In her blog, Countdown to Cisco Live EMEA, Adele Trombetta, SVP, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) EMEA, mentioned how excited she is for Cisco Live EMEA in just a little more than a week, and I agree.… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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In her blog, Countdown to Cisco Live EMEA, Adele Trombetta, SVP, Cisco Customer Experience (CX) EMEA, mentioned how excited she is for Cisco Live EMEA in just a little more than a week, and I agree. Her preview of this event provides an overview of several different areas where CX will make a splash this year. However, I want to go a little deeper and give you some more details on what you’ll see in our Customer Experience booth, and around Cisco Live February 5-9.

With a dozen CX demos available to you at this year’s event, let’s get you ready to explore and start accelerating your business outcomes.

CX Booth

Here are the demos you will find inside the CX booth in Amsterdam:

Cisco Lifecycle Services

Remove adoption roadblocks and transform at speed with less risk with our new outcomes-driven service. From improving the customer experience and enhancing security to optimizing productivity and more, our experts can help you achieve measurable business results. With our telemetry-based AI/ML insights, tools, and automation, we can help you accelerate time to value from your Cisco technology investments and achieve your business outcomes, faster.

Automation

Cisco offers solutions to simplify and speed up the delivery of business outcomes. Automated deployment and configuration, service-level monitoring with observability, response and remediation, incident management, and software upgrades with validation and assurance can benefit businesses of all levels of automation maturity. Regardless of where you are in your automation journey, Cisco has solutions that are easy to consume and tailored to your needs.

Success Tracks/CX Cloud

Improve operational efficiency and reduce risk with a 360-degree view of your network with proactive digital insights; remove adoption roadblocks with expert best practices, and boost staff productivity and skills with learning resources with Success Tracks, enabled by CX Cloud to maximize the value of your IT investments.

Security, Consulting and Managed Services

Two separate demonstrations in our booth will show you how to strengthen your organization’s security resilience. Come explore the wide range of CX Security services helping to strengthen your organization’s security resilience. From product-agnostic advisory, strategy, and security architecture-focused services to planning, design, and implementation of Cisco Security products – pre-defined or fully customized service solutions cover your complete services lifecycle.

TAC Innovations

Our top priorities are simplicity, speed, and efficiency when getting IT issues solved, no matter their size. See how self-service automated support workflows can reduce your time to final resolution or how RADKit enables remote diagnostic log collection and automates complex tasks with network-wide APIs to speed up time to resolution. In addition to the TAC Innovations demos in the CX Booth, TAC engineers, sales engineers, and professional services engineers will also be available via Technical Solutions Clinics and in the Technical Solutions Clinic Theater.

Customer Success

Come see how Cisco CX enables customers in Financial Services, Retail, and Utilities to overcome IT challenges and deliver optimized mission-critical services, improve end-to-end security, and drive more intelligent operations. You’ll also learn how we’ve helped them transform work environments, reimagine communities, and enhance customer experience.

Cisco Community

One of the most frequented Cisco digital properties is Cisco Community, which serves more than 1.4 million visitors each month and supports seven languages. Learn more about this trusted, online, peer-to-peer community and knowledge hub, where you always have access to real-time answers and 24/7 advice.

Partner-Powered Customer Experience

Visit the CX partner demo to discover how partners can enhance the customer experience with Cisco tools and platforms. Engage with experts showcasing live demos of tools such as the Partner Experience (PX) Cloud, dive into the capabilities and insights available through Lifecycle Advantage and explore how to drive customer software adoption through the digital end-to-end Lifecycle Practice Journey.

Cisco Learning and Certifications

Cisco Learning and Certifications (L&C) will be in the booth with training offers and demos on Cisco U. and Cisco Modeling Labs (CML). You can find Cisco L&C outside of the CX Booth as well, with 30 sessions planned in the Cisco U. Theater!

Sustainability

Finally, stop by and let Cisco Customer Experience solutions help shape, scale, and sustain your journey toward sustainability. Align your goals with actionable plans enhanced by AI/ML, automation, telemetry, and guided expertise to identify, accelerate, and measure the impact of your sustainability technology initiatives.

Of course, that’s only what we have going on within the Customer Experience booth. We also have a CX demo in the Cisco Showcase, which walks you through how Cisco CX leads the way to help our customers realize business outcomes faster at every step of the lifecycle.

Last but certainly not least, head over to the Sustainability Zone and learn how to make your buildings and workspaces ready for hybrid work while driving sustainability. You can design a secure, sustainable, and future-proofed smart building with our end-to-end approach. Come explore our vision to help create the next generation of smarter buildings.

