Let me start with a few ideas that should be pretty uncontroversial:

• Digitization is transforming even the most old-school industries. Who would have thought the taxi cab business would get turned on its head by an app?

• The old way of doing IT-where every company builds and maintains its own vast infrastructure-is going to change. For decades, survey after survey has said that companies spend 70 or 80 percent of their IT resources just to keep the lights on.

• Companies want to shift their IT risk onto IT companies. They want to press the proverbial "big red 'easy' button" on their networks so they just work.

Cisco is taking a giant step in that direction with Cisco-Meraki cloud managed IT. The idea-which should be pretty uncontroversial-is to make the network as easy to operate as your iPhone.

When Cisco acquired Meraki a couple of years ago, people thought of it as a company that supplied wireless networks to midsized businesses. But it's never beenjustabout Wi-Fi or small and medium-sized businesses.

It's about making any network of any scale manageable via any browser. Motel 6 supports 11,000 locations and 70,000 guest rooms via our cloud managed networking solution.

It's about making the network so simple that customers can deploy and troubleshoot it from anywhere without sending IT people to set up new sites. Forever New is a group of clothing stores based in Australia. They put Wi-Fi in 260 stores in 11 countries inless than 10 minutes per store.

As one customer -Sanjel Corporation -said, "Taking a page out of Apple's playbook, Cisco Meraki is simple and it works!"

Our team has been hard at work rolling out new enhancements-improving the wired and wireless performance, security, mobile device management, location accuracy and user experience.

And just to prove how friendly the cloud-managed experience is, enterprises can take the Meraki Challenge for a chance to win an Apple or Android watch or a tropical vacation!

Let me know what you think. You can comment here or for Cisco-Meraki customers who have an awesome "Wish List" feature that is the "big red 'easy' button" for feedback. See you in the cloud...

Additional Resources:

• To learn about Cisco ONE Software Suites for our on-premise offerings, visit John Brigden's blog post.
• To understand the benefits Cisco Meraki brings to channel partners, check out Bruce Klein's blog.