With the $28B aquisition now complete between Cisco and Splunk, both vendors will soon be in heavy marketing mode as they position their new combined offerings (under Cisco) to “unify the full power of network and endpoint data with leading Security and Observability solutions, all underpinned by our highly scalable, AI-powered data platform“.
The combination of Cisco and Splunk will provide truly comprehensive visibility and insights across an organization’s entire digital footprint, delivering an unprecedented level of resilience through the most extensive and powerful security and observability product portfolio on the market.
Gary Steele| VP Splunk.
So what does that mean?
Unification and Choice
According to the new Splunk website and publicly facing collateral, the combining of forces is destined to offer the following value and connected experiences to their combined customer base.
Power the SOC of the Future, by
improving the efficacy, efficiency, and economics of defending organisations and service providers against modern security threats, offering what they claim will be the “most comprehensive security solutions for threat prevention, detection, investigation and response.”
Continuing to deliver Splunk’s existing security and monitoring platforms, while adding Splunk technology to Cisco’s existing portfolio with enhanced network, endpoint and cloud data for” unparalleled insights and faster remediation“.
Enhancing Cisco’s security offerings across the board to help organisations secure users, protect infrastructure, and improve prevention, detection and remediation with Cisco’s User Protection, Breach Protection, and Cloud Protection suites which is fed from Cisco’s Talos data intelligence platform.
Enrich Observability across all and any environment by:
Offering a comprehensive full-stack observability solution, enhancing customers’ ability to deliver seamless digital experiences and prevent downtime across any environment, combining and joining Cisco Thousand Eyes and App Dymanics with Splunk’s portfolio of products.
Continue to offer choice to customers, by offering unified solutions as well as the individual Cisco and Splunk whilst providing unified management and insights.
Create a world leading observability platform through the Integration of the best of Cisco and Splunk technology leading to an holistic ability ability to detect and remediate incidents, empowering IT Teams to focus on enablement, security and digital transformation rather than troubleshooting performance and issues.
What about AI?
Yes… Cisco and Splunk also talk alot about AI empowerment and execution. After all, AI workloads are intense, drive traffic into different places and have a profound impact on how people use and access data and applications.
Aimed more at organisations who build and operate on their own data, rather than consume SaaS, the fuel of AI and its ability to provide information and serve requests is reliant on fast and secure access to models trained on huge volumes of the data.
Cisco beleive that their combined forces will bring an unmatched breadth of data through allowing organisations to build, scale and tune, highly scalable data platforms while ensuring performace and security at scale.
The competition?
The race to empower and secure both traditional and AI powered workloads continues up pace. Cisco have a great history of building arguably the best networking technologies in the world, have one of best SaaS performance monitoring platforms and now with the added arsenal of products from Splunk, puts them in a great position to win over customers, partners and MSPs with a unified offering.
Cisco have struggled to win hearts and minds with security for years but this combining of forces gives them an ACE card to play. Whether they will get this right (from a hearts and minds, price and integration) is yet to be seen, but Cisco have a great track record of integrating technologies from vendors their aquire.
More information
More information around the combined entity of Cisco and Splunk are coming in fast and late last week, Cisco ran a customer and partner briefing which is now available on demand here.
Last month, and now just a few weeks away from Cisco Live, Cisco have announced they are bringing a new “AI Assistant for Security” to market this year. This is an artificial intelligence tool that combines generative AI technologies with an “unparalleled scope of data” , giving IT/SecOps teams the ability to generate more secure, AI-driven insights that span devices, applications, security, networks, and the internet .
“AI Assistant for Security will help provide better protection to our customers by simplifying management for both seasoned administrators and novice users. Our aim is to inject generative AI and unify telemetry across all Cisco Security solutions to create a more effective experience and safeguard our customers”
Brian Feeney | VP Global security partner sales | Cisco
Cisco AI Assistant for Security marks a major step in making artificial intelligence pervasive in the Cisco Security Cloud. Starting with the Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center, Cybersecurity professionals will be able to leverages Cisco AI Assistant for streamlining and automating firewall management both on premises and in the cloud.
Firewalls first – more later
Cisco have said that they will launch the AI Assistant for firewall as soon as Spring 2024, with this representing a great opportunity for their partners and customers to start leverage the advantages of AI.
Cisco say this will be included and integrated into their cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center with no additional charge. Longer term, Cisco said they plan to extend it to their other firewall management tools later.
Why? Well, according to Gartner, Configuration complexity and inconsistent rules are among the highest cause of security risks and breaches when it comes to configuring networks and firewalls with misconfiguration being the cause of nintey nine percent (99%) of all firewall breaches.
Image (c) Cisco
The AI Assistant for Security is built on “Ciscos foundation of security, data protection, and privacy, guided by Cisco’s responsible AI principles and framework”. Their AI assistant is trained on Cisco’s huge security-focused datasets, (Talos) which analyses more than 550 billion security events daily and helps IT and SecOps teams in making informed decisions, enhancing their tooling and reporting capabilities, and automating intricate tasks.
“Cisco is harnessing AI to reframe how organisations think about cybersecurity outcomes and tip the scales in favor of defenders. Cisco combines AI with its breadth of telemetry across the network, private and public cloud infrastructure, applications, internet, email, and endpoints. “
Jeetu Patel | VP security and collaboration | Cisco
Cisco say that their Cisco AI Assistant for Security is a major step forward in making artificial intelligence relevant and pervasive in the Cisco Security Cloud – their unified, AI-driven, cross-domain security platform. Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center will be the first platform to leverage the AI Assistant for Security to simplify firewall management.
This should make it much easier to manage and maintaining firewall rules and policies, by enabling administrators to “talk to and administer” the platform to with natural language to find policies, understand rules, spot anonomises and even get suggestions for new rules.
How AI Assistant for Security is different to Microsoft SecurityCopilot?
Scope
Cisco AI Assistant for Security and Microsoft Security Copilot are both artificial intelligence tools that are designed to help IT and SecOps teams work do efficiently, smarter and safer users work faster, but the platforms and services are different in several ways when comparing to Microsoft Security Copilot.
Cisco’s AI assistant is designed to work across (initially) their firewall services (with other services that make up the Cisco Secure Cloud portfolio coming later), Microsoft Security Copilot is designed to assist cybersecurity professionals in investigating critical incidents across their entire security portfolio including Microsoft 365, their XDR platform, Azure and Sentinel. Microsoft Security Copilot doesn’t work across physical security devices like firewalls so the two services are potentially good complementing services.
Microsoft has combined the power of OpenAI’s large language model with Microsoft’s own threat analysis footprints which is informed by more than 100 different data sources across Microsoft 365,Azure and hundreds of this party data analysis companies. It uses the combined intelligence of more than 65 trillion threat signals every day to provide company and sector specific insights, alerts and guidance.
Use Cases
Currently AI Assistant for Security is designed to help organisations better configure their security services (starting with firewalls), detect inconsistencies (for example across different sites, service or offices). This will expand over time however and we expect more to be annouced in Feb 2024 at Cisco Live in Amsterdam.
Use cases for Microsoft Security Copilot include for example the ability to allow admins to use prompting language prompting to ask Copilot to acreste an exec level report on an incident response for a particular ongoing investigation. Copilot will pull data across multiple sources based on the set of interrelated and connected tools and services. Another change of prompt for example could the see Copilot provide more information, change how it displays or summarises the report, or even create lessons learned documents or suggest changes in process.
Cost
According to Cisco, the AI assistant for Security will be generally available for firewall customers in the spring of 2024 at no additional cost via the cloud-delivered Firewall Management Center (FMC) and expanding to other management tools in the future.
Microsoft Security Copilot, however, which is currently in paid public preview is expected to cost >$100k when it’s officially availabily later this year.
A better together story?
As you can see the Cisco and Microsoft’s offering in this space is quite different. While Cisco see their AI Assistant for Security as a way of differentiating their brand in the cyber security space and to leap ahead of the competition in this traditional secoery space (think Palo, HPE, Dell, Checkpoint etc), Microsoft Security Copilot is more geared towards collating security signals from the organisations configuration, reports and signals from Microsoft’s own threat intelligence of 65 Trillion signals, the organisations configuration and third party connected signals to provide almost an AI powered cyber security team.
I very much see this as a “use both” better together theme.
Closing Thoughts
According to Gartner, Configuration complexity and inconsistent rules are among the highest cause of security risks and breaches when it comes to configuring networks and firewalls with misconfiguration being the cause of nintey nine percent (99%) of all firewall breaches.
As such, launching this with a “firewall first” approach is a sensible move by Cisco to add more value to their offering through the use of embedding generative AI into their core security product base without adding a surcharge or making it “Premium”. It should help to further position Cisco as a Leader in the security space against the fierce completion. I look forward to this being available and for Cisco to increase it’s reach over time to the rest of their portfolio.
Read more
You can learn more about Microsoft Security Copilot at and Cisco’s AI assistant below.
Hello, followers and subscribers! As the year comes to an end, I want to take a moment to thank you for your support and interest in my blog. It has been a busy and exciting year in tech and I hope you enjoyed reading my posts which focussed mainly around AI, Modern Work, Cloud Security, Windows and Surface.
In my last blog post before Christmas, I will recap some of the highlights of what I posted about throughout 2023. Let’s take a look at what news and info I shared this year.
If you dont currently read or subscribe to my blog you can tune in or subscribe here.
January 2023
I kicked of the new year with ISE event, some news around Microsoft’sd Secyriuty revenue, the MVP programme and Cisco and Microsoft’s partnership around collaboration.
Cisco and Microsoft Teams partnership: The blog discusses the significance and benefits of the collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft to enable Cisco devices to run both Webex and Teams seamlessly without a reboot¹[1].
Microsoft’s security revenue and market share: The blog reports on Microsoft’s impressive growth in the cybersecurity market, driven by its integrated and comprehensive security portfolio and partner ecosystem.
Teams Premium features and pricing: The blog explains what Teams Premium is, how it differs from the standard Teams license, and how much it costs for different currencies.
Microsoft’s cloud price harmonisation: The blog informs about Microsoft’s plan to align the pricing of its cloud products and services across the globe based on the US dollar exchange rate, and how customers can prepare for it²[2].
Windows Insider MVP award and program: The blog shares the author’s personal experience and excitement of being re-awarded as a Windows Insider MVP, and invites others to join the Windows Insider Program and nominate potential MVPs.
February 2023
In february 2023, we sawe Cisco Contact Centre certified for Teams and a new Teams client announced (which is now generally available). I also found my old RM Tablet PC (running Windows XP tablet and did a quick recap review). Here is a summary of all the things I blogged about in Feb 23:
Microsoft Teams new client: The blog reports that Microsoft is working on a new version of Teams that will be faster, more efficient, and more stable than the current one. The new version will use Webview2 and React technologies and will be available in preview soon.
Webex Contact Center for Teams: The blog announces that Cisco Webex Contact Center has received official Microsoft Teams certification, which means that it can integrate seamlessly with Teams to provide enterprise-class customer service across multiple channels. The blog explains the benefits of this integration for both Microsoft and Cisco, as well as for organisations, partners, and customers.
