Cisco @CES 2018: Behind All The Gadgetry, There’s This Thing Called “Connectivity”

In the midst of the clamor and falling in love to prepare for the holidays, and to close the year 2017, this is another great thing for many of us: Prepare for the International Consumer Electronics Show 2018, in Las Vegas.

You can ask why a company like Cisco, not necessarily known for consumer devices, goes to a show like CES, often described as the Super Bowl of consumer products. We go because we are in the business of connectivity, and almost everything in the (vast) panorama of consumer electronics devices needs a connection at some point, in order to do what was created.

Whether it's a screen that shows a 4K movie, a physical activity monitor that collects biometric data, an artificial intelligence analysis engine that measures metrics, or any of the "things" of the Internet of things, everyone needs a form (wired or wireless) to move your data, at some point.

Our focus at CES 2018 is on our customers (providers of broadband services, video and connectivity) and on what they need to be successful next year and beyond. Like revenue growth, to begin with, to compensate for the relentless growth of broadband consumption, which is already straining investments in networks.

You may have heard this before, but it is worth repeating: now we are three years away from a service provider environment (2021) where the growth of IP traffic will have increased 3 times, up to 278 exabytes per month, according to our Cisco more recent. VNI forecast data. That's more than 14 times all the IP traffic generated in 2010! And this traffic flows to and from and through more than 27 billion connections, 51% of them are compatible with machine-to-machine interactions, and 48% of them are suitable for video.

Arriving there, in a reasonably prepared way for the future, will require, in our opinion, massive amounts of network scale, through the native infrastructure of the cloud. It will demand a ruthless simplification of networks and operations, through the automation of workflow. And it will require a security architectural approach to protect the infrastructure, applications and endpoints.

We are already starting to see some attractive results in the field. Here are some compelling numbers, as evidence:

•     A 10% increase in ARPU associated with consumer video, among customers who use our cloud-based Infinite Video platform
•     A speed 60% faster for the creation of income, associated with Smart PHY automation
•     A 70% increase in operating efficiencies, among customers that take advantage of our automation and orchestration resources for networks and applications
•     A 50% reduction in average repair / MTTR time between customers using Cisco Control Center to gain real-time visibility and control of service issues.

You can see all this (and more!) Yourself in our CES suites at the Wynn. On the automation front, we will demonstrate how automation relates to SD-WAN services, Smart PHY implementations and a native cloud CMTS designed to increase bandwidth and agility.

And, because the CES is still a "video show", we will focus on some advances in our Infinite Video, cloud-DVR and mobile video platforms, such as end-to-end latency reduction and cost optimization for ABR. (Adaptive bit rate) video, as well as analytical and machine learning improvements for video experiences.

Our Cisco Jasper Control Center will be on display, illustrating how an automated connectivity management platform can link devices to global networks, customers and back-end systems. This is important when critical changes need to be addressed, without breaking the bank.

Finally, we will present our work at Cisco Kinetic, the first IoT data operations platform designed to help companies integrate and maintain IoT things. It is an excellent combination of connection management, fog / edge computing and data delivery, on a platform, designed specifically for a massive scale.

To finish, we go to CES because we believe in connectivity, in all its forms. We believe that the road to ruthless simplification is paved with automation, and we will have several examples on hand to share. And, as the world's largest security company, we are providing resources that help minimize the surface of known and unknown threats. I hope to see you there!