Cisco A/NZ Vice President, Ken Boal
Digitisation, cyber security and the rapid pace of innovation were some of the dominating topics during presentations held at Cisco Live.
Digital is about making your company relevant in the future, was the key message from Cisco chief security and trust officer, John Stewart. He is also part of the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Cyber Security Review panel.
He cited that last year, more than 53 billion sensors were shipped globally, which is more than three times the number of connected devices on the internet.
“Everything that is getting connected is generating data and needs to do it securely,” Stewart said.
“It’s happening at such a high speed. The nature of the IT implications for service providers, enterprises SMBs and all the way to your home is dramatic.
“To observe it, is to be left in the dust, rather than decide on a strategy of this is where we’re going and this is how I’ll use it to my advantage.”
Stewart told the crowd during his keynote address that digital should be thought of as data-driven decisions that are going to help monetise and create value in organisations, grounded in facts that you’re following the right trends and nailing the value proposition.
Cisco A/NZ vice president, Ken Boal, said we’re now seeing the impact of digitisation in A/NZ farms, factories, transport, financial, government services as well as sporting stadiums.
“It’s not should I go digital, it’s how do I go digital?” he said.
Cisco is backing the Government’s national innovation and science agenda through its Innovation Centres, one based in the Perth and a recent centre launched in Sydney last month.
Boal said Cisco was responding to the market trends through software-driven approaches to simplify and automate datacenters and networks around the country.
“We’re working with our cloud provider partners and service providers to upgrade those critical national digital networks, broadband networks, the NBN as well, and we’re helping to overlay Cloud platforms to support the as-a-service model that many of our enterprises are demanding,” he said. “We’re also making consumption easier of Cisco applications and services by collaboration, security and embedding them into the networks as service offerings.”
Through Cisco Investors, it is also access to a $2 billion fund to help support the start-up eco system in Australia.
Boal also tapped on the skills agenda, indicating that it has 22,000 active students enrolled in academies around A/NZ and Pacific Islands, learning about building networks, cyber security and IoT.
Julia Talevski traveled to Cisco Live in Melbourne as a guest of Cisco.