Yealink DeskVision A24: The blog reviews a new all-in-one collaboration device from Yealink that combines a 24 inch 4K touch-display, a pop-up camera, a speaker, a wireless charger, and a touch screen monitor. The device is certified for both Teams and Zoom and offers a premium desktop collaboration experience. The blog praises the device’s design, functionality, and value.
RM Tablet PC: The blog revisits an old RM Tablet PC from 2002 that ran Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, which was a special edition of Windows XP designed for pen-sensitive screens. The blog credits the RM Tablet PC and Windows XP Tablet PC Edition for introducing and innovating the touch and tablet computing world that we now take for granted. The blog also reflects on the evolution of tablet devices and operating systems since then such as Microsoft Surface Pro.
March 2023
March was a busy month. We saw the Cisco and Microsoft partnership expand, talked about how Cisco Thousand Eyes is a vital tool for troubsleooting and managing the end user expewrience in the world of remote work and SaaS applications, chewed the fat over Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop, covered new AI features coming to Windows 11 and of course, covered the huge announcement about the upcoming Microsoft 365 Copilot. Here’s some of the things I talked about:
Microsoft and Cisco partnership: The blog starts with the announcement of the certification of Cisco Board Pro to run Microsoft Teams Rooms natively, as well as supporting Webex. This is part of the ongoing collaboration between Microsoft and Cisco to provide interoperability and seamless experiences for their customers.
Surface Hub 2S update: The blog then mentions the new version of Windows that will ship with the next generation of Surface Hub 2S devices, called Teams Rooms on Windows. This will feature a new user interface, unified management, and new collaborative features such as FrontRow and Copilot for Teams.
New Teams app for Windows: The blog also covers the new preview version of the Teams app for Windows, which is said to be faster, more efficient, and more streamlined. The new app also includes the foundations for new AI-powered experiences, such as Copilot for Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft 365 Copilot: The blog introduces Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new AI assistant that leverages large language models and Microsoft Graph data to help users with natural language queries, tasks, insights, and content creation across Microsoft 365 apps and services.
ThousandEyes by Cisco: The blog explains how ThousandEyes by Cisco is a digital end user experience monitoring solution that helps ensure optimal performance of SaaS apps and cloud services for employees and customers. It also compares it with Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365.
Windows 11 updates: The blog concludes with a summary of the latest updates and features coming to Windows 11 in 2023, such as Taskbar enhancements, Energy Recommendations, File Explorer improvements, and Moment updates.
April 2023
April saw me talk more about updated to Windows 11 and Windows 365 (including Windows 365 Boot), a review of the gorgeous Surface Pro 9 5G, new AI features in Widnows 11 and Surface and the lauch of Mcirosoft Designer in preview.
Windows 11 Insider builds: New features and fixes for Windows 11, including a revamped widget board, spatial audio support, and Windows Studio Effects.
May 2023, saw Microsoft Announce Fabric – their new data analtics platform for the AI era, Windows Copilot (the neg gen Clippy/Cortana for Windows 11) and a in depth comparison of ChatGPT vs Bing Chat (now, Copilot). Here are the summaries of the blog posts in order:
Windows Copilot: The Cortana that never was. This post discusses the new Windows Copilot feature that will bring AI to the forefront of Windows 11. Copilot will live in the Windows sidebar and offer contextual actions and suggestions based on what’s on screen. Users will also be able to ask natural language questions and Copilot will respond much like Bing Chat. Copilot will also support third-party plugins that use OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, enabling cross-application tasks and generative AI capabilities.
Bing Chat vs ChatGPT: Why Bing Chat is better. This post compares and contrasts Bing Chat and ChatGPT, two natural language chatbots that use OpenAI’s GPT technology. The post argues that Bing Chat is superior to ChatGPT in several aspects, such as speed, accuracy, quality, capability, and accessibility. The post also highlights some of the unique features of Bing Chat, such as web search, image search, image creation, conversation modes, and integration with other Microsoft apps and services.
June 2023
June 2023, I talked about how Microsoft is helping defend Ukraine from Cyber Attacks from Russia, the death of Internet Explorer and Windows Autopatch. We also looked at the massive changes to Cisco’s Cloud managed network infrastructure solutions.
Here are the summaries of the blog posts in order:
Microsoft shares lessons from Ukraine cyber war. This post talks about how Microsoft helped Ukraine defend against Russian cyberattacks and information operations, and what insights they gained from this experience.
Cisco brings Catalyst to the Meraki cloud. This post announced that Cisco was introducing a new option for customers to manage their Catalyst switches and access points using the Cisco Meraki cloud dashboard. This was announced at Cisco Live 2023.
Microsoft announces Viva Sales. This post introduces a new intelligent service that connects customer data across any CRM into Teams and Office and fills many of the gaps left by legacy CRM platforms. This was the latest additon to the Microsoft’s Viva suite.
Internet Explorer is officially dead: This post marks the end of life of Internet Explorer, the once dominant web browser that was released in 1995. It explains what end of life means for users, and why they should switch to Microsoft Edge or other modern browsers. It also reviews the history of Internet Explorer, its decline in market share, and its legacy features that are still supported by Edge.
Microsoft acquires Milburo: This post reveals that Microsoft has agreed to acquire Milburo, a world leader in foreign threat analysis and research detection services. It states that Milburo will join Microsoft’s Customer Security and Trust organisation, and will enhance Microsoft’s threat detection and analysis capabilities.
Microsoft launches software updates dashboard: This post unveils a new software updates dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center that enables IT to get a unified overview of the installation status of Windows and Microsoft 365 app updates across all their devices. It shows how the dashboard provides charts and statistics on update status and end of service, and how it supports both fully managed and monitored only devices. It also provides links to further information and instructions on how to enable the preview.
Windows Autopatch reaches public preview: This post announces that Windows Autopatch, a service to automatically keep Windows and Microsoft 365 up to date in enterprise organisations, has now reached public preview. It describes how Windows Autopatch shifts the update orchestration burden from the IT department to Microsoft, and how it provides features such as testing rings, halt and rollback, and expedited updates. I also covered prerequisites, licensing, and features of the service, and how to join the preview.
July 2023
The second part of the year, kicked off with pricing being announced for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft renaming Azure AD to Entra ID and Bing Chat Enterprise (a commercial grade version of Bing Chat) being made available free to Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise Customers.
Bing Chat Enterprise: A new version of Bing Chat that is secure and private for work, powered by generative AI. It can be accessed from Microsoft Edge, Windows 11, or bing.com/chat. It is free for existing Microsoft 365 customers or $5 per user per month as a standalone version.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Pricing: An AI powered service that brings generative AI features into Microsoft 365 apps and services. It is currently in a closed private preview and will cost $30 per user per month for commercial customers on top of their Microsoft 365 licenses.
Orca AI: A new open-sourced AI model that can imitate the reasoning of large foundation models like GPT-4 in a much smaller footprint. It is designed to solve the limitations of using smaller language models and revolutionise the AI industry.
Microsoft EntraID: A new brand name for Microsoft’s unified access and security offering, which includes two new products: Entra Private Access and Entra Internet Access. These products are designed to provide identity-centric and zero trust network access to any app or resource, from anywhere. Azure Active Directory is also renamed to Entra ID.
August 2023
In August (while many of were on summer holidays), I gave some key tips o Microsoft 365 Copilot based on feedback and questions from customers, talked about Microsoft’s upcoming Surface and Windows 11 event, highlighed key things from Cisco’s latest Network Trends report.
Here are the summaries of the three blog posts on this page:
5 things you need to know about Microsoft 365 Copilot: This post covered the main features and benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new AI-powered assistant that can help users with various tasks across Microsoft 365 apps. It also discussed the pricing, availability, and preparation for Copilot, as well as the potential drawbacks and limitations of AI-generated content.
New devices? More AI? What is coming to Windows 11 and Surface?: This post speculates on what Microsoft we going to announce at their “special event” on September 21st, 2023. It expects that Microsoft will unveil new Surface products, such as Surface Laptop Studio 2, Surface Laptop Go 3, and Surface Go 4, as well as highlight the recent advancements in AI, such as Windows Copilot, Bing Chat Enterprise, and Windows Studio Effects.
Cisco adds ransomware detection and recovery to their XDR system: This post reports on Cisco’s new solution that integrates their Extended Detection and Response (XDR) system with Cohesity’s DataProtect and DataHawk offerings to provide ransomware detection and recovery support. It explains how this solution can help organisations protect and restore their data in the event of a ransomware attack, and how it fits into Cisco’s comprehensive security portfolio.
Key highlights from Cisco network Trends Report. The blog post discusses the 2023 Global Networking Trends Report by Cisco, which covers some of the emerging networking trends in the multi-cloud world, and how they affect the IT operations and security of organisations and highlights the challenges and opportunities of hybrid work and multi-cloud adoption, such as providing secure access to applications distributed across multiple cloud platforms, gaining end-to-end visibility into network performance and security, and adopting a SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) model that delivers simplified and consistent security and performance for multi-cloud access and hybrid work. I also covered an overview of the Cisco products that can help organisations address many of the challenges of multi-cloud networking and security, such as Cisco SD-WAN, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Cloudlock, and Cisco SASE.
September 2023
This was a busy month of blogging. I talked about the Meta and Microsoft partnership, availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot for “some customers”, Cisco’s aquistion of Splunk, New AI features in Surface and Windows, Microsoft Copilot “copyright” protection, changes to E5 licensing with more Security included and more.
Here are the key things talked about in each blog post on this page:
Meta AI to use Microsoft Bing: This post discusses the expanded AI partnership between Microsoft and Meta, which will integrate Bing Search into Meta’s AI chat experiences, such as ChatGPT, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
Microsoft Mesh entered public preview in October: This post introduces Microsoft Mesh, a new 3D immersive experience that will be surfaced through Microsoft Teams. It explains how Mesh can help blur the lines between the physical and virtual space, and how to get started with it.
Microsoft unveils the Surface Hub 3: This post explores the features and benefits of Surface Hub 3, the latest all-in-one hybrid meeting and collaboration device that combines the best of Microsoft Teams Rooms, Windows, and Surface Hub. It also compares it to Surface Hub 2S and explains how to upgrade from it.
Cisco to Aquire Splunk: This post reports the news that Cisco will acquire Splunk, a cybersecurity and observability platform, for $28 billion. It describes how the acquisition will help Cisco create the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability solutions.
Microsoft announces Microsoft 365 Copilot availabilty: This post announces the availability and pricing of Microsoft 365 Copilot, a new AI assistant that helps users with various tasks across Microsoft 365 apps and services. It also covers the features and benefits of Copilot in Windows, Bing, and Microsoft Shopping.
Windows 365 get’s top spot in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. – where I discussed that Microsoft had been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Desktop as a Service (DaaS), which is the provision of virtual desktops by a public cloud or service provider. We covered their Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop platforms and Microsoft’s unique position in this space.
