CiscoLive! Is the ultimate destination for CX innovation, emerging technologies, and announcements. With nearly 20,000 IT professionals gathered in Las Vegas, attendees had an opportunity to learn about the future of communication & collaboration—and what that means for your organization’s goals.
In case you didn’t make it, you can still get the highlights in one place.
Cisco’s said “Let’s Go!” on innovation
Taking the stage at CiscoLive, CEO Chuck Robbins and fellow executives shared how Cisco is focused on industry-defining innovations that enable customers and partners to improve their resiliency and security in the face of today’s rapidly evolving challenges.
With massive technology shifts in AI, cloud platforms, security capabilities, and the working environment, Cisco emphasized trust in their partner ecosystem—Bandwidth included—to extend the value of their portfolio.
Hybrid workplaces still aren’t going anywhere
The hybrid theme continued at Cisco Live with the emergence of technology and solutions that support remote and hybrid workplaces. We all understand that work can be done from anywhere, and now technology teams are on a mission to figure out how to best support and improve it.
One of the buzzworthy spots on the show floor included their demo station for Augmented & Virtual Reality, where techies tried on headsets to explore a virtual work environment for an immersive digital experience.
A new Webex Calling connectivity provider
On Monday morning, Bandwidth announced two new Webex Calling PSTN connectivity solutions for enterprises moving to the cloud. Local Gateway, a hybrid approach to deliver voice, and Cloud Connect, a pure-cloud approach to deliver voice, are now available for Webex Calling users.
Bandwidth’s new UCaaS Integration for Webex Calling means organizations can:
- Migrate from premise-based legacy systems to cloud-based communications
- Go directly to the source for high-quality voice calling and faster time to resolution
- Consolidate vendors with enhanced calling features your employees and customers want
- Open the doors to your cloud future with Bandwidth’s platform-agnostic connectivity and number management tools
Are you currently using Webex Calling for your customers or employees? Learn more about this new solution.
The best answer to complex environments? Flexibility
Beyond the now-familiar narrative around hybrid work, the topic of hybrid stacks was evident throughout many sessions and conversations at Cisco Live. Enterprises are facing increasing challenges from maintaining disparate systems, and while the idea of a completely unified and simple stack sounds great in theory, in practice they still need solutions for managing things “as is” while longer-term consolidation efforts are in the works.
We heard from IT and infrastructure leaders who are juggling multiple UC and CC solutions across widespread office locations and unique setups for individual business units, many of which are simultaneously supporting a mix of cloud-hosted and on-premise systems.
The key takeaway in either of these hybrid challenges is the value in flexibility without sacrificing simplicity. Whether managing networking infrastructure, or telephony systems, teams are at their best when they have solutions that easily adapt to the complex nature of their setup. They need built-in flexibility to solve for remote workers and E911, interoperability with advanced technology, and openness of working with providers who are platform-agnostic.
The focus is on AI
You didn’t think AI was forgotten at Cisco Live, did you? With tons of sessions that touched on artificial intelligence, you know this has been the hottest topic of the year. There were discussions around how AI can advance the work in network operations and engineering, cybersecurity, plus customer experience and contact centers.
We loved the session focused on Webex Contact Center, led by Cisco’s Director of Business Development, Zack Taylor. He highlighted how their innovations in artificial intelligence, customer journey orchestration, and analytics and insights are deployed across the multi-tenant cloud Webex Contact Center solution and the dedicated instance cloud Webex Contact Center Enterprise.
These improvements to the contact center platform will better support enterprises of all types as they seek to deliver the best in customer and agent experience.
Bandwidth sparkled at the show ✨
What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay there… but we couldn’t help highlighting a few memories worthy of keeping from the Bandwidth team!
- On Monday, we announced our Maestro integration with Webex Calling to bring PSTN connectivity to enterprises to hybrid and cloud customers of Webex.
- On Tuesday, we discovered Cisco Live’s sustainability zone with hands-on upcycling activities, plus a wellness lounge that featured building bee hotels and petting therapy dogs! (Not to mention their virtual F1 driving station or their Lombardi trophy photo ops.)
- On Wednesday, Bandwidth’s very own Director of Product Management, Elijah Robertson, led a speaking session on Composability, the contact center and AI: A tale of future-proofing. He highlighted how IT leaders can solve their biggest headaches with centralization to reduce costs and complexity, adopting pre-built integrations to simplify migrations and leverage best-in-class CX and AI tools, and how a resilient solution reduces risk in more ways than one.
- On Thursday, we compiled all the ways people asked, “What do I need to do to get one of those unicorns?” We heard unicorns, stuffies, sparkly horses, glittercorns, plushies, and more! We told them you simply need to know its proper name—the Telepony (our favorite play on words with “telephony”). Catch us at the next show to bring one home!
Bandwidth had a spectacular time connecting with IT professionals at Cisco Live 2023. Between numerous theater sessions, workshops, and professional development opportunities at the show, we learned even more about both the challenges and immense talent of this industry who are solving these problems every day for their organization. As a Cisco partner, we couldn’t be prouder to see their shared commitment to helping customers create a more sustainable and collaborative workplace.
