Heraclitus asserted that life is in flux, and the only thing that’s constant is change itself. The notion rings especially true for enterprises these days, who are facing an uncertain business environment and are susceptible to disruptive technologies that threaten their existence. To remain relevant in the digital age, businesses need to be able to get a glimpse of the future.

Which is why businesses across all industries turn to Cisco Systems to help them adopt, re-configure and most importantly, deliver the solutions that will empower them to serve their customers better. Cisco’s track record in revolutionizing how the world of business connects and interacts speaks for itself. But the company has come a long way from being a router manufacturer (albeit the best one), to what it is now; the de facto choice for networking, data center, security, collaboration and the IoT.

At ASEAN Virtual Cisco Connect 2019, on top of putting its wide array of futuristic enterprise tech solutions on display, Cisco showcased to the Southeast Asia region, and the rest of the world, why it is the one company that always sets the gold standard for technology. According to KK Lee, Chief Technical Officer at Cisco ASEAN, the company’s present position is a result of a lot of hard work in combination with the spirit of innovation by its engineers to solve problems, since its inception 34 years ago.

Innovative solutions made simple

Source: Cisco Connect 2019

“We are the bridge between problem and solution, and that’s about all of what we want to do. But we want to do it in the most clinical manner. Simplicity is the name of the game,” Lee said emphatically, during his address titled, ‘Cisco Innovations: Making the Future Possible.’ Innovation, Lee added, is the pervasive culture of the company that permeates through every level and aspect to the point that they do not have an innovation department or an office to ensure innovation – it’s simply not necessary.

Cisco approaches innovation via its multi-pronged method of build, buy, partner, invest, and co-innovate. This strategy has worked well for Cisco, and the company has some impressive numbers to back that strategy. According to Lee, Cisco now employs some 26,000 engineers in R&D, has filed about 19,000 patents along the way, spends US$6.5 billion every year on forging new research, has acquired and merged with 216 other companies and invested in over 120 startups, many of which are located in the APAC region.

This innovative strategy also has allowed Cisco to lead many market transitions all these years, outliving and out-surviving many of its competitors. For example, the company raised a lot of industry eyebrows when it decided to enter the server market.

“But we weren’t interested in making an ordinary server. Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System) was  never meant to be a server, but a compute platform that runs on stateless machines or hardware. It was built for virtualization from the ground up,” explained Lee. And along the way, Cisco also designed other elements of UCS such as the I/O bus functions, which led the system to hold 120 world records for speed & efficiency, including in high speed computing (HSC), middleware hosting and database processing.

What’s in store for the future

Source: Cisco Connect 2019

Lee told the crowd at the event that Cisco has been busy developing solutions that deploy some emerging technologies that will help shape how business will operate. He divided them into four distinct categories;

• Wireless Networks – Cisco has been in the thick of developing 5G and WiFi 6, which massively increase network capacity and lower latencies. They will enable new applications to take flight, including a greater proliferation of IoT devices. Further, the emergence of WiFi 6 allows for seamless connectivity of devices such as AR/VR goggles that hitherto required thick, cumbersome cables. Additionally, time slicing methods deployed by these new generation connectivity protocols enable more energy-efficient data transmission.
• Cloud-Driven Infrastructure – Cisco is lending its expertise to help Rakuten, the Japanese tech provider to build an all-cloud mobile network. Cloud-driven infrastructure coupled with automation is crucial for development at scale and Cisco’s software-defined approach along with its best-in-class hardware will combine to help create this revolution in mobile infrastructure.
• Machine Learning – Organizations can accelerate deep learning with Cisco UCS C480 ML M5 Rack Servers, designed specifically for AI and ML workloads to help data scientists. Cisco now offers a complete array of computing options sized to each element of the AI lifecycle: data collection and analysis near the edge, data preparation and training in the data center core, and real-time inference at the heart of AI.
• Blockchain – Businesses need an enterprise-ready platform, and Cisco understands this. The company provides simple, secure and scalable blockchain solutions for businesses which will not only transform, but completely re-imagine the processes in the future.

In short, Cisco is helping organizations to peer into the future, and help them unlock their digital potential by leveraging multi-cloud platforms, reinventing the network, unlocking the power of data, making security foundational, and producing the frameworks for the creation of meaningful customer experiences.

To view this presentation in its entirety and learn how security, intelligence and platform underpin digital businesses and allow them to thrive, visit www.cisco.com/my/connect2019.