Cisco Connect 2016 or how to face digitalization and the value of the user experience

The combination of technology and business strategy to achieve success in the new economy has been the central theme of the eighth edition of this annual event of the manufacturer to show through presentations, demos and exhibition area the value of transformation and the digital opportunity.

The edition 2016 of Cisco Connect, the annual technology event of this manufacturer, has gathered in Madrid about 2.200 professionals from all sectors under the motto 'The digital opportunity', with the aim of analyzing the technological and business keys necessary to digitize business processes, reinvent the business model and lead current and future market transitions.

In this eighth edition, The company has had the participation of 37 Cisco channel and strategic partners - with Intel as the main strategic ally (more data in Digital AV Magazine)-, who through presentations, demos and exhibition area have explained to attendees how to capture the value of the digital transformation and opportunity.

As José Manuel Petisco has stated, general director of Cisco Spain (in the image below), at the event “one in four companies from all sectors, as services, industrial, pharmacist, energetic, trade, financial or administrations, is already betting on digitalization proactively, leveraging new capabilities based on technologies such as IoT, Cloud, security and data analytics to optimize your operations, accelerate innovation and create new user experiences”.

During his inaugural presentation, Petisco stressed that “digital transformation has the potential to reshape the market faster than any other known driver.”. Whether it's connected education, automated factories, autonomous vehicles, telemedicine or smart cities, “the benefits of digitalization will impact the productive and social model in a way previously unimaginable”.

For your part, Carlos Clerencia, director of public and corporate sector at Intel Iberia, He highlighted in his presentation that “the best way to adapt to the future is to invent it”, for which his company is creating “new technologies that help organizations and society obtain value from the transformations that we will experience in the coming years”.

In this line, Pablo Carlier, responsible for cloud and data center for companies and public sector at Cisco Spain, showed the necessary guidelines to “reinvent ourselves in a digital world” through a technological platform that allows us to accelerate, devise, create and host the new applications of tomorrow.

The plenary session ended with a live demonstration on the power of collaboration as a pillar of digital transformation. Directed by Antonio Conde, collaboration director at Cisco Spain, The demonstration showed with practical examples the benefits that organizations can obtain when deploying collaboration solutions such as Cisco Spark, designed to optimize the user experience as a differentiating factor.

During the event, parallel presentations were given by representatives of BT, with the title 'The digital possible'; Citrix with the topic of 'NetScaler in ACI and hyperconvergence environments'; F5 Networks on advanced security with three success stories'; NetApp around 'Storage: Flash and other trends', and Telefónica on 'Living cloud'.

The business program was organized into three panels focused on the main areas of transformation enhanced by digitalization, while the afternoon sessions ended with an open debate on ‘Simplification, security, software and innovation’.

Added to this were the eighteen practical demonstrations carried out continuously throughout the day by the company., focused on business scenarios and business benefits, like the smart hotel, a digital school, telemedicine, digitized commerce, connected transport, mobile banking and security, which were completed with the Acuntia demos, adequate grounds, Avnet, Comstor, Ingram Micro, Level 3 Communications, Mediacloud, Purple Wifi, Red Hat, Tech Data/Azlan, Tecnocom and Unitronics.

Cisco Connect wanted to take advantage of its presence on social networks to give visibility to the solidarity projects that the Capacis and Apsuria foundations develop to help people with intellectual disabilities., which under the hashtag #RetoCapacidad managed to be a trending topic during the morning of the event in Madrid, and for which the company donated 3.000 euros to these organizations.

For Snack, “every city, Every country and every organization must face digitalization to be successful in the new economy, where four out of ten companies will be displaced from their current market position in the next five years. We hope that the debate, “Cisco Connect demonstrations and practical cases help Spanish organizations advance on this journey that transforms sectors with new disruptive business models.”.