Guest Blog by Igor Dayen, SP Product and Solutions Marketing

Cancun is a paradise for many and thus it is known to draw crowds. Another reason for Cancun's popularity is the addition of the Cisco Live Conference right in the center of this resort town. This event allows Cisco customers, executives, experts, and partners to share insights on new Service Provider technologies and their potential to transform the way we work, learn, and play. This year we had a successful conference showcasing service provider product and solution demonstrations as well as technical training. The demonstrations in the service provider booth and the breakout sessions that were presented to the attendees were very well aligned.

Cisco Live is Cisco's premier education and training destination for IT professionals worldwide. With that spirit, Cisco Live Cancun proves to befertile grounds for driving innovations with our service provider customers and partners. Our exhibition was poised to tell the story of the Open Network Strategy by presenting over 15 technology and business demos. We also brought with us an ASR 9000 IPoDWDM line card as well as an ASR 9000 8x100GE line card to showcase the latest innovations that service providers can start deploying today. Being all together in one booth allowed our staffers and attendees to exchange ideas, knowledge and business opportunities across segments and architectures. This was a very positive experience as it allowed customers to see end-to-end solution-both in vertical and traditional horizontal solutions.

Our service provider booth on the Cisco Campus in the World of Solutions was very busy. We had many insightful conversations around NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) and SDN (Software Defined Networks), as pillars for delivering cloud services and automated network handling respectively. Our solutions based on NFV and SDN have matured significantly and are ready for prime time.

Let me cite as an example Cloud VPN-a secure cloud services solution that delivers virtual services seamlessly, cost-effectively and on-demand to remote sites, users and businesses. Our visitors have been able to learn how Cloud VPN automates the delivery of their cloud services with an easy-to-use GUI and cloud service delivery portal for their administrators and as a customizable, self-service portal for the Enterprise customers and internal users. This very powerful solution, as an instance of Cisco's Virtual Managed Services, enables Service Providers to bring enterprise-grade services to the SMB's.

Another solution that was very popular with the attendees at Cisco Live was Network Service Orchestration (NSO) powered by Tail-f. In this NSO demo, visitors could experience how multivendor orchestration enables service providers to effectively configure, provision, and automate network infrastructure resources. This solution implements NETCONF protocol and the YANG data model to simplify network programmability and automation. NSO greatly leverages the power of YANG to model device and service parameters. This allows customers to build more robust and resilient products in less time. These are the fundamental capabilities to grow business for service providers.

On another note, we have demonstrated a tool that helps substantiate the ESP platform technologies and its offerings. This tool is of high essence when it comes to a need to better understand the untapped revenue opportunities. It is called Cisco Monetization and Optimization Index (MOI). MOI is quickly emerging as an essential industry resource and standard for understanding how service providers can position themselves for continued success. We showed how MOI Index helps quantify how Cisco service provider architecture, products, and solutions can aid service providers in increasing business revenue, reducing operating expenses, and enhancing agility.

Another important innovation that service providers will now be able to deploy is Segment Routing. This routing innovation is designed to deliver significantly greater network programmability and efficiency. The demonstration showed how Segment Routing alleviates application networking complexity and provides high scalability by enabling edge routers to steer packets onto the most optimal network paths, intelligently responding to application requirements and network conditions.

Virtualization was one of the hot subjects that was brought up and discussed during the event. Virtualization can allow you to transform the Service Provider infrastructure to an open, flexible, agile and programmable services platform. NSO was a good example that demonstrated how NfV-based innovations can automate services and make the services programmable. Another topic that was very popular was SDN. With software-defined networking (SDN), you can more easily make your network automatically adjust to application needs and what you need it to do. We explained how WAN Automation Engine (WAE) puts the SDN principles to work and make the infrastructure more agile.

I was personally very excited while working with my team on preparing the service provider booth experience for you. For those of you who joined us in Cancun, I am glad you were able to learn firsthand about the service provider transformation opportunities. At the same time, I would like to welcome all of you and especially, those whose schedule did not allow them to be in Cancun, to join us at Cisco Live Berlin in February 2016. In the meantime, we have put together a list of key collateral that will help you understand the SP strategy.

In case you could not make it to Cancun, here is the list of demos that we presented. We broke down the list of demos below by three key areas that are of value to you: "Increase Revenue," "Lower Costs" and "Increase Agility." It is never too late to go through any of these demos. Please contact your Cisco account representative to arrange for a demo of your choice.

• Increase Revenue
  • Evolved Services Platform: Virtualization and Orchestration Strategy
  • Mobility IQ: Unlock Value with Visual Network Knowledge
  • Connected Analytics for Service Providers
  • Virtual Managed Services and Cloud VPN for Business
  • Cisco cBR-8: Evolved Converged Cable Access Platform
  • Cloud DVR and Video Entertainment Solutions
  • Monetization and Optimization Index

• Lower Costs
  • Cisco ASR 9000 vDDoS Protection and Mitigation
  • Cisco EPN Manager
  • Network Services Orchestrator Enabled by Tail-f
  • High Density 100G Solutions for Core Networks
  • Agile Optical Converged Infrastructure
  • Cisco IOS XRv Virtual Router

• Increase Agility
  • WAN Automation Engine
  • Application Engineered Routing
  • Virtualized Video Processing

Overall, a clear message was sent and well received on how an industry must embrace digitization and focus on the opportunities that will allow for SP business to grow. We emphasized that we need to change how we work with our customers, how we need to co-innovate, and how to work together to transform the experience, transform the architecture, and transform the business.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Berlin.  Find out more about Berlin here.