Our VP of Marketing, Dessi Schachne, reflects on some of the key takeaways from the Cisco Live 2023 kick-off presentation, and how Cisco’s direction resonates with the objectives Kurmi has to simplify the world of UC provisioning, migration and administration.
From the very outset, Cisco Live 2023 proved hugely insightful with several valuable takeaways for Kurmi and our customers. The kick-off saw presentations from key Cisco executives that were refreshingly open and honest about ‘what’ Cisco is looking to deliver over the coming months and years, and, perhaps more significantly ‘why’ they are moving in this direction. The watchword for us, was ‘simplification’.
Of particular interest for us was the keynote from Jonathan Davidson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Networking. He deep-dived into the need for simplification; music to our ears at Kurmi as it’s at the heart of everything we stand for.
Simplify technology to simplify outcomes
Jonathan explained candidly that, for many of us, our daily experiences are ‘sub-optimal’. They can be confusing, risky and disjointed. Whether that’s configuring a network or checking into a hotel. We have high expectations from technology, but most of the experiences we have are combinations of applications, security, networking, cloud, storage and more – these can be really difficult to manage, and often don’t hang together as smoothly as we would want.
By simplifying the technology, outcomes can be simplified and allow all of us who use technology to communicate and interact with customers to create unified experiences that are simple, secure and predictable.
This definitely resonates with us. The power of our unique software suite lies in simplifying and automating provisioning, migration and day-to-day administration of unified comms to give customers an optimal experience.
Conquer the complexity
To do this, as Jonathan pointed out, we need to ‘conquer the complexity’ of the network infrastructure we have created over the last several decades. Failing to mitigate the complexity means that it will continue to grow over time, especially as the world is embracing new frontiers of AI, hybrid work, digitalization and the growing attack surface.
Don’t be afraid
Cisco is embarking on a campaign of radical simplification. Acknowledging that Cisco has built products and technologies that once met a need but are no longer needed, Jonathan announced that Cisco is on a journey towards platform consolidation. But his message is ‘Don’t be afraid’, which is one that we echo at Kurmi. Platform consolidation will ultimately make it easier for users to use Cisco products, and Cisco’s planned license simplification will make life easier for administrators, auditors and compliance. This will translate into more unified experiences for users and customers, but getting there needn’t be a major migration headache with tools like Kurmi Provisioning Suite to simplify the practical application of the journey.
Embrace the cloud
Another key takeaway from the keynote was the theme of being cloud friendly, cloud-first, in addition to supporting on-premises environments. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it? It’s straight out of Kurmi’s playbook and is something we are excited to be working towards with all of our customers on both Cisco and other unified communications platforms.
To find out how Kurmi can simplify your UC platform provisioning, migration and day-to-day administration, request a demo.