October 2023
October saw me talk more about the ROI of Microsoft Copilot, the new vision for Micrsosoft OneDrive, Teams Town Hall, major updates to Bing Image Creator and the end of support (RIP) for Windows Server 2012!
OneDrive 3.0 Update: This post announces a major update for OneDrive, which includes a new design, AI features, and more. It also explains how to get started with OneDrive Town Hall, a new experience for large-scale events that replaces Live Events.
Teams Town Hall: This post introduces Teams Town Hall, a new feature that allows users to host various types of internal and external events, such as company-wide town halls, all hands, global team meetings, etc. It also describes the advanced production capabilities, the structured approach for attendee engagement, and the unified experience for users that Teams Town Hall offers.
Windows 11 Moment 4 Update: This post highlights the new features and improvements that are rolling out with the latest feature update for Windows 11. It includes a new File Explorer design, Copilot for Windows, a new AI assistant, improvements to the Taskbar, and notable in-box app updates.
Windows Server 2012 End of Support: This post reminds users that support for Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 ended on 10th Oct 234. It also provides some options for users to upgrade, purchase Extended Security Updates, or migrate to Azure.
Bing Image Creator: This post showcases the new Bing Image Creator, which uses OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 to generate high-quality, creative, and realistic images from natural language prompts. It also explains how to use Bing Image Creator and how it provides improved safety and ethics with content credentials and content moderation system.
Microsoft 365 CoPilot: What is the ROI? – This talked about availability and pricing of Copilot, and went into looking at examples around the ROI. We explored how it can help with productivity, creativity, and decision-making for users who can leverage its features and capabilities and looked at some numbers. We also covered the need to adopt Copilot in the right way – proper planning, training, support, and data management to ensure successful adoption and measurable outcomes.
News about the key annoucements at Microsoft Envision: this was a review of the key things announced at Microsoft’s AI event in London in 2023. I talked about my take on the keynote speeches and what we have and what is coming in this esciting world of AI.
November 2023
Another busy month of news – it never slows down. In November I talked about my hands on experiences with Windows 365, Copilot coming to Windows 10, all the new “Copilots” Microsoft announced at Ignite, new Apps in Teams and did a demo and walk through of Copilkot Studio. I also shared my view on why “everyone” needs a Surface Pro for work!! I also shared details of major updates coming to Cisco’s partner programme in 2024.
Here is a summary of my key blog posts:
Cisco Announce major changes to Partner Programme in 2024. In this blog, I talk about Cisco’s new partner incentive programme that rewards partners for selling Cisco hardware, software and as-a-service solutions, as well as driving customer adoption and growth of subscriptions and a new set of specialisations to help identify and reward key partners.
Intro and demo of Microsoft Copilot Studio: An overview of Microsoft Copilot Studio, a new platform that allows Microsoft 365 customers to build their own generative AI copilots and custom GPTs. I included a step-by-step guide on how to create a simple copilot using a website as a data source, and showed how to test and publish it.
Copilot coming to Windows 10: We see Microsoft announce that Copilot is coming soon to Windows 10 devices – we look at the hardware requirements, the availability, and the benefits of using Copilot on older devices.
In the the last month of 2023 (a short month for many), I closed the year with a post about the Cisco and Microsoft “better together” story and invited people to register for our event in January at our new Client Exdperience Centre, gave tips on writing AI prompts, talked about Google’s Gemini AI (the ChatGPT compete), talked more about Designer and Image Creation, updates to Copilot with GPT4 Turbo, and highlighted the results of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for UCaaS. We also talk about Mcirosoft investment in the UK for AI data centres and charges coming for Windows 10 support beyond 2025.
Cisco and Microsoft: Simplifying Enterprise Collaboration. This post discusses how Cisco and Microsoft have partnered to enable Cisco’s Webex video devices to connect to Microsoft Teams meeting services, and how this collaboration benefits customers who use both platforms.
Prompt Engineering: AI prompts that punch! This post provides some tips on how to write and perfect good AI prompts for generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, including how to be specific, provide context, use simple language, and experiment with different variations.
Teams meetings, webinars and Townhalls. What to use when. This post explains the differences and use cases of three distinct formats of virtual events in Teams: meetings, webinars, and town halls. It also outlines the key features and considerations of each format.
Microsoft and Cisco: Leaders in the UCaaS Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant This post summarises the highlights of the Gartner 2023 Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, where Microsoft and Cisco are both Leaders. It also compares their strengths and weaknesses in terms of messaging, meetings, telephony, contact center, and pricing.
What is Google Gemini and when is it available? This post introduces Google Gemini, a new AI-powered search engine that aims to provide more relevant and personalised results for users. It also discusses the features and benefits of Google Gemini, such as semantic understanding, contextual awareness, and conversational interface. It says that Google Gemini is expected to launch in mid-2024.
Goodbye 2023 – Hello to an AI Powered 2024
That’s it for my year in review! I hope you enjoyed reading it, maybe learned something new or useful from it or saw different perspective.
I want to thank you again for your support and interest in my blog and for being part of my journey. I appreciate your comments, likes, shares, and feedback and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.
In 2023, we witnessed the dawn of a new era, where AI became an integral part of our everyday lives, enabling us to accomplish things beyond our imagination. This era is as significant as the inception of the personal computer, the start of the world wide web, mobile phones, and cloud in the previous decades. What new opportunities and challenges will AI bring us in 2024?
I wish you all a Happy New Year! May 2024 bring you health, happiness, and success in all your endeavors!
Gartner this week published their 2023 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service. The full report from Gartner details all the players across all quadrants. This blog is a summary of the highlights from this report on the strengths and weaknesses across both Microsoft and Cisco – who have been in the top right quadrant for many years.
2023 – Key Unified Comms Trends – by Gartner
Gartner’s report identifies an increasing demand for bundles UCaaS and CCaaS solutions, along with the continued growing popularity and demand for Microsoft Teams for voice, meetings and messaging. They also point out the growing importance of CPaaS for customisation and integration, and the changing preferences of users moving more towards collaboration rather than telephony and dial-tone calling. There are five leaders in the 2023 magic quadrant ranked in the following order:
Microsoft
Ring Central
Zoom
Cisco
8×8
I have summarised the core two vendors I work closely with below
Summary of Microsoft’s Position in 2023
Microsoft Positioning: Microsoft remain 1st – top right in the leader’s quadrant with the gap between their competitors increasing. They continue to grow their market share and this year have seen more vendors join their partner eco system for phones and meeting rooms including Cisco.
Microsoft’s strengths: Microsoft Teams is the most popular choice in the UCaaS market, especially for organisations that are already using it for messaging and meetings. Microsoft Teams’ telephony capabilities satisfy the requirements of most organisations, and Microsoft has invested have many options to bring telephony into Teams including their own calling plans, direct routing, direct routing as a service and more recently in Operator Connect services. Microsoft has strong financial health and a long track record as a UC/UCaaS vendor. Their seamless integration into both Microsoft 365 and vast extensibility has been a key ingredient for its continued success.
Microsoft’s cautions: Microsoft Teams Phone still has some gaps in advanced telephony features, which require third-party solutions or integrations – though it is noted that they are working to close these. Gartner also points out that Microsoft does not offer a self-developed contact center solution for Teams which requires customers to choose from a wide range of varying solutions and levels of integration. Gartner also calls out that Microsoft’s availability SLA target for core UC services (other than PSTN) is lower than most of the UCaaS market.
Summary of Cisco’s Positioning in 2023
Cisco Positioning: Cisco remain in the top right quadrant (4th out of 5) but have been over-taken recently by pureplay UCaaS vendors including Zoom and RingCentral. They remain a solid UCaaS vendor with quality products and services.
Cisco’s strengths: Gartner credit Cisco as one of the few UCaaS vendors that can deliver a complete, self-developed UC portfolio, including hardware, software, and cloud services. They call out that Cisco has deep expertise and investments in security, regulatory, and industry-specific capabilities and certifications. Cisco has also made big improvements in its Webex Control Hub for unified management, making it a competitive option for large and/or highly distributed multinational organisations.
Cisco’s cautions: Gartner say that Cisco’s offering is perceived to be more expensive than its competitors, and its pricing strategy is not very aggressive. Cisco’s Webex contact center solution, whilst suitable for small or midsize contact centres, is not best choice for large, high-volume ones. Cisco faces continued fierce competition from other UCaaS vendors that offer collaboration capabilities to its existing customers, and many have also partnered with Microsoft to provide more choice.
The following table shows a comparison of the vendor, strengths and cautions:
Vendor
Strengths
Cautions
Microsoft
Popular and growing choice for voice, messaging and meetings
Satisfactory telephony capabilities
Strong integration with their own- and third-party apps and services.
Strong financial health and track record with loyal customer base.
Gaps in advanced telephony features
No self-developed contact center option
Lower availability SLA target
Confusing PSTN options
Cisco
Complete, self-developed UC portfolio
Deep expertise and investments in security and regulatory
Strong unified management for large and distributed organisations
Perceived to be more expensive than competitors with complicated discount schemes
Contact center solution not suitable for large, high-volume ones
Vast competition from other UCaaS vendors for collaboration
Summary of Cisco and Microsoft in 2023 Garner MQ for UCaaS
Summary
In summary, this report evaluates the UCaaS providers based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. Microsoft and Cisco are both Leaders in this Magic Quadrant, but they have different strengths and weaknesses.
Gartner say that Microsoft excels in messaging and meetings but lacks advanced telephony features without third parties and has no native contact center solution.
Gartner say that Cisco offers a comprehensive UC portfolio but is more costly and less competitive in contact center. They also have fierce competition amidst the continued growth of Teams and pure play UCaaS providers.
At Cisco’s 2023 Partner Summit this week, Cisco annouced a massive shakeup in their partner incentive programme. I my experience (and from the partners I work with), this makes Cisco’s incentive programme really stand out as top in class, in terms of where and how partners are rewarded.
In short, this new Partner Incentive is based-on three areas.
Rebates for one-time sales deals.
Incentives for recurring business.
Additional rebates for driving customer value services such as driving adoption and increasing subscription volumes (seats).
Inventives aligned to Cloud
Cisco said that they are transforming the partner program to align with its transition to more software and services-based offerings.
The new Cisco Partner Incentive programme is designed to reward partners for selling Cisco hardware, software and as-a-service solutions by aligning the rebates paid, based on total contract value, customer adoption and growth of the subscriptions they have bought. This will help ensure Cisco partners work more closely with their customers (as against one off deals) to ensure their customers buy it, use it and grow it, rather than just focusing on selling product.
This is a similar approach that longer standing cloud vendors such as Microsoft use to drive usage and adoption of their products and services.
The Cisco Partner Incentive is the biggest change we’ve made to partner incentives in more than a decade and is the capstone on the Cisco partner programme evolution started in 2020.
Marc Surplus |VP partner programs|Cisco
The new icentives will also better support their partners to acquiring new logos, for up selling additional cisco products and services and for cross selling into other accounts. Partner that offer and upsell “Cisco Powered Managed Services” will also receive increased rebates.
