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Why Attend Cisco Live! 2017?

Cisco Live! 2017 is tracking to be one of the biggest show on record. Held in Melbourne, Mar 7-10, more than 6,500 IT professional will descend on the city to hear keynotes from Cisco executives.

IDG staff (ARN)
26 February, 2017 09:39

Cisco’s big event on the calendar is Cisco Live! an event that each year, gives IT professionals from around the country the opportunity to get hands-on time with Cisco’s leading technology, and harness their vision from a diverse group of business unit and technology leaders.

Cisco Live! 2017 is tracking to be one of the biggest shows on record. Held in Melbourne, March 7-10, 6,500+ IT professionals will descend on the city to hear keynotes from Cisco executives, and attend some of the 300+ planned sessions.

These sessions cover the full gamut of Cisco’s many technology solutions, including (but not limited to) Cloud, collaboration, networking, big data, IoT, and virtualisation. Those in attendance will hear from keynote speakers including Ken Boal, VP of Cisco Australia and New Zealand, Chris Dedicoat, EVP, Worldwide Sales and Field Operations Cisco, and Jeff Reed, SVP Enterprise Networks Cisco.

In addition to the keynotes, attendees will get to experience a wide range of different activities, ranging from networking events, where attendees can share insights with other key technologists in the country; attend a DevNet Zone - a space dedicated to helping both new and experienced software developers access resources; as well as a “Meet The Expert” program, allowing attendees to connect with Cisco Live! speakers and those that design and develop Cisco solutions. This is a rare opportunity to understand why Cisco solutions are designed the way that they are. For a bit of fun, there will even be a Cisco Press Book Signing area where you can get your favourite Cisco authors to sign your copy of their books.

This year, there will be a special focus on cybersecurity. The Cyber Security Experience will give partners a comprehensive breakdown of the current threat landscape, and provide them with information on how they can help their customers meet the ever-evolving and escalating threat landscape.

“In this day and age, where there is so much information coming at you from so many levels, be that from digital resources, emails, white papers, and so on, we envisioned that Cisco Live would be an opportunity to get very close to the actual technology, and get access to the experts in that technology,” Anthony Miller, partner developer manager at Cisco Global Security Sales Organisation, said. “It’s an opportunity to see how the technology works, and understand the business issues that it is solving.”

Cisco’s security experts will be in force at the event. There will be up to seven senior executives from the Cisco Security team present, giving attendees plenty of opportunities to ask the critical questions. There will be a special breakfast event, exclusively available to resellers, where the global CSO for Cisco, Stephen Martino, will walk attendees through some of the security strategies and best practices that Cisco itself uses for its organisation. With over 120,000 staff worldwide, the mass amount of information that Cisco processes and shares between its offices makes for a fascinating case study in security that can then be applied to businesses of all sizes.

“Cisco has made billions of dollars worth of acquisitions in the security space in recent years, as we follow through with a strategy to use acquisitions in conjunction with pre-existing security capabilities,” Miller said. “We have a genuine commitment to security, and this means that we need to address the dominant challenges that organisations are having with their security. This means that we understand that security needs to be taken as an end-to-end architectural solution, and adopting a threat-centric approach to security is going to be one of the key technology themes through the year.

"Our goal is to help partners understand the depth of solutions available through Cisco, as well as the strategies that they can adopt in helping their customers remain secure in such a dynamic modern environment.”