This week Cisco kicked off Cisco LIVE 2022, the company’s premiere networking and security event that brings together the Cisco community to showcase innovations, inspiration, and networking. However, there is one major difference that sets this year's event apart from the ones in 2020 and 2021. And it is not just because the last one we attended in person, in 2020, took place just before the pandemic broke the world.

For the past two years, Cisco has hosted an all-digital Cisco Lives, due to lockdowns, travel restrictions and the need to adapt a new normal. This year though marks its first ever Cisco Live hybrid event – with an expected 15 000 attendees in-person, coupled with a live-streamed digital event that people can tune into from anywhere in the world (if interested you can register for the live stream and view on-demand content here).

As has been the case in previous years, Cisco executives will take the Cisco Live stage, including Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins. Customers will be front and center, including Amazon, City of Las Vegas, Ford, McLaren Racing, Starbucks, coupled with innovation talks, hands-on labs, and leadership and technical education sessions.

The event will feature Grammy award-winning, Academy Award-nominated Musician and Filmmaker, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Pharrell Williams discussing the role of tech in education and future of work, a talk from actress Mindy Kaling and the event will culminate with a celebration and performances from Dave Matthews Band and Britany Howard.

“Through the challenges and unpredictability of the past few years, I believe we’ve seen the true power of technology. Digital transformation remains core to every business as we navigate this complex world alongside our incredible customers and partners,” said Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco. “I’m excited for us to share our latest innovations with our customers this week at Cisco Live to continue to help them transform and adapt,” he enthused.

New Technologies for the Modern Enterprise

Already, has Cisco shared some new technologies at Cisco Live across its networking, security, collaboration, and optimized applications portfolio that help organizations drive the productivity, resiliency and agility required in today’s hybrid world.

Cisco explained that these new technologies power an inclusive future, delivering:   

• Unified experiences: Today’s business environment is predictably unpredictable, and business agility and resiliency have never been more important. Today Cisco announced new cloud management capabilities that provide a unified experience across the Cisco Meraki, Cisco Catalyst, and Cisco Nexus portfolios – and a new Cisco ThousandEyes product for advanced optimization of WAN performance.
• Security resilience: Cisco unveiled its new strategy for a global, cloud-delivered, integrated platform delivering secure access and connectivity for organizations of any shape and size. Cisco is taking steps to realize its Security Cloud vision with innovations across the industry’s most complete portfolio.
• An empowering, connected hybrid work experience: The industry’s first phone for hybrid work – the Cisco Video Phone 8875 – maximizes productivity and reduces meeting fatigue when hot desking is becoming the new normal in the workplace. Advancements to Webex Calling, part of the Webex Suite, improve work flexibility, reliability, and audio. Integration of ThousandEyes into Webex Control Hub provides better experiences for Webex Suite users by empowering IT admins to proactively monitor app performance issues. Salesforce and Oracle Eloqua are now integrated into Webex Webinars to provide flexible workflows for enhanced productivity.
• A reimagined application experience: Cisco has launched AppDynamics Cloud, a cloud-native observability platform for modern applications which are based on increasingly complex, distributed architectures and services. Designed for simplicity, usability, and intuitiveness, it empowers IT teams to deliver the exceptional digital experiences currently demanded by businesses, consumers and end users.
• New free open-source, API-first developer solutions: Applications are no longer simply an extension of the brand or an added channel to engage customers - today applications are the business. Available today, Cisco’s Panoptica app and Calisti app, the latest additions to Cisco’s suite of cloud-native, API-first tools that result in faster application development cycles, and provide businesses with modern application connectivity, security, and observability that is critical for exceptional digital experiences.

Innovation Showcase

Cisco will preview forward looking technology in its “World of Solutions” at Cisco Live. This includes:

• Transforming automotive travel: A Ford Mustang Mach-E will preview Webex Meetings in-car capability. Attendees will also see a demo of Cisco connected roadways and intersections in action.
• Real-world hybrid work space: Work isn’t a place you go, it’s what you do. And work can now be done anywhere – at home, in the office or at a coffee shop. Attendees can enter Cisco’s hybrid work stations to test the latest technology that enables a new way of working.
• Immersive 3D collaboration: With Webex Hologram, attendees will experience the industry’s only real-time meeting solution that takes advantage of augmented reality headsets to combine feature rich Webex meeting functionality with immersive 3D holograms.
• Extending video communications and collaboration into deep space: Experience Callisto, the unique vehicle-connected crew interface technology, that will be onboard the Orion spacecraft for NASA’s Artemis I mission powered by Cisco, Lockheed Martin and Amazon.
• The fastest autonomous car: Software developers and network engineers are innovating using Cisco’s technologies and platforms – and even setting a world record for the fastest autonomous car. Attendees will see the Cisco-powered car that set the land speed record for autonomous vehicles (over 190 MPH).
• Asynchronous video messaging: With meeting fatigue more prevalent than ever, solutions that increase productivity and flexibility in the workday are much needed. Vidcast, part of the Webex Suite, enables users to easily record, edit and share video messages — all without waiting for calendars to align to meet live. For the first time, Cisco will preview its AI-powered editing features that will make it even easier for users to create polished videos - with the ability to use the transcript to clip/edit the video, remove filler words, and in the near term, leverage custom text-to-speech models for insertions or overdubbing.

This question that this year's Cisco Live brings to the fore has to do with what lies ahead, and whether hybrid everything (hybrid work, hybrid industry events) is our new normal - and to what extent thatwill impact on the kinds of technologies we can expect to see being developed and introduced to the market. 

One issue we expect to hear more on from Cisco is resilience, and as Robbins mentioned at the outset, on how technologies can enable companies to adapt to what is clearly now inevitable change.