Just a few years ago, I'd go out for an occasional weekend drive to take in the splendor of Northern California, and leave my mobile phone and various gadgets behind.

Those days are long gone.

Over time, smart devices and connectivity have transformed my life -as I'm sure they have yours -and become essential to function in today's modern world.

By 2020, there will be an estimated 50 billion objects connected to the Internet. Organizations and even individuals that effectively use these connections will achieve significant advantages, including more efficient and enjoyable experiences.

And service providers are in an enviable position, sitting at the center of the Internet of Everything (IoE), bringing together people, processes, data, and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before. IoE is turning information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries.

The stakes are high.

From smart grid and smart buildings to environmental sensors and mobile consumer experiences, Cisco predicts that between now and 2022,$19 trillion in value is at stake for organizations willing to take advantage of the immense IoE opportunity.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0KtkEw8Ybw

Today, Cisco made announcements that demonstrate our commitment to partnering closely with service providers and enabling them to capture more of this opportunity, as hundreds of them already have. Their businesses can thrive by increasing revenue, decreasing operating expenses, and enhancing agility.

First, we announcedthat over 30 additional partners, including BT and Equinix, have joined our initiative to expand the scope of the Intercloud. This is the worldwide network of interconnected clouds that Cisco and provider partners are rapidly developing to enable a new generation of cloud-dependent applications and the advent of true hybrid clouds.

Today's news expands the reach of the Intercloud with 250 additional data centers in 50 countries, with it the promise to change fundamentally how IT and cloud services are bought, sold, and used. This progress builds on Cisco's plan to architect the world's largest Intercloud together with key partners, which was announced in March. This addresses customer requirements for a globally distributed, highly secure cloud platform capable of meeting the robust demands of the Internet of Everything.  Designed for high-value application workloads, with real-time analytics and "near infinite" scalability, Cisco's open approach to the Intercloud allows local hosting and local provider options that enable data sovereignty.

Cisco also announced that our Evolved Services Platform (ESP), a comprehensive virtualization and orchestration software platform that creates, automates, and provisions services in real time across compute, storage, and network functions, now enables cloud providers to deliver two new virtualized and automated managed business services: Cloud VPN and Security. Cisco's solutions are designed for cloud providers to address the fast-growing small- and medium-sized business (SMB) segment of the global managed network and communication services market, which is expected to grow to$62 billion dollars by 2018.

Today is a notable day for Cisco and the service provider community, as we transform the business, transform customer experiences, and transform the architecture to support IoE.  As we remain focused on delivering positive business outcomes, it will open up new, exciting opportunities and revenue models for service providers...and exhilarating experiences for the rest of us.

Just imagine what my Sunday drives will be like in 2022.

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