Skills Shortages driving Managed Service Demand
Cisco estimates that the managed services market for its products is worth $161 billion, and expects 46% of its sales to be sold as a managed service by 2027.
More and more organisations are turning to trusted Cisco Partners to look after support and maintaining their technology and help drive adoption of technologies to increase ROI and usage across their organisations.
New Specialisations to differentiate the top partners
To help partners differentiate in the market and demonstrate their expertise, Cisco is also introducing up to six new solution specialisations within the next nine months. These will cover areas such as cloud, security, collaboration, IoT, data center and enterprise networking.
Cisco is also enhancing its partner experience platform (known as PXP) with new features which include as a new sustainability estimator, that will enable partners to calculate and present their customers with environmental and cost benefits of modernising their IT hardware with the latest technology. This will made available only to environmental sustainability specialised partners.
Cisco is also introducing new Partner Advanced Support for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) along with guided access to API integrations that build on MSPs’ existing services and integrate into their operation and support services platforms such as Service Now.
New partner program starts H2 2024
The new Cisco Partner Incentive is expected to begin in the second half of 2024, and will replace the existing Value Incentive Program (VIP) and VIP Annuity.
Designed for everybody to wins
Cisco says the new incentive will provide more predictability and profitability for partners, as well as more value for customers. This is great news for partners like us (Cisilion) as it helps us drive more value for customers, while keeping prices for product and services low in an ever more competitive landscape.
Rewarding partners for growth and adoption of Cisco products helps ensure customer leverage maximum value and ROI of their investment, ensures partners continue to add value and that Cisco (hopefully) retain and grow their market share across their extensive product portfolio.
With the $28B aquisition now complete between Cisco and Splunk, both vendors will soon be in heavy marketing mode as they position their new combined offerings …
Starting later this month (April 2024) , Microsoft will rollout an configuration setting called Restricted SharePoint Search (RSS) that will allow Global/Tenant and SharePoint Admins to …
Cisco has announced that it will acquire Splunk, a cybersecurity and observability platform platform for $28 billion.
Cisco say that acquisition is expected to help them create the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability solutions, moving organisations from threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention.
This will help build on the extensive full stack observability platforms Cisco have already including Thousand Eyes and Cisco App Dymanics.
We’re excited to bring Cisco and Splunk together. Our combined capabilities will drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability…. From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient.”
Chuck Robbins | CEO | Cisco
This is the biggest acquisition in Cisco’s history and a massive push into software and artificial intelligence-powered data analysis. With three two complimentary services coming together it should help Cisco achieve it’s mission to “securely connect everything to make anything possible, and move from threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention”.
Splunk President and CEO Gary Steele will join Cisco’s Executive Leadership Team reporting to Chuck Robbins.
What is Cisco’s Full Stack Observability offering?
Cisco’s Full-Stack Observability (FSO) solutions bring together performace and availability data from on-premises, cloud and SaaS applications allowing organisations to monitor traditional and modern applications, track performance of cloud-native applications, and correlate network metrics with application performance data and provide real-time insights and recommended actions for any performance related issues along with the potential. Impact to the business.
Cisco Full-Stack Observability is comprised of a single platform that brings together multiple solutions such including AppDynamics, ThousandEyes, and Cisco Secure Application. Splunk will soon be added to this!
The platform is open and extensible, API-driven, focused on OpenTelemetry, and anchored on Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces (MELT).
You can find more information about Cisco Full-Stack Observability solutions on the Cisco website
Cisco has added ransomware detection and recovery support to its recently unveiled Extended Detection and Response (XDR) system.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts the end user’s device and data and demands a ransom for its decryption. Ransomware attacks can cause considerable damage to businesses and organisations, disrupting their operations and compromising their data. To combat this threat, Cisco has now introduced a new solution that integrates with their new Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solution with Cohesity’s DataProtect and DataHawk offerings.
Cisco’s XDR system is a cloud-based platform that combines multiple security products and telemetry sources to detect, analyse, and respond to threats across the network and endpoints. As Cisco announced the General Availability of their XDR platform, they also announce that they have added ransomware detection and recovery support to their XDR system, enabling Security Operations Center (SOC) teams to automatically protect and restore business-critical data in the event of a ransomware attack.
This feature is made possible by integrating Cisco’s XDR system with Cohesity’s DataProtect and DataHawk offerings, which are well established and trusted, infrastructure and enterprise data backup and recovery solutions. These provide configurable recovery points and mass recovery for systems assigned to a protection plan and can preserve potentially infected virtual machines for forensic investigation and protect enterprise workloads from future attacks.
Cisco said that the exponential growth of ransomware and cyber extortion has made a platform approach crucial to effectively counter adversaries. It also noted that during the second quarter of 2023, the Cisco Talos Incident Response team responded to the highest number of ransomware engagements in more than a year.
The integration of Cisco’s XDR system and Cohesity’s solutions is designed to help Security Operations Centre (SOC) teams and IT to automatically detect, snapshot, and restore business-critical data at the very first signs of a ransomware outbreak; often before it has had a chance to move laterally through the network to reach the high–value assets.
In the announcement, Cisco and Cohesity said that they already have a long-standing partnership, with over 460 joint customers. Cisco have said that the Cohesity Cloud Services package will also be able to be sold by their Cisco channel partners like Cisilionlater in 2023. The Cohesity Cloud Services include data security and management as well as threat defense, data isolation and backup/recovery. Cisco have also said that the software can be deployed and hosted on both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) via their marketplaces.
This brings more features to Cisco’s XDR service (a competitive landscape where they compete against the likes of Microsoft, Sentinel One and Palo Alto) and brings together a myriad first-party Cisco, and third-party security products to control network access, analyse incidents, remediate threats, and automate response all from a single cloud-based interface. The offering gathers six telemetry sources that SOC operators say are critical for an XDR solution: endpoint, network, firewall, email, identity, and DNS, Cisco stated in the announcement.
Part of Cisco’s growing Security Portfolio
The Cisco Security portfolio is a comprehensive set of solutions that work together to provide seamless interoperability with your security infrastructure, including third-party technologies. Their growing portfolio covers various aspects of security, such as network security, user and endpoint protection, cloud edge, advanced malware protection, email security, web security and workload security. The Cisco XDR system is part of this portfolio and integrates with other Cisco products and services to detect, analyse, and respond to threats across the network and endpoints.
Cisco XDR system can leverage the threat intelligence from Cisco Talos – the cloud-based platform known as Cisco SecureX, as well as the backup and recovery solutions from Cohesity to provide a powerful and proactive defense against ransomware and other advanced threats. Cisco XDR system also supports third-party integrations with other security vendors, including Microsoft, Splunk and many others.
Cisco have, and continue to invest heavily in their end-to-end security portfolio and their XDR solution (as of December 2022) is on the cusp of moving into the Leaders Quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection.
Cisco's XDR play competes against other industry leading XDR vendors including Sentinel One Microsoft Defender, Crowdstrike Falcon, Palo Alto Cortex XDR and Trend Micro Vision One.
Cisco are on the verge of become a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection.
Conclusion
Ransomware is a serious threat that requires a comprehensive and proactive solution. Cisco’s XDR system, integrated with Cohesity’s DataProtect and DataHawk offerings, provides a powerful way to detect, prevent, and recover from ransomware attacks.
For organisations with a fragmented security portfolio and those heavily invested in Cisco infrastructure, Cisco’s XDR can be an excellent choice for organisations that need to increase visibility and simplify the detection and remediation time with the integration of XDR with the rest of their Cisco Security portfolio – enhancing the visibility, automation, and effectiveness of security operations.
Cisco has just published their 2023 Global Networking Trends Report. This report covers some of the emerging networking trends in the multi-cloud world, and how they affect the IT operations and security of organisations. The report is twenty-one pages long and covers some interesting trends and observations from more than 2,500 IT leaders in 13 countries across North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Western Europe (including the UK).
Image (c) Cisco
My key take aways from the report
Hybrid work and multi-cloud adoption are driving the need for innovative approaches to securely connect remote workers to corporate data and assets distributed across multi-cloud environments with a huge need (40% of respondents) to de-silo operations and bring together network and security controls and visibility.
Cisco says that “providingsecure access to applicationsdistributed across multiple cloud platforms” is the top challenge cited by 41% of networking professionals, followed by gaining end-to-end visibility into network performance and security (37%).
Growth and demand for SASE. SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) is a convergence architecture that delivers simplified and consistent security and performance for multi-cloud access and hybrid work. Cisco are a leading vendor in the SASE space which combines SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) and SSE (Security Service Edge) into a single, integrated SaaS security offering.
In the report, Cisco highlighted that 47% of respondents expect to connect their branches and remote clients using a SASE model by mid 2025, while 59% said that they will be prioritising centralising and consolidating cloud security over the same period.
Extending SD-WAN connectivity consistently across multiple clouds can automate cloud-agnostic connectivity and optimize the application experience. 53% of respondents prioritise integration with cloud service providers for this purpose5.
End-to-end network visibility and predictive analytics are essential for ensuring a consistent user experience across the complex digital service delivery chain, especially around SaaS apps with 51% of respondents prioritising end-to-end network telemetry and visibility. 47% of respondents said they will be prioritising predictive network analytics.
More organisations are multi-cloud than ever before with 92% of organisations reporting that they use more than one public cloud service (includes SaaS, IaaS and PaaS).
How Cisco Technology can help address these challenges
Cisco provide a comprehensive portfolio of products that can help organisations address many of the challenges of multi-cloud networking and security which fall into the SASE and SD-WAN categories. These include:
Cisco SD-WAN with edge security stack or SD-WAN with Umbrella Cloud Security (SASE) both leverage the Cisco Identity Service Engine’s Security Group Access Control Lists for segmentation policy management and enforcement across the WAN.
Cisco SD-WAN integrated with Cisco Umbrella SIG for a cloud-delivered SASE model that seamlessly secures access wherever users and applications reside.
Cisco Cloudlock, – Cisco’s cloud-native cloud access security broker (CASB) that helps secure your use of SaaS applications
The Cisco SD-WAN and these SSE collaborations provide a range of SASE deployment options for our Partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), allowing them to utilize a mix of networking and cloud security solutions to offer multiple managed options to enterprises at various stages of their SASE journey 3.
Cisco Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a cloud-native platform that combines SD-WAN, SWG (Secure Web Gateway), ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access), DNS-layer security, CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker).
The table below shows the key challenges discussed in the report and the corresponding solutions from Cisco that can help address them:
Challenge
Solution
Providing secure access to applications distributed across multiple clouds
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), a convergence architecture that delivers simplified and consistent security and performance for multi-cloud access and hybrid work. SASE It combines SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) and SSE (Security Service Edge) within Cisco’s cloud platform
Gaining end-to-end visibility into network performance and security
Cloud-based network detection and response solutions, such as Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics, which provides visibility and threat detection for an organisations’ network across public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.
