Cisco is joining a trend that already seems unstoppable: Simplifying technology procurement practices by offering its products on a pay-per-use or “as a service” basis.
Cisco will offer its entire portfolio of products as a service
In the framework of Cisco Live! held yesterday by the company, the multinational presented its Cisco Plus commercial offer in this area. According to the organization, Cisco Plus goes beyond hardware or software as a service, since it “focuses on results and experiences and will offer greater speed, agility, and scalability to customers”. In this regard, Cisco Plus will also include Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) solutions that will unify networking, security, and visibility across access, WAN and Cloud environments.
The first solutions with the “Cisco Plus” seal will be available in the United States in the middle of this year and will gradually be implemented in other strategic markets for the company. The next countries to be covered by the Cisco program are expected to be Australia, Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Premiering this service catalog will be the “Hybrid Cloud as-a-service” solution that includes Cisco’s entire portfolio of data center compute, networking, and storage, plus third-party storage and software, bridging the gap between on-premises, edge, and public cloud.
From an initial offering, and based on a flexible consumption model and a suite of lifecycle management services, customers will be able to determine the level of service they want in areas such as planning, design, and deployment of the solution.
Throughout the fourth quarter of this year, the company will also debut its “Cisco Plus Experience,” a self-service portal built on Cisco CX Cloud where customers will be able to easily contract and control the consumption of their “as a service” products. In addition to Cisco Plus, what continues to be the most important event organized by the company throughout the year, has left other interesting headlines. They are the following:
- Cisco announced the integration of the ThousandEyes cloud and Internet intelligence solution with the Cisco Catalyst 9000 switching family and Cisco AppDynamics Dash Studio, introducing the first extended visibility solution for the corporate technology environment.
- The company simplifies network and security operations with an expanded Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture, with the ability to purchase all core components in a single offering and the flexibility to easily move to a unified subscription service in the future. Cisco is also announcing innovations in SecureX, its native cloud security platform, which offers complete protection from endpoints to the cloud.
- Cisco Secure is announcing Duo passwordless authentication, which allows users to bypass passwords and securely log into cloud applications using security keys or biometric authentication embedded in endpoints such as laptops and smartphones. Duo’s passwordless authentication is part of Cisco’s zero-trust platform.
