It’s a warm summer night. The stadium glows from the phones poised to capture the coin toss. The fans are ready. The players are in position. Game time!
It’s a picture-perfect image of convenience, safety, and punctuality, all working together as one. But peek behind the picture, and it’s a chaotic orchestration of not just players but a dizzying array of IT platforms, networks, and technologies conducted by dispersed people, teams, and organizations. The fans in the bleachers might not be worried about weather conditions affecting the field or game-time communications, but IT staff and operators are tackling a lot.
The IT Reality Today
Complexity constricts IT across so many industries, like sports. Silos and inefficiencies separate dashboards, teams, and technologies, leaving them vulnerable. Progress in one area, like connectivity, increases the threat surface in another. While IT teams are enabling the audacious—hybrid work, modernizing industries, and building greener economies—they often do it blindfolded and handcuffed.
Is it working? Not very well. It’s been costly and risky. Is it scalable? Not very … it’s been frustrating and time-consuming. For those who have succeeded, it’s like winning a championship game—heroic, but lots of sweat, stamina, and swearing.
What if we could collapse everything into a simple press of a button? No more navigating dozens of systems and platforms to enable one outcome. No need to switch from one tool to provision, another to manage policy, and yet another to monitor alerts. If technologies, apps, and networks acted as one, it would simplify IT and help you create more unified customer experiences.
The Power of Unified Experiences
Today, we’re making the easy button better with Cisco Networking Cloud. It was born from the feedback we heard from you alongside countless other customers. You shared about your unique journeys. Some of you manage networks from the cloud, while others stay on premises. Some of you are first movers and fully digitalized, and others are catching up quickly. You all expressed a need for simple-to-use and predictable platforms with fewer interfaces and simplified licensing. You also echoed each other with the need to prioritize solutions, not products.
We are grateful for your openness and partnership. And we are delivering.
Cisco Networking Cloud is our vision—our commitment—to simplify IT, everywhere, at every scale. Until now, there has never been a consistent way to automate operations, analyze and diagnose issues, or assure the user experience across networking domains. Cisco Networking Cloud will change that.
With Cisco Networking Cloud, you will have a unified management experience platform for on-premises and cloud operating models. We are still dedicated to building the best on-premises solutions. However, we believe most of you could benefit from a cloud-first automation strategy in at least some parts of your business. The Cisco Networking Cloud allows you to explore management with both models.
We are bringing together campus and branch, data center, compute, IoT, SD-WAN, and more. Cisco Networking Cloud binds the applications under Cisco Networking, including Meraki, ThousandEyes, and Cisco Catalyst, to act as one. We are fighting rising complexity with radical simplification.
The Cisco Networking Cloud converges and connects fragmented platforms that exchange data through automation. It replaces isolated pockets of data with telemetry, assurance, and proactive analytics across the network. Together, we will make everyday life more connected, protected, and convenient.
From Vision to Value
Let’s go back to our game. Imagine cameras and sensors speaking across the network, guided by AI analytics. Instead of scouring dashboards, you’re alerted to the wayward fan inside the game field, the temperature fluctuations inside the locker room, and the Wi-Fi strength in the stadium. You’ll even receive notifications if the soda machines overheat. Cisco Networking Cloud just took you from troubleshooting in hours—to seconds. It gives you time to easily avoid potential hazards and the space to ensure the game is on time with fans enjoying their favorite drink. Unified experiences delight customers and fuel business.
Every facet of our world today is being reimagined, whether it’s winning championships, transforming transportation, eradicating disease, or fighting climate change. IT will be at the heart of this reinvention for years to come—so will unified experiences.
The world is changing fast. It’s time to
Simplify IT with Unified Experiences
Additional Resources
Read more about how Cisco Networking Cloud can simplify the platform experience, and how predictive automations increase the power of the network:
Simplifying How Customers Unleash the Power of Our Platforms
Fixing Things Before They Break: A More Proactive Network Mantra
Good
Is this a replacement for DNA center? Is DNAC being deprecated?
Thank you for the question, John. Cisco Networking Cloud is not replacing Catalyst Center (formerly Cisco DNA Center).
Cisco Networking Cloud is our vision for a unified management experience platform for both cloud and on-premises operations. We are embarking on a multi-year journey, where we will simplify management functions until we arrive at a single platform across the Cisco Networking portfolio.
This is amazing !!
With the demand for having 24/7 availability of network due to critical business requirement, how cisco is prepared in terms of instant bugs and vulnerabilities on cisco catalyst IOS-XE. This has been a challenge for me in our network.
How reliable is the cisco IOS-XE ??
We hear you Bipinchandra—the network is business critical. IOS XE is designed to reduce network complexity and continues to be one of the most reliable operating systems across access, core, and WAN. Our secure development process continually validates the integrity of Cisco products, using both fully automated test frameworks and real-world customer profiles, to catch and fix issues early in the development cycle. IOS-XE powers much of the connected world. Happy to have one of our team members walk you through the IOS-XE architecture if that would be helpful.
In addition, Cisco Networking Cloud, CSIRT, and Talos threat intelligence teams, combined with the telemetry our CX team continually monitors, allow us to identify and address emerging risks to our customers’ infrastructure.
But underneath the hood, it’s still separate products?
Cisco Nexus Cloud for DC, and Meraki for campus – I fail to see how this batters “Silos and inefficiencies separate dashboards, teams, and technologies”.
To me it seems like yet another Cisco software product, on top of all the others, that probably doesn’t have the full feature set.
It’s not even Cisco. At least I can connect to a Cisco router/firewall. This is a closed system and lends itself to management by low skilled technicians. Probably a “derogoatory comment” and will be censored. I’m surprised to see your comment here Erik.
Hi Otto, happy to have one of our team members talk to you and understand any specific issues.
I appreciate the comment, Erik. IT is besieged with these sub-optimal experiences, and we are working on improving it. Cisco Networking Cloud is a multi-year journey where we will simplify management functions until we arrive at a single platform across the Cisco Networking portfolio.
Today, we are delivering components across our existing networking portfolio to increase operational simplicity, efficiency, and reliability, including single sign-on (SSO), API key exchange/repository, and seamless navigation across the portfolio with a common user interface. Example: We have catalyst switches now able to be monitored and managed inside of the Meraki Dashboard. More to come!
Good
This is great I am actually working with Meraki devices at the moment and I am learning that they are cloud-based, Meaning one can access and control them remotely contrary to the Catalyst. Is that all about Meraki ?? or is there much more ? . Does if mean that there has to be one system admin such that if there is a failure an engineer working on field has to wait for the admin to sort out the problem?
Good, please engage me enough.