Extending SD-WAN connectivity consistently across multiple clouds
SD-WAN multi-cloud integrations, which allow networking and cloud teams to accelerate and automate extensions from enterprise sites to various cloud providers and other enterprise sites through Internet, interconnect, or colocation and cloud provider networks.
Siloed cloud, network, and security operations
Cloud-centric operating model, which brings cloud operating model principles to the network and across the entire cloud/network IT stack, enabling more integrated workflows and better collaboration between network, security, and cloud operations.
Visibility into end user experience and performance of multiple Cloud SaaS apps
Cisco ThousandEyes provides real-time and historic view into the availability of thousands of different SaaS apps. It allows IT to monitor all employee’s user’s digital experience against software as a service and on-prem applications, regardless of where users are, through the essential elements of your SASE architecture. With ThousandEyes, organisations can gain back visibility and control over SaaS applications and ensure that they are performing optimally.
Table 1 – How Cisco technology addresses the challenges of securing and managing Networking and Security across multi-cloud environments,
Summary
Cloud is the new data center, Internet is the new network, and cloud offerings dominate applications. By gaining a view of global Internet health and the performance of top SaaS applications, IT teams can proactively detect and remediate major unexpected network or application issues affecting them as soon as they happen.
Based on the report, Cisco say that organisations can mitigate against many of the challenges discussed by adopting a cloud-centric operating model that brings cloud operating model principles to the network and across their entire cloud/network IT stack. This can enable more integrated workflows and better collaboration between network, security, and cloud operations.
Yesterday (6th June 2023) was the first day of Cisco Live which was hosted in Las Vegas.
CEO Chuck Robbins hosted the keynote, along with a host of product leads and Cisco executives who ran through their huge list of updates. The core focus for Cisco and the announcements made, were focussed on security, networking, cloud, AI, and sustainability. Some of the key announcements were:
Updates to their Full Stack Observability Platform (FSO), a cloud-based service that provides comprehensive visibility and insights into applications and networks.
Cisco Cloud Application Security, a new feature of their FSO ⬆️ that monitors and protects cloud applications from threats.
Cisco Networking Cloud, a unified cloud network management platform that simplifies connectivity and security across devices and networks.
Cisco Secure Access, a single sign-on solution that enables users to access any application from any device or network.
Cisco Multicloud Defense, a platform that unifies security controls across clouds and applications, with support for multiple firewalls.
Cisco Secure Firewall 4200, a new, faster, and more reliable firewall that works with their Multicloud Defense service
Cisco SOC Assistant, an AI-powered tool that helps security teams detect and respond to incidents, with optimized remediation tactics.
Cisco Key Themes
Chuck Robbins highlighted, Cisco’s five key themes going forward as:
Reimagine your applications.
Power your hybrid work.
Transform your infrastructure.
Secure your enterprise.
Your journey to sustainability.
Reimagine your applications
The first main product announcement was that of the general availability of Cisco’s Full Stack Observability (FSO) Platform which has been in preview for a few months.
The focus and need for FSO was positioned as the fact that “Every business is a digital business“. She discussed how that while having the right applications is critical to getting work done, they also need to work efficiently for people to be productive, wherever they work. Liz Centoni pointed out that the magnitude of apps used by businesses can “lead to an avalanche of data and insights that can be overwhelming, meaning delays in functions such as threat detection“.
Origibally announced last year, but now available to all, FSO is designed to let organisations gain insights and analytics almost any data source, helping reduce the number of monitoring tools needed, speed up support efforts and keep users online and productive. One of the key use cases for FSO is that in customer digital experience monitoring, whereby Cisco are able to measure predict and monitor the end-to-end user experience across various parts of a customer journey (for example, during an online e-commerce experience).
Joining FSO to Security, Cisco also announced that a new product – Cisco Cloud Application Security, is also coming FSO, which will bring a new layer of security insights into FSO to help understand, see, and act on threats affecting the organisation.
Power your Hybrid Work
The focus on this topic was really blended into Security and FSO which I cover later. There was not much talk about collaboration tools like Webex, though they did say that Webex was remains as a key part of Cisco’s collaboration strategy, which is now able to work seamlessly with Microsoft Teams with their support for Cisco Powered Teams Rooms. Cisco revealed how global organisations like Audi, Carhartt, and MGM Resorts International are using the end-to-end Cisco stack to enable hybrid work and improve productivity.
Journey to Sustainability
Sustainability was a key focus for Cisco, and they publicised a few key initiatives and some major pledges and initiatives to help both Cisco and their customers get greener, recycle more, and ensure sustainability manufacturer, supply chain and lifecycle management. “If you take our technology and put our ecosystem along it, it can help the transition to a modern and low-carbon economy” was a statement given by Cisco Chief Strategy Officer Liz Centoni.
Transform your Infrastructure
Jonathan Davidson, EVP and General Manager of Cisco Networking, announced the launch of Cisco Networking Cloud, a simplified, single cloud network management platform that aims to make cloud networking easier and more secure for organisations. During the announcement he said that Cisco Networking Cloud will provide
Unified experiences across technologies, applications, and networks
Radical simplification through platform consolidation
Cloud-first management with enhanced security and visibility
A simpler design experience with consistent interfaces
Cisco’s claim and message around Cisco Networking Cloud was “If it’s connected – it’s now protected“, and the key focus was about simplicity, with their vision being to bring unified visibility and management covering all an organisations’ technologies, applications, and networks. Cisco said that today, in the most, such unified experiences are being inhibited by operational complexity, but that Cisco is leading the fightback with what he called, “radical simplification“.
Secure your Enterprise
Liz Centoni said, in her presentation that “When it comes to security, we want to frustrate attackers, not users…..giving users safe and easy access to their apps and data“.
Security was the biggest talking point for at the keynote this year and was the topic for the last part of the presentation. The session was led Jeetu Patel, Cisco’s EVP and General Manager of Security & Collaboration. During this part of the keynote, he talked about Cisco’s vision and solutions for network, cloud, and application security. Some of the key points he shared were around how security services needs proper coordination and management to avoid discord and inefficiency – comparing them to an orchestra where everything needs to work in harmony to avoid just being lots of different noises.
Cisco also spoke about the issues and complexities that the traditional patchwork approach of the security has in most organisations and that these point products and solutions typically creates silos and complexity for customers as well increased cost and often areas of little or no protection.
This was used as a hook into announcing Cisco Security Cloud, which is an open, integrated security platform for multi-cloud environments that leverages generative AI capabilities to optimise performance and security of every connection.
Cisco shared how they now observe over four hundred billion security events every day, which provides them intelligence and trends and insights into the threats facing businesses. Cisco talked about the importance of AI within their products sets, which cuts around one hundred billion hours of work in threat detection and mitigation across their customer base.
Cisco emphasised the need for organisations to adopt zero trust and zero friction security, whereby users can connect to any application, from any device, or any network, without compromising on security or having a clunky and difficult user experience. Cisco talked about their Cisco Secure Access, solution – a single sign-on offering that is claimed to “enable seamless connectivity”. Linked to this was Apple iCloud Private Relay an integration with Apple devices and iOS that provides secure access to an organisation’s apps and services with the need to download anything extra on their iOS device. The words “Cisco makes security simple and magical for users” was one of my favourite quotes of the day!
“The world needs security defenses that are completely synchronised, this is what we set out to do – provide a platform for security”
Jeetus Patel | EVP of Security & Collaboration | Cisco
Finally, Cisco talked about the integration of Cisco Secure Access and Thousand Eyes (which is their cloud-based network intelligence platform that provides visibility and insights SaaS applications network performance and user experience. Jeetus Patel, talked about the challenge of securing private and public clouds, which often have different admin consoles, firewalls, and security controls. Cisco said that that their new Cisco Multicloud Defense platform is a new solution that will provide a translation layer to enable seamless communication and unified security across an organisation’s multi-cloud environments.
Cisco also introduced the new Cisco Secure Firewall 4200, a faster (and more energy efficient) offering that improves redundancy and was built alongside their new Multicloud defense platform as well as Cisco SOC Assistant, an AI-powered tool that helps security teams detect and respond to incidents, with optimized remediation tactics.
Did you attend or tune into Cisco Live? What were you most excited about?
Cisco have announced that they are to acquire Armorblox, a leading email security house whose portfolio (which is centred around email protection) includes email security, DLP, data encryption, impersonation protection, fraud protection, URL, and ransomware protection.
What do Armorblox do?
Founded in 2017 and now with over 58,000 customers, Armorblox protects organisations against data loss and targeted email attacks like business email compromise, vendor fraud, and account takeovers. Their tools leverage Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs). They have scored highly in the Gartner Peer Insights report and have invested heavily in their interoperability through APIs.
Armorblox are also part of the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association and has deep integrations with Microsoft Sentinel which will play well with Cisco’s goal to work more closely with Microsoft.
Cisco say that “Through this acquisition though, we see many exciting broad security use cases and possibilities to unlock“.
Armorblox seamlessly integrates over APIs with existing security stacks, making life easier for security teams. Our comprehensive security solution leverages large language models, such as GPT, and a broad set of deep learning algorithms to accurately detect today’s targeted threats, protect key business workflows, and reduce manual work for security teams through automated processes.
Armorblox
Cisilion plan to leverage this investment to bring new AI powered security offerings to their existing portfolio across as well as enable them to leapfrog their competition and offer compelling, integrated, and advanced threat protection.
I’m excited to see the ways in which Cisco leverage this acquisition to bolster security across all their offerings. Assimilating and embedding the technologies they aquire is one of their huge strengths.
At Enterprise Connect this week, Microsoft and Cisco took to stage again (this is now a serious relationship) and annouced that the Cisco Board Pro is now certified to run Microsoft Teams Rooms natively on the device as well contining of course, the ability to still fully support Webex.
Cisco Board Pro offers advanced AI-powered collaboration features that can now be used in Microsoft Teams meetings for the first time. Organisations can join feature-rich, back-to-back Teams and Webex meetings on the same device from the Teams Rooms home screen – with no reboot or reconfiguration required.
The initial partnership was announced back at Microsoft Ignite in October 2022, where a new look harnessing was unveiled in which Cisco are extending the interoperability of their latest hardware and software portfolio with support and full interoperability with Microsoft Teams, empowering their customers with seamless, connected experiences that can be customised to best suit their needs support native Cisco Webex experience, native Teams experience or both worth seemless meeeting switching without reconfiguration or admin intervention.
With this official certification, both the 55-inch and 75-inch models can be configured at set up to run Teams Rooms as the default experience, allowing their customers to experience Teams’ digital workplace with Cisco’s purpose-built video conferencing hardware.
Cisco Board Pro
The Cisco Board Pro joins a list of other devices and peripherals Certified for Teams including the Cisco Desk Camera 4K, the Cisco Headset 320, and the Cisco Headset 720 which I covered in more detail here.
This comes the same week that Microsoft quiet announced the next generation of their Surface Hub devices.
