Last week saw our annual Cisco Live event hosted in Spain. Customers from all around the world converged at the Fira Gran Via in Barcelona.  They experience the latest technology innovations, network with peers and colleagues, and find out what Cisco has in store for 2020.

For many of our customers, Cisco Live is a must-attend event that helps them plan for the year ahead. We're happy we can support them in this way.

Below are the top five key takeaways from Cisco Live Europe 2020:

1. Reimagine the Application in a Hybrid Cloud World

The application is now the engine for growth for many companies. In order for applications to be the gold standard of the digital business, they need to be available 24/7/365, work fast, and deliver the user experience demanded. If they perform badly or are unavailable when needed, consumers simply look for an alternative. Oftentimes never come back. More than 50 percent of consumers place a higher value on their digital interactions with brands than their physical interactions. They have zero tolerance for poor application performance. Businesses must, therefore, focus on improving the application experience to achieve a competitive advantage.

The way apps are built is also changing. The cloud has driven a shift in both application development and business computing topology. There's now a mixture of legacy apps and new containerized applications. Some running on-premises and others running in the cloud. At the same time, computing at the edge is providing both applications and devices with lower latency, high bandwidth, and consistent reliability without the need to connect back to a centralized data center. The challenge for IT teams is to provide an environment supporting apps and data wherever they're located. At the same time while overcoming the complexity that arises from the 'technology silos' we see today. Visibility is key to do this properly.

2. Build the bridge to accelerate your hybrid applications

While some vendors provide visibility into either applications or an individual tier of physical or virtual infrastructure, Cisco is the first to bridge all three layers with insight and proactive optimization. At Cisco Live, we announced three powerful software additions to our portfolio that enable a new operating model:

• Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer -Application-aware automation for on-premises and public cloud infrastructure
• Cisco AppDynamics Experience Journey Map -Discovery of the most critical moments in the customer experience to maximize ROI
• HyperFlex Application Platform -Ready-to-consume on-premises Kubernetes-as-a-service driven from the cloud

For more on Hybrid Applications, read Liz Centoni's blog: "When Apps are from Mars and Infrastructure is from Venus, how do you accelerate your Hybrid Applications?"

3. Make the lives of data center operations teams easier

We introduced new features designed to make the lives of our customers easier.

For example, you can now bridge the gap between infrastructure and applications with Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer. This gives you the visibility, real-time analytics, and automation needed to optimize IT infrastructure and assure optimal application performance.

We also simplified Day 2 Operations with the expansion of the Data Center Network Assurance and Insights suite to include new Network Insights capabilities. These enable your IT operations teams to do their jobs more easily and in the process add value both to the data center and the business itself. Read more in a blog by Thomas Scheibe: "Transforming Day-2 Operations with Cisco Data Center Network Assurance and Insights."

4. Get hands-on experience

We enabled attendees to get to grips to several solutions in live environments. A huge number of our developer program team, Cisco DevNet, were on hand to help developers and IT professionals learn how to develop new integrations with Cisco products and platforms using APIs. There were also two sessions in our conference program dedicated to our developer audience that took them through developing with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and Cisco Intersight. If you would like to learn more about DevNet, click here.

5. What we learned from our customers

It's always great to learn from others, which is why we appreciate it when our customers tell us about their experiences with our solutions and products. We are here to support you on your journey to digitally transform your businesses. We now look forward to hearing from you again on your success with innovative projects. We're especially grateful to our customer leaders who joined us on stage to share their experiences with peers at the Gateway booth. If you missed any of the sessions, you can find all the recordings and highlights here.

Last but not least, we'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who made the trip to Barcelona, it was truly a pleasure to see you. Next time we will also summarize the top five key takeaways from the next Cisco Live event.  And remember: the Cisco Data Center goes anywhere your data is