Networking, Security, IoE Take the Stage at Cisco Live 2015

by Jeffrey Burt

The show in San Diego was the last one that Chambers will attend as Cisco’s CEO. However, he still will be a presence at the company as its executive chairman and board chairman.

Robbins has been with the company for 17 years, so he’s not new to Cisco Live. Still, his profile this year was particularly high as he prepares to take over as CEO July 26.

Lloyd, who will leave Cisco July 25—the day before Robbins takes over—talks to the crowd at his last Cisco Live after 21 years with the networking giant.

Cisco made sure to give developers as much hands-on experience with the technology as possible.

On display at the show was a drone that included Cisco technology.

Chambers has often said that the IoE was as big a transition for the IT industry as the Internet was, and Cisco had its technology on full display.

Smart lighting for the home and business is one of the areas getting a lot of attention in these early days of the IoE.

At the show, Cisco officials talked about efforts to make security pervasive throughout the network—from the data center to the cloud to the endpoints—to accelerate adoption of the IoE and to protect against increasingly sophisticated threats.

Cisco also is bringing developers to its Intercloud initiative to help create cloud services for the effort, which is aimed at creating a global connected network of clouds.

The company had its collaboration technology on display at the show, including its TelePresence systems.

While there was talk of clouds, collaboration and security, at the center of it all is the network, the foundation for everything Cisco does.

Cisco introduced two new Nexus switches aimed at mega-scale and cloud data centers, including the 3264R, a 2U (3.5-inch) 64-port switch that supports speeds of 10G and 40G.

The company brought greater programmability and automation capabilities to its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) portfolio.

Cisco officials have stressed the importance of openness, developers and partners—including Intel—to the company’s plans for everything from ACI and software-defined networking (SDN) to the IoE.

Also at the show, Cisco conducted its third annual Empowered Women’s Network Forum, a network of Cisco customers, partners and employees who come together to help women in IT.