Pricing and availability
55-inch Cisco Board Pro RRP: $13,995
75-inch Cisco Board Pro RRP: $22,995
Cisco also offer a good discount to customers who invest in a Cisco Webex Enterprise Agreement.
For the current list of Cisco devices certified for Teams see here.
Hybrid Work and the growth of SaaS makes troubleshooting end user experience so much harder.
ThousandEyes by Cisco is a digital end user experience monitoring solution that helps ensure your business SaaS apps are running at optimum performance wherever your employees or customers are.
ThousandEyes proactively monitors, alerts, and provides visual “route cause analysis” within minutes of a User Experience issue, regardless of if whether the issue is the LAN, WAN, Internet, “XaaS”, ISP, Collaboration Service (such as Teams, Webex or Zoom), or Cloud Provider. It can even determine whether the issue is caused by any third-party dependency such as Content Delivery network, Application, Connector, Secure Web Gateway, Identity Provider, or firewall.
What is ThousandEyes?
ThousandEyes enables organisations to rapidly increase the responsiveness of support teams and managed service providers by providing end-to-end visibility and performance monitoring across the ever-changing and distributed IT landscape wherever your applications, data, infrastructure, user, and devices are located by. This helps organisations to:
Better support their hybrid workforce with near-real-time visibility of the employee’s experience.
Quickly identify and solve app experience issues by continually monitoring employee interactions with web and SaaS-based applications.
Gain end-to-end visibility from the user, across the network, WAN, and the Internet as well as to their cloud service providers and SaaS applications.
Cisco Thousand Eyes provides and end-to-end End user Experience Monitoring to help ensure that your employees / customers experience of your service or applications is “as expected” and helps proactively detect when there are issues which might impact this performance before users start complaining.
End to end visibility with Cisco ThousandEyes
Thousand Eyes provides end to end visibility and intelligence”. Its aim is to help IT provide the best possible employee and customer experience, whatever the application or service by comprehensively measuring and monitoring network performance end-to-end. This means that IT get complete visibility across the internet or WAN, edge, network, application, routing, and device layers to see exactly how and where the Internet and WAN connectivity is impacting employee or customer user experience.
Paying customers of ThousandEyes – and one of its’ killer features, is its’ ability to perform performance “snapshots” which provide clear-cut information – either on demand, or on a schedule. These can be shared with people outside your organisation and is pivotal to proving where the fault lies, therefore helping to help SaaS vendors troubleshoot their own infrastructure and it won’t be a surprise that many of the worlds’ largest SaaS providers are also Cisco Thousand Eye customers!
It does this by using “active monitoring” that utilises a software agent that simulates user activity and checks availability from multiple locations. Cisco leverage Thousand Eyes agents across much of their network equipment including wireless access points and switches (such as the Cisco Catalyst 9k), Cisco SDWAN solutions and SASE services, and is even incorporated into their Webex Meetings platform. There are also agents for desktop devices that can be deployed and what’s more you don’t need a Cisco network to use it. Thousand Eyes is proven to work well with leading SaaS and collaboration platforms such as Slack, Webex and Microsoft Teams.
Cisco Thousand Eyes – Image (c) Cisco.
The Synthetic testing constantly simulates user interaction with SaaS and Web applications, represented by a series of page loads interspersed with interactions like typing in fields and clicking buttons, making the synthetic test “feel” like a user to the actual applications under test. These tests are invaluable to application and network operations staff, since it helps IT and App Support better understand actual user experiences rather than playing the best guess or deflect game. These are presented back as “experience scores” which can be reported on, alert and track trends over time, providing an early warning before issues arise.
What problem does ThousandEyes fix?
In short, when an employee or a customer has a bad digital experience, they don’t care where the problem is, or what has caused it – they simply want to know what is wrong and when it might be resolved.
Marketing slide from Cisco ThousandEyes
The need and therefore market for this kind of tool is increasing, as the global pandemic dramatically accelerated the shift to the cloud and SaaS apps, and with the hybrid work, now just the way we work, we need a better way of monitoring and managing the end-to-end employee experience in an environment that no longer directly in control of IT!
As the world settles into what is now a hybrid work world dominated by the continual adoption of SaaS apps and work from anywhere mindset, visibility into how applications are performing for your employees and customers across the internet and various cloud services is critical to business continuity, employee, and customer experience.
Hybrid Work and the growth of SaaS makes troubleshooting end user experience so much harder.
Today, we, many organisations are still reliant on “self-diagnosis” (or no diagnosis), which leads to conversations like “it’s the network” or “my broadband is slow” or “XXX application is running slow”. This might have been ok during the peak of the pandemic when everyone was sent home to work and was “making the best out of temporary situation”, but three years on this from this, diagnosing and troubleshooting performance related issues is still too commonplace. Now, more than ever, the ability to monitor the end-to-end performance of your business apps, dictates the experience of your customers and employees and the excuses of before are no longer tolerated.
When an employee or a customer has a baddigital experience,they don’t care where the problem is or what has caused it – they simply want it fixed quickly.
Many of these issues are not new, but the shift to cloud and our new distributed hybrid workforce, means that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to understand and support the right “experience” using traditional legacy application performance management tools. What’s more the lack of visibility can often means employees and customers can be having a poor experience without IT or support evening knowing about it until someone complains!
Who needs ThousandEyes?
Do you have employee experience issues due to lack of Internet, WAN or SaaS visibility?
How do you know your Content Delivery Provider is serving your content quickly and consistently whether users at home or in the office?
Do you have inhouse web apps and need a better way of understanding how they perform? when your users work remotely or from disparate offices?
Does your IT help desk struggle to add value and provide answers to users experience issue with SaaS applications?
Is the lack of visibility and ability to monitor cloud apps, impacting employee productivity and/or customer experience?
If the answer to the above is mainly “yes”, then it’s worth looking at investing your time in a proof of concept to see how Thousand Eyes could help.
Why Cisco?
Personally, I think ThousandEyes is a great fit for any organisation with a cloud-first approach that has offices globally and leverages a high degree of hybrid workers (that’s most of us right!)! Whilst it’s not limited to those with only Cisco networks, the economics work well for organisations that already leverage Cisco networking, due to native integration across most of Cisco’s core product offerings including their Cisco Catalyst networking, SASE, SDWAN and their Collaboration suite (Webex).
This makes integration and deployment slick and negates the need to deploy additional agents, since Cisco include the ThousandEyes agent across many of their devices. Customers that buy into Cisco Enterprise Agreements also get a more competitive price point for ThousandEyes and from a support perspective it’s an integrated suite which means less finger pointing.
Speak to a Cisco partner for help
Speak to your favourite Cisco Gold Partner (I’m happy to help you need one) and they will be able to help demonstrate, deploy, configure, and support ThousandEyes for your organisation.
You will find your trusted Cisco partner can help in many ways including:
Demos, PoCs or specific product/application performance assistance
Cisco funded free trials
Help with business case development following a successful PoV
Scoping, deployment and tuning to ensure you can monitor all your in-house web and public SaaS hosted applications, connecting into your underlying Wireless LAN, WAN, MPLS, Internet connectivity and WFH remote locations to provide end-to-end visibility and end user performance monitoring.
Consultancy and support to ensure key departments, locations, users, and application estate is under cover.
Access to the best pricing through your Cisco Gold Partner.
See it action and find out more
Cisco provide free to access to this awesome “live outages site” where you can look at the live state of the world’s most popular commercial and consumer cloud services and see just how comprehensive and simple it is to use.
With ISE 23 kicking off this week in Barcelona, the UC world will no doubt be excited to see the developments, fruition and live demos of Cisco tech running Microsoft Teams.
This is significant for several reasons. Of course, Microsoft can run Webex, Zoom, RingCentral, and others from within Teams and many of the Teams hardware from Yealink, Poly, Logi etc can also run both Zoom and Teams on the same hard hardware, but this requires a reboot of the hardware causing a less than slick experience.
Is Cisco Rooms on Teams the beginning of a bigger plan?
What Cisco and Microsoft have done differently is that with this partnership, Cisco devices will not only run Webex or Teams, but the Cisco Meeting room kit will be able to do this seemlessly withoutareboot.
Cisco Room Kit running Microsoft Team
It will be interesting to see if any other Annoucements this week suggest that other Teams & Zoom meeting room kit will be lookimg to do the same!
Why is this significant?
The big questions is why would Microsoft find value in this after all Microsoft now has close to 300 million monthly active users and is the clear leader in is this space which it continues to innovate with new services and revenue streams expected from the recent launch of Teams Room Pro and Teams Premium.
According to analysts, Cisco and Microsoft share close to 90 percent of the same customers. Not necessarily in the collaboration space but across the board. Where that is Cisco’s networking business or Call Manager or Webex, Security or indeed their Contact Contact centre (which is soon to be certified for Teams.)
Most organisations like the idea of a smaller number of vendors to work with and if they can standardise on Cisco and Microsoft for their meeting room technology (since Microsoft don’t make the hardware for their Teams Rooms), this could be a big advantage.
For Cisco, this also means that they don’t loose the hardware and maintainance on their room systems should their Webex customer base decide to move partly or in full to Microsoft Teams.
For Microsoft, I think this also means bringing Cisco in as more of an advocacy – protecting both their install bases from their joint competition in this collaboration and voice space – Zoom, Google and RingCentral…vendors both Cisco and Microsoft do not want to see penetrate or weave into their account base.
Is this really about CPaaS?
Cisco is betting heavily on the success of its redefined Contact Centre solution Webex Contact Centre which could become a real significant player in the CCaaS space for Teams users and not just Webex customers.
Since the partnership was announced at Ignite, just before Xmas, much of Cisco messaging has been around adding value to Teams rather than replacing it (though Cisco hope of course customers will still invest in Webex). The focus of much of the marketing is around making the user experience on Teams better by using Cisco technology.
Here’s where CPaaS comes in. This partnership with Microsoft is also a great opportunity for Cisco to leverage its broader UC portfolio to add their Webex Contact Center natively into Team, attacking the plethora and crowded market of Teams certified contact centres such as Luware, Anywhere 365 and Enghouse.
Organisations with Teams, looking to replace their contact centre solutions are continually looking at Teams Certified solutions.
The Cisco Webex Contact Centre is already a highly-regarded CCaaS solution, soon to be certified by Microsoft for Teams (maybe as soon as this week?).
Cisco Webex CC on Garner Magic Quadrant 2022
Cisco and Microsoft – Better together?
Only time will tell.. If the plan plays off Cisco should certainly be able to capitalise on market growth and their reputation and proven success in the CCaaS space. If they can secure Webex as the CPaaS of choice for Teams, this could significantly reverse the declining marketshare that Cisco has been suffering of late.
This will also help Microsoft block their other completion and prevent players like Zoom getting into their accounts. Together Cisco and Microsoft should be able to protect their join customer base making it harder for other UC vendors to eat their share.
Who might loose out to this partnership?
