Cisco Live Barcelona 2018 recap

Posted on by Hamillton Barnes

The leading education and training event for IT professionals globally has come to an end. Last week Barcelona was the hub for IT professionals wanting to learn about the newest trends and Cisco’s vision for the coming year. Cisco Live gave you all the latest insights and technical skills you need to thrive in this industry. And at the same time attending Cisco Live allows you to build your human network. Everyone comes together and talks to each other, which is a learning experience in itself. It’s an event that boost your personal and professional development.

It’s time to look back at the happenings of Cisco Live Barcelona 2018.

Opening keynote

Cisco Live started off with the opening keynote with Rowan Trollope – Senior Vice President and General Manager, Applications, which was all focused on the future. Rowan talked about the speed things are happening and that Cisco is working now on things to take place in the upcoming years. The future is the age of intelligence that is made possible by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. With this new age, the network will have to be rethought. This was where David Goeckeler – Executive Vice President and General Manager, Networking and Security Business entered the stage and talked about the importance of reinventing the network. David talked about unbelievable technology that Cisco is launching this Cisco Live and how Cisco is taking the next big growth step on intent-based networking.

He explained how intent-based networking (IBN) is a strategy that Cisco has been driving across their entire portfolio. They believe it will be one of the most significant technology launches to date. If you don’t go down the IBN path, then you are going down a legacy path he says. He stressed how important it is to adopt these new technologies and that the next wave of innovation of IBN is all about context.

During this keynote David talked about the 3 new parts of the Cisco portfolio that they are launching:

  • DNA Center Assurance: In campus and branch networks, Cisco DNA Center Assurance is delivering a new level of insight and visibility to dramatically reduce the time and money IT spends troubleshooting across wired and wireless environments.
  • Meraki Wireless Health: For customers with distributed IT operations, the new Cisco Meraki Wireless Health reduces mean time to remediate wireless issues with rich analytics and insights.
  • Cisco Network Assurance Engine: In the data center, the Cisco Network Assurance Engine uses continuous verification of the entire network to help keep business running as intended, even as the network changes dynamically.

Cisco’s intent-based networking portfolio represents a fundamental shift away from the manual and time-intensive methods by which networks are traditionally managed. These intent-based networks capture and translate business intent into network policies, and activate them across the infrastructure. With the introduction of assurance capabilities, they can now continuously verify the network is operating as intended.
Source: Cisco

Announcements

We just mentioned Cisco’s announcement of its powerful assurance innovations across its intent-based networking portfolio that will help IT team shift from reactive to proactive. These new innovations will address the 43% of time IT spends troubleshooting, while making IT operations more proactive, agile and automated. These software innovations represent significant advancements in mathematical modelling and contextual insights, accelerating Cisco’s strategy to reinvent the network for the digital era.

Image source: Cisco

Cisco Container Platform

But the assurance innovations were not the only announcements Cisco made during Cisco Live. They also announced the Cisco Container Platform. A turnkey, open and production-grade software container platform to address customers’ growing need to have applications seamlessly run the same way on premises and in the public clouds. It simplifies and accelerates how application development and information technology (IT) operations teams configure, deploy and manage container clusters based on 100% upstream Kubernets. This new solution expands Cisco’s growing portfolio of other leading container platform offerings, providing more choice for their customers.

Find out the ins and outs of Cisco’s Container Platform here

The experience

Cisco Live is all about building relationships, sharing ideas, inspiration and networking.

Thousands of technology professionals gathered at Cisco Live for over 700 technical and business sessions that were covering a variety of different IT areas. You could say there was something for everyone.

As it’s a huge event, you need to have a plan in place! There is so much to do at Cisco Live that you have more to do then there is time. Tip for your next Cisco live, make a planning. Have a goal what you want to learn this week and plan your days accordingly.

Let’s have a look at a few activities outside of the classroom:

  • Tech circles: previously known as Lunch & Learn sessions. Here you have lunch and have the opportunity to interact and engage with Cisco experts and peers in group discussions focusing on your technical topic of choice.
  • CCIE programme: are you a CCIE? Then you can enjoy special benefits during the event. With special CCIE sessions and an exclusive CCIE social event.
  • Social events: one of the most valuable aspects of Cisco Live is the opportunity to network with your peers. Cisco Live offers ample opportunities to have some fun, recharge your batteries, and get to know your fellow attendees outside of the classroom. Every evening there was another event organised where you had the opportunity to network and socialise with other IT professionals.
  • Cisco Live Bookstore: They displayed a range of bestselling – and some brand new – titles for you to browse through.
  • Orientation tours: As Cisco Live is such a big event an orientation tour can be a great idea, especially if you are a first-time visitor. You could get a guided tour of all that Cisco Live has to offer.
  • The Customer Appreciation Event: On the Thursday there was a special event where you could enjoy food, drinks, live music and performances from special guest, Rudimental.
  • Cisco Champions: Of course, there were also multiple Cisco Champions present in Barcelona. Cisco Champions are individuals that are very passionate about technology and also very active socially, very engaged and share their knowledge with the Cisco Community. They Tweet, Blog, make videos with interesting content, you name it! You can recognize them on the black ribbon on their badges on Cisco Events. And did you know you don’t have to work for Cisco to be a Cisco Champion? Here are a few Cisco Champions that were at CLEUR last week and we recommend to follow on social media:

