools at their exposure while keeping security at the forefront.  

Land ho! Dock safely and securely

Only 8% of CDG survey respondents reported no security challenges with their connected community initiatives. Ensuring network security when employees use their own devices, training, finding staff with cybersecurity skill sets, securing remote cloud-based applications and access, and managing endpoints are all key challenges, respondents said.

The growing scope of governments’ IT environments and the threats against them requires a broader shift in cybersecurity. Creating a holistic approach to security comes down to outlining a strategy that merges practices across teams and systems, helps agencies identify current security vulnerabilities, and defines the goals and objectives for the entire organization moving forward.

Embrace the voyage

Every journey starts with a goal, whether that’s to discover a new world or deliver best-in-class constituent services.  

Begin your journey toward more connected communities with a clear vision to achieve a flexible and scalable environment. By embracing IoT to help with your area’s goals, establishing processes to bridge the digital divide, empowering the workforce to provide services, and implementing strict cybersecurity protocols, you’re all set to sail toward a safe and secure connected community. 

Are you ready for the journey? Follow our urban technology checklist to get started.

The post Mapping the Way to a More Connected Community appeared first on The Meraki Blog.