The Teams Room space is already well served by flexible, innovate solutions from the likes of Yealink, Poly, Neat and Logitech etc. For Teams organizations already invested in these brands, I see them sticking, but customers moving from Cisco to Teams now have the ability to reduce cost, maintain ‘brand’ and leverage thier investment and partnership with Cisco with less disruption, upheaval and change.
The CPaaS providers that develop Teams certified contact centres may be most worried by this partnership, since Cisco will now able to compete in their space which, whilst already crowded, lacks many true enterprise grade solutions like Cisco have.
As tech vendors continue to modernise and revamp their partner programmes to better align with the pace of technology, changing needs of their customers, demands around hybrid work and the continual digital transformation acceleration, Cisco have recently added six new solution specialisations which aim to further build and support their partner competitiveness as well as recognise and reward partners with specific expertise and capability.
Image (c) Cisco
The six new specialisations are tied to Cisco customer priorities and represent fast-growing market opportunities for Cisco and its partners in areas where Cisco has been investing and innovating. These are heavily focussed around Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid Work and the solutions that enable these.
Cisco’s Solution Specialisations
The new solution specialisations are one of the four categoriesof partner specialisations available to qualified Cisco partners, like Cisilion to demonstrate their expertise to customers, including:
Architecture specialisations: demonstrate product expertise in specific technology areas.
Solution specialisations: demonstrate that a partner excels at delivering value with Cisco solutions, including cross-architectural offers prioritized by customers.
Cisco Powered Service specialisations: convey partner proficiency in delivering managed services and as-a-service offers.
Business specialisations: focused on horizontal business practices that are essential to supporting customers’ business goals.
Partners that achieve solution specialisations are recognised and rewarded based on the value delivered to customers. The requirements for each specialisation are tied to knowledge and experience, allowing partners to capitalize on their existing investments with Cisco.
The relevance of the new Solution Specialisations
Cisco say their solution specialisations are designed to “showcase partner value to customers and represent the type of solutions partners are selling today“. These specialisations (which are not simple to earn and retain), reflect how Cisco partners, like Cisilion, are using cross-architectural solutions to solve their customers’ biggest challenges (such as how to address the challenges or hybrid work) rather than just simply selling and deploying technology products. Cisco say that “the specialisations are awarded to partners that can demonstrate how they are working collaboratively with Cisco to help solve customer challenges such as balancing an organisation’s security needs with the flexibility employees want, providing the best digital experience or consistently delivering a secure user experience from anywhere.“
Specialisation is ranked number one as the initial critical partner selection criterion for 74 percent of customers. By tying solution specialisations to customer buying criteria, Cisco makes it easier for customers to identify which partners to work with.
Full-stack Observability (FSO): Which highlights partners expertise in centralising and correlating application performance analytics across the full IT stack. This includes integrations across Cisco’s AppDynamics, Thousand Eyes, Intersight, and Secure Application. Partners with this specialisation can demonstrates expertise in prioritising actions to deliver superior customer experiences, drive revenue streams, and accelerate digital transformation for their customers.
Hybrid Work from Office: Which recognises partners for their skills and experience helping customers evolve traditional on-site and off-site work models, with solutions that power hybrid work, enabling people to work safely and securely from home, the office, and anywhere in between on any given day or time.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE): Which highlights partners’ ability to help their customers to securely enable the growing universe of roaming users, devices, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps without adding complexity or reducing end-user performance.
Hybrid Cloud Computing: Showcases partners that provide customers with simple, secure hybrid cloud computing experiences at home, in the office, or anywhere.
Hybrid Cloud Networking: Recognises partners that securely and efficiently connect and manage customers’ data, workloads, and applications across data centres, edge, and multiple clouds.
Hybrid Cloud Software: Demonstrates expertise in managing operational complexity by helping customers streamline and unify IT operations with secure, hybrid cloud management software.
Benefits for Customers and Partners
The main benefit is that this approach takes away from an old-skool technology/product sell that was all about speeds, feeds, features, and cost, and instead encourages partners to have more meaningful “outcome-based conversation“. Cisco say this should help partners do what they do best – having a more “unified solution strategy” conversation with customers where technologies integrate and work together to provide solutions that are better than the sum of the parts.
Examples of this include the alignment between Cisco’s Webex video, calling and meeting services, the network infrastructure layer, the edge, and the Internet with integrated full stack visibility across these layers to ensure the best user experience whilst simplifying IT operations through management and support.
Cisco’s Desk Camera 4K camera is small, powerful and full of AI features (if you use Cisco Webex) and is also now officially certified for Microsoft Teams.
Cisco is no stranger to making high quality audio and video devices for video conferencing on their Webex platform – but with their partnership with Microsoft around building devices “made” or “certified” for Microsoft Teams a bunch of premium devices now have another route to market.
I’m lucky to have both the new Cisco Desk Camera 4K and Cisco WS-720 series headset which has recently been certified for Teams and even has the Microsoft Teams “button” on the earcup. The Cisco Webex variant has a Webex button.
This is a review of the Cisco Desk Camera 4K.
Cisco Desk Camera 4K
Cisco Webex Desk Camera 4K
The Cisco Desk Camera 4K, is a premium USB web camera for video conferencing, video streaming, and video recording. The camera provides up to 4K Ultra HD at 60 FFS video and features high-definition audio along with dual microphone for great audio pick-up on all your video meetings or streaming and is certified for Cisco Webex and also Microsoft Teams.
The HD camera comes with a range of features to make meetings from anywhere feel more professional and well-managed, including autofocus, low light management, and a custom field of view to suit your office demands. The system also works seamlessly with the Cisco Webex collaboration environment as well as now Microsoft Teams though there isn’t really anything it does in Teams that any high-quality webcam can’t do.
This is a high quality, premium device – features include:
4K Ultra HD camera quality (Windows Hello®️ Certified)
Two built-in microphones
Support for 30FFS and 60 FPS
13MP image sensor
Automatic focus adjustment
Adjustable field of view
Multiple pre-sets (controlled via Cisco Desk Camera App)
Built-in background noise reduction
Physical Privacy shutter
Digital zoom and correction controls
USB plug-and-play functionality
Clip mounting for easy setup
Cisco Webex Certified
Microsoft Teams Certified
Whilst certified for Webex and Microsoft Teams, the Desk Camera can of course be used with any video conferencing aps or streaming services and works nicely as on Xbox! The fast autofocus, face detection (where supported by the apps) and 10x digital zoom really help to enhance the video experience for your remote attendees.
Getting set up
To get started on Windows devices, set-up is as simple as plugging it via USB-C or USB-A with the supplied cables (Cisco provide both in the box for good measure).
The camera itself has an adjustable clip with a tripod screw thread offers mounting flexibility on a laptop, an external display, a tripod, or a desk stand in various open office spaces, huddle rooms, and home offices.
It is a shame there is no carry pouch for the camera though to stop it getting dirty or scratch when travelling.
To customise and configure the device beyond the factory standards, you need to install the Cisco Desk Camera app.
Install the Webex Desk Camera App
The Cisco Webex Desk Camera App provides a host of controls to change all aspects of the device as well as manage firmware updates, which mine was eager to update once connecting to the software. You don’t need to install it to use the camera, but it if you want to change the settings and manage the hardware then you need to!
Within the app it is possible to camera, image and microphone settings such as camera zoom levels (and pre-sets), field of view, auto focus settings and even framerate and resolution.
The Cisco Desk Camera app works with the camera and allows you to record videos, take snapshots, customise the camera settings, and upgrade the firmware.
Using Desk Camera 4K within Teams meetings
As expected, the quality and sharpness of both audio and video within Teams was good. to evaluate this of course I had to seek feedback from remote colleagues which was positive. By that, my video image was clear and sharp – even when sat across the other side of the room with the camera zoomed in. Even 3m away from the camera (which I wouldn’t do when working at home), video and audio pick up was good. It is nice to have such high-quality mics in a webcam – great if you have a more “budget” laptop without premium mics.
Despite the camera supporting 4K, most video meetings services (including Microsoft Teams) only support 1080p. To test the video quality, I move to the back of my office and zoomed the camera in (around 3m). The image quality was pretty good (seeing as this isn’t a room camera. Unfortunately, Microsoft Teams itself doesn’t currently have people tracking or auto-zoom so I had to manually zoom the camera using the Desk Camera app.
You can see the video quality at both close and zoomed in the images below from a Microsoft Teams call.
Close up (left) and 3m (ish) zoom (right)
Using Desk Camera 4K within Webex
The Desk Camera 4K really comes to life in Cisco Webex. Webex provides full access to device controls and settings directly via the app (as well of course within the Camera app). Within Webex, you get access to various settings from within the app.
Webex Video Controls (in app).
Device Management
Cisco have ensured that managing an army of Cisco desk cameras is simple, with integrations with the Webex Control Hub which allows for easier remote management. Today, no such controls exist within the Microsoft Teams Admin console for managing Teams webcams – though I have not tried adding the camera to a Teams MTR to see what I can do here.
The Microsoft Teams client offers limited controls over camera features and settings other than the ability to change basic controls – for everything else, you need to use the Webex Desk Pro camera app.
Webex on the other hand, provides more controls for their intelligent hardware. It will be interesting to see if some of this makes its way into Microsoft Teams since a large part of the partnership between Cisco and Microsoft is also around sharing best practice across the leading eco systems. Cisco also allow you to access advanced camera controls directly from the Webex app meetings app – which is really useful.
Verdict: Why buy the Cisco Webex Desk Camera?
With the many different options available out there for professional webcams then the Cisco Desk Camera 4K is definitely one to consider. This is no is a state-of-the-art webcam solution created for business users (or serious vloggers) who want to ensure they have the best possible video quality in meetings or when streaming video. The Desk Camera 4K is really small and compact too so easy to mount on your home monitor or perch over your laptop lid if you need to. It also supports up to 60 frames per second.
As a USB powered device, this camera is ideal for hybrid work (if you have a cheaper laptop with poor webcam). Whilst certified for Cisco Webex and Microsoft Teams, it can of course be used with video conferencing or streaming tool (as long as it’s supported by the OS).
The camera also supports Windows Hello®️ for business for passwordless and secure sign-on for Windows 10 and Windows 11.
When used with Cisco Webex, you also get access to smart AI enhancements such as facial recognition, tracking, auto adjustment, and more – so if you are a serious Webex user, this is definitely a webcam you want to test out.
At Cisco Live 2022 this week, Cisco annouced that Catalyst is coming to the Meraki cloud which put simply means that organisations will now be able to manage their Catalyst switches and access points using the Cisco Meraki cloud dashboard, providing a centralised view of the network with real-time switch status and health.
Image (c) Cisco Meraki
Supported platforms
At time of launch, the Catalyst 9200, 9300 and 9500 switching platforms will be supported in the Meraki dashboard with two different options:
Cloud Monitoring (monitoring only)
Cloud Management (monitoring and config management)
Licensing
Monitored Catalyst switches needs only a Meraki license.
Fully managed Catalyst switches requires DNA Advantage (DNA-A) or DNA Essentials (DNA-E) licensing.