Image source: Cisco

Areas

  • DevNet Zone: We can’t stress enough how important DevNet is to stay relevant in the market. Here developers and network engineer and everyone else who is interested in it could learn using innovative Cisco technologies and platforms. You could learn to code by following coding classes, learn about network programmability and discover what you can do with Cisco SDKs and APIs. In the DevNet Zone they provided very educationally focussed sessions. It’s probably one of the most active zones of Cisco Live.

Susie Wee, Vice President & CTO, DevNet provided a talk about the rise of the APIs. Furthermore, you could visit theatre and classroom sessions, hands-on workshops, take part in learning labs and follow demos where you could learn and ask your questions directly to the experts about Cisco’s portfolio of APIs and technology.

In the DevNet Zone you could also find “Design Thinking” where they taught you the way of thinking depending on what vehicle you work on. Learning a new way of thinking comes in very handy because you have to think differently when you are coding.

  • World of Solutions: Here you could learn about the latest innovations from Cisco and their partners. There were over 150 partners ready to meet with you and the Cisco Campus to the Innovation Zone to the Partner Theatre. There was also a big lounge space where you could network with your fellow IT professionals.
  • Cisco Investments Pavilion: This are companies Cisco invested in. This can be fairly new companies or more developed ones. This aren’t necessarily start-ups. Every business here has a unique idea that represents places where Cisco made a stake where they think things are going. These companies are the next thing and very interesting. They are developing the next technologies and life changing tech. The twelve companies showcasing at the Cisco Investments Pavilion represented a global line-up of ground-breaking technology in multiple domains including DC, Cloud, Security, Mobility, IoT and Collaboration. The following companies were present:
    • Exabeam
    • Cohesity
    • Moogsoft
    • Stratoscale
    • Mist
    • SecurView
    • Veniam
    • Gainsight
    • Puppet
    • Evrything
    • Worldsensing
    • BehavioSec
  • Cisco Campus: Here you could experience and interact with Cisco’s products, solutions, and services through demonstrations presented by Cisco experts.
  • Meet the Engineer: These sessions gave you the opportunity to engage with a Cisco Engineer in a 1 on 1 conversation focused on your questions and challenges. There were more than 300 Cisco Engineers and experts available to meet.
  • Innovation showcases: These showcases offered a look at the latest innovations from Cisco to provide the context and inspiration that today’s IT professional need to know for tomorrows technology. Topics included: Data, Security, Reinventing the Network, Intent for Datacentre Networking, Multicloud, Emerging technologies, Innovation, IoT.
  • Partner villages: Here you could meet the partner companies that can extend your Cisco investment in key areas such as: collaboration, security, datacentre and cloud. Here you could connect with experts and explore innovations from the companies that are helping power the digital transformation of business. The companies in this area helped you to identify, integrate, build and deploy the technology and services you need to thrive in tomorrow’s more connected and collaborative business climate. Partners included:
    • CTModule
    • Kurmi
    • Logicalis
    • Linxdatacenter
    • IBM
    • Netscout
    • Splunk

 

Tips for new attendees for the next Cisco Live

  • Follow Cisco Live on Social Media, @CiscoLiveEurope and #CLEUR. You will stay up to date with the latest updates and of course don’t forget to include the #CLEUR in your own social media posts.
  • Wear comfortable shoes! It’s such a big area where you will be walking around a lot. A lot of standing will be involved too, so come prepared and wear comfortable shoes.
  • Book sessions and labs early as they tend to fill up rather quickly.
  • Make sure you read the titles and abstracts of the sessions you are signing up for. You don’t want to waste any time on a session that isn’t of interest for you.
  • Make a planning. As mentioned before, make a planning with a goal in mind. But keep it flexible. Have a check every day to see if you still want to attend the same things and have some room for changes.
  • Cisco merchandise. Picking up an official Cisco Live T-shirt is a must.

Image source: Cisco

Cisco Live 2019

Missed out on this years CLEUR just like us? Next year the event will once again be organised in Barcelona! We will definitely be attending next year and we hope to see you there.

This little overview didn’t include everything by far but you are up to date now with the basics of what happened at Cisco Live. We like to end this recap with the key takeaway from this Cisco Live:

Get started on the change today!