The main difference between the two switching licenses is that DNA-E will not include application visibility or client usage data.
Is this the end to DNA Center?
Put simply, No. What Cisco is doing is providing more flexibility and options to their customers. It will mean, however that organisations will need to make a choice as to where that want to manage their Cisco Catalyst infrastructure. In Meraki, in DNA Center, or standalone.
Once a Catalyst switch is fully managed by Meraki it will no longer be an IOS device and will instead run Cisco Meraki software. If the Catalyst switch is a monitored only switch though, it will still be accessible and manageable via the CLI.
New Catalyst Wireless Switches
Cisco also annouced that they are introducing three new Catalyst wireless access points that can be managed by their Meraki dashboard or a C9800 controller.
Catalyst CW9166
Catalyst CW9164
Catalyst CW9162
Feature Partity with DNA Center?
No.. Well not initially anyway.
Since this is the first iteration of Catalyst management within the Meraki Cloud dashboard, there will not be feature parity with what is possible with the CLI or DNA Center. Initially all the core basic basic monitoring and configuration will be available and Cisco have a said a feature list and roadmap will be published soon.
Why are Cisco taking this approach?
Cisco have traditionally been continuing to build on-premises software solutions, such as DNA Center, but with their increased focus of software subscriptions and cloud this is a logical move and something their competition have been doing for a while.
Since the aquisition of Meraki back in 2013, Cisco have continued to try to provided multiple options for their customers and this appears to eb a great move into that hybrid space, providing and option for scenarios where DNA Center maybe too much or complex, but a more simplistic cloud managed approach with a Meraki may well fit organisations who want cloud management with Meraki while still having the feature-rich capabilities of the Catalyst product set.
Getting Started…
Cisco advise their customers to speak to their account manager, work with their trusted a isco partner and / or to check out their get started guide. There’s no need to go full in and organisations can start their move cloud management for Catalyst at their own pace.
Cisco has released an updated version of their SD-WAN software which now supports the optimal routing of Microsoft SaaS apps including Microsoft SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams on their SD-WAN. Cisco’s Vipella SD-WAN solution is the first SD-WAN solution to be certified for this.
Note: At time of writing, this feature applies to Cisco’s Viptela SD-WAN solution and is not currently supported in the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN portfolio. This may change.
With this update to the Cloud OnRamp feature, Cisco SD-WAN “further integrates Cisco’s support for Microsoft’s Informed Network Routing technology that lets organisations share Microsoft 365 app feedback telemetry with networking vendors and to receive network link telemetry from them”, according to Jeevan Sharma, Manager, Product Management, Enterprise Cloud & SD-WAN group at Cisco in a blog about the enhancements.
Known as Cloud OnRamp for Microsoft 365, it uses “proactive and continuous link probing to assess the best performing path at any point in time. It also allows network admin to utilize Microsoft URL categories granularity for categorizing the Microsoft 365 apps into Optimize, Allow and Default categories, while active link probing makes sure that the best performing path is always selected”.
How it works
This latest update to Cisco’s SD-WAN software, which continually monitors and controls the connectivity, management, and services between data users (remote or office based) and cloud and data centre services, now includes support for more Microsoft SaaS applications specifically SharePoint (and OneDrive) and Microsoft Teams.
Cisco SD-WAN customers can leverage Cisco’s Cloud OnRamp to intelligently route Microsoft 365 traffic, to provide the fastest, most secure, and most reliable end-user experience. This is done by ensuring that all connectivity paths to Microsoft 365 from each WAN / Internet connection at the branch, office, regional hub and/or data center is monitored continuously for performance, and application traffic is then dynamically routed to the best-performing path without requiring human intervention. Cisco Cloud OnRamp also provides real-time and historical visibility into SaaS application performance.
“I am excited to announce that the integration between Cisco SD-WAN and Microsoft Informed Network Routing now includes support for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint app telemetry. This update will help us deliver an improved end-user experience through enhanced cloud connectivity. The partnership between Microsoft 365 and Cisco SD-WAN further enhances your Microsoft Teams and SharePoint experience by optimizing routing and path selection beyond traditional network telemetry probes”
Jeff Mealiffe | Principal Architect | Microsoft 365 Core Networking | Cisco
Microsoft and Cisco Partnership
Cisco SD-WAN is Microsoft Network Partner Program (NPP) certified and is also a Microsoft 365 networking partner. As part of this program, Cisco SD-WAN aligns with the Microsoft’s Connectivity Principles aimed at helping Microsoft 365 customers achieve optimal end-user experience.
What is SD-WAN?
SD-WAN technology is available from leading network and vendors such as Cisco, Palo Alto etc, and typically include routers and switches or virtualised customer-premises equipment (vCPE). They run together using a connected software stack that handles things like policy, security, networking functions, and other management and security functions.
Cisco SD-WAN technology enables enterprises to build a scalable and carrier-neutral WAN infrastructure, allowing them to reduce WAN transport costs and network operational expenses. Cisco SD-WAN enables IT to apply business-centric, application-aware, and differentiated routing policies – providing end users at the remote offices, branch direct connectivity to performance-intensive trusted app, such as Microsoft 365, while routing generic Internet traffic via SWGs, CASBs, or the customer’s VPN connected data center.
Cisco published their Q2 financial results which were announced on the 16th February 2022. with overall revenues up 6% to $12.7B and GAAP operating income up 8% to $3.5B.
We continue to see incredibly strong demand across our portfolio, emphasizing the criticality and relevance of Cisco’s innovation
Chuck Robbins | Cisco Chair and CEO
In the full report, which you can see here, Cisco said that they continued to see “robust demand, with momentum once again across all geographic regions and customer markets”.
They reported their 3rd quarter of consecutive growth and 33% order growth YoY in Q2.
TL;DR
Internet for the Future increased 42%
Secure, Agile Networks increased 7%
End to End Security increased 7%
Optimised Application Experiences increased 12%
Hybrid Work (Collab) decreased 9%
Q2 Summary
Cisco reported their 3rd quarter of consecutive growth with >30% growth and 33% order growth year-over-year in Q2.
Overall Cisco’s product sales continued to grow in Q2 (up 9% overall to $9.35m).
Secure Agile Networks (Enterprise Networking in the old world) grew 7% with most of the growth coming from data centre switching which experienced a double-digit growth in their Nexus 9000 product range in Q2.
Campus switching also grew well, led by double digit growth in their Meraki Wireless networking.
Collaboration Sales which includes WebEx, declined by 9% which continues to track a downward trend in their collaboration devices, meetings and voice services
End to End Security sales grew 7% with growth reported across their portfolio with products making up their “Zero Trust” portfolio seeing “double digit” growth.
Optimised Application Services which includes products like ThousandEyes grew 12%
Internet of the Future (which includes routed optical networking and 5G services grew a whopping 42% the biggest growth across their product portfolio
Services Product Growth
There isn’t much to report here other than Services Sales declined 1% in Q2.
Subscription Revenues
Cisco said that subscription revenues grew 7% year on year to $5.5B as they continue to transform themselves into more of a software business and remove the reliance on hardware only sales. Cisco said that Subscription reviews accounted for a total of 44% of their revenues in Q2 with annualised recurring revenue (ARR) up 11% to $21.9B
Supply Chain Issues Continue
Cisco said that supply chain issues will continue to impact Cisco in H2 (which ends in July 2022) and its expected to impact shipments and fulfilment throughout 2022.
Like most vendors at the moment and something my employer Cisilion is seeing as a continue challenge with our customers, Cisco have been badly affected by the supply chain issues stemming from the global shortage of semi-conductors.
I feel I must congratulate Cisco on the annoucement of their new partner and customer centric Enterprise Agreement.
Simple and Inclusive
This looks and feels like one of the simplest yet powerful subscription based licensing programmes in the channel… at a time when “other” major vendors seem to be struggling to get a model right that is fair and offers value to both customer and partners regardless of size.
Consistent across their solution portfolio
When fully available in early 2022, Cisco will make their full portfolio of services available through a single agreement rather than the current multiple EAs with different terms, rules and portals they have today. Instead the EA will cover all five of Cisco’s solution areas – application infrastructure, networking infrastructure, collaboration, security and services.
Helps make it easy for customer to buy solutions across the stack
This new EA will dramatically simplify purchasing and selling as it creates one program and one experience for everything Cisco do and aligned to their product portfolio.
For example, Cisco has been beating the drum hard with the concept of “full stack observability”, which is growing in importance in this multi-cloud centric, highly mobile and hybrid world.
To make this a reality, customers, need to buy products across multiple technology and solution stacks, including services like AppDynamnics, ThousandEyes, Intersight etc., but this new should make it much easier for partners to sell and for customers to buy.
Cisco and Microsoft are amungst the two enterprise leading platforms that have seen a huge surge in usage numbers as organisations around the world move to online meetings to working and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Microsoft and Cisco measure and record their numbers differently so its sometimes hard to compare one with the other, but the overall set of numbers are staggering.
Cisco Webex
Cisco’s has said their Web conferencing platform Webex has unsurprisingly seen a huge surge in usage numbers as organisations around the world move to online meetings to working and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cisco recorded a peak of record 4 million meetings in one day on March 18 2020 up almost 100% on the number of global meetings that took place before the week before the outbreak hit.
Cisco have said that in the first 20 days of March alone, they hosted 7 billion minutes of meetings on Webex (an average of 350 million minutes a day) day with the duration of the meetings typically 22% longer than usual. company also saw a drastic increase in users signing up on its platform.
Cisco also recorded a record 324 million meeting attendees last month.
Microsoft Teams
Cisco’s news comes the same week as Microsoft also announced they had seen a new peak of a staggering 2.7billion minutes in one day, a 200% increase on the previous week and the total number of video calls in Teams grow by over 1,000 % in the month of March.
Image and data from Microsoft
Turn on Video to make online meetings more natural…
Cisco, like Zoom and Microsoft have recently made Webex free during Covid-19 with a view naturally to attract new users to the platform and to help grow usage within existing business who adjust use Webex across parts of their business. This is naturally driving usage of the platforms at huge pace as most of the world works from home!
While video can’t truly replace in-person meetings, it can actually be more productive, peoplr are using video more than normal as the social distancing seems to be a new way of life for a time to come.
In Microsoft’s Remote work trend report, they state that “Researchers like Dr. Fiona Kerr have found that eye contact and physical connection with another human increases dopamine and decreases the stress hormone cortisol. Her research shows that you can even physically calm someone down simply by looking them in the eye. So as the world works remotely, it is no surprise people are turning on video in Teams meetings two times more than before many of us began working from home full-time“…
Image from Microsoft.
Summary
So turn on that video everyone…personally I find it really helps me feel ready for my day. When I went to the office I’d (try) to make myself look presentable, so just because I’m working from home for the foreseeable future why should that change… The notion of getting ready for work and expecting face to face communication certainly gets me into work mode and seeing people (even over Teams or Webex) really does make me feel more connected and less distant from the people I am used to seeing on a daily basis.
Sources: Remote work trend report & Revoult Business Report.