We have so much we want to share with you this year at Cisco Live EMEA. I hope you’re looking forward to it. I know our CX team is!

If you want to know more about our Customer Experience presence at this year’s Cisco Live, check out the CX at Cisco Live website for the most up-to-date information.

In the meantime, feel free to leave me a comment or a question below, and stay tuned for more info coming your way as we get close to the start of Cisco Live EMEA on February 5.

"}]]  With a dozen CX demos available to you at this year’s Cisco Live EMEA, let’s get you ready to explore and start accelerating your business outcomes.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

This year we’ll see a movement for responsible, ethical use of AI that begins with clear AI governance frameworks that respect human rights and values.

In 2024, we’re at a breathtaking cro… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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This year we’ll see a movement for responsible, ethical use of AI that begins with clear AI governance frameworks that respect human rights and values.

In 2024, we’re at a breathtaking crossroads.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has created incredible expectations of improving lives and driving business forward in ways that were unimaginable only a few short years ago. But it also comes with complicated challenges around individual autonomy, self-determination, and privacy.

Our capacity to trust organizations and governments with our opinions, skills, and fundamental aspects of our identities is at stake. In fact, there is growing digital asymmetry that AI creates and perpetuates – where companies, for instance, have access to personal details, biases, and pressure points of customers whether they are individuals or other businesses. AI-driven algorithmic personalization has added a new level of disempowerment and vulnerability.

This year, the world will convene a conversation about the protections needed to ensure that every person and organization will be at ease when using AI, while also ensuring space for innovation. Respect for fundamental human rights and values will require a careful balance between technical coherence and digital policy objectives that do not impede business.

It’s against this backdrop that the Cisco AI Readiness Index reveals that 76% of organizations don’t have comprehensive AI policies in place. In her annual tech trends and predictions, Liz Centoni, Chief Strategy Officer and GM of Applications, pointed out that while there is mostly general agreement that we need regulations, policies, and industry self-policing and governance to mitigate the risks from AI, that is not enough.

“We need to get more nuanced, for example, in areas like IP infringement, where bits of existing works of original art are scraped to generate new digital art. This area needs regulation,” she said.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum a few days ago, Liz Centoni explained a wide-angle view that it’s about the data that feeds AI models. She couldn’t be more right. Data and context to customize AI models derives distinction, and AI needs large amounts of quality data to produce accurate, reliable, insightful output.

Some of the work that’s needed to make data trustworthy includes cataloging, cleaning, normalizing, and securing it. It’s underway, and AI is making it easier to unlock vast data potential. For example, Cisco already has access to massive volumes of telemetry from the normal operations of business – more than anyone on the planet. We’re helping our customers achieve unrivaled AI-driven insights across devices, applications, security, the network, and the internet.

That includes more than 500 million connected devices across our platforms such as Meraki, Catalyst, IoT, and Control Center. We are already analyzing more than 625 billion daily web requests to stop millions of cyber-attacks with our threat intelligence. And 63 billion daily observability metrics provide proactive visibility and blaze a path to faster mean time to resolution.

Data is the backbone and differentiator

AI has and will continue to be front-page news in the year to come, and that means data will also be in the spotlight. Data is the backbone and the differentiator for AI, and it is also the area where readiness is the weakest.

The AI Readiness Index reveals that 81% of all organizations claim some degree of siloed or fragmented data. This poses a critical challenge due to the complexity of integrating data held in different repositories.

While siloed data has long been understood as a barrier to information sharing, collaboration, and holistic insight and decision making in the enterprise, the AI quotient adds a new dimension. With the rise in data complexity, it can be difficult to coordinate workflows and enable better synchronization and efficiency. Leveraging data across silos will require data lineage tracking, as well, so that only the approved and relevant data is used, and AI model output can be explained and tracked to training data.

To address this issue, businesses will turn more and more to AI in the coming year as they look to unite siloed data, improve productivity, and streamline operations. In fact, we’ll look back a year from now and see 2024 as the beginning of the end of data silos.

Emerging regulations and harmonization of rules on fair access to and use of data, such as the EU Data Act which becomes fully applicable next year, are the beginning of another facet of the AI revolution that will pick up steam this year. Unlocking massive economic potential and significantly contributing to a new market for data itself, these mandates will benefit both ordinary citizens and businesses who will access and reuse the data generated by their usage of products and services.

According to the World Economic Forum, the amount of data generated globally in 2025 is predicted to be 463 exabytes per day, every day. The sheer amount of business-critical data being created around the world is outpacing our ability to process it.

It may seem counterintuitive, however, that as AI systems continue to consume more and more data, available public data will soon hit a ceiling and high-quality language data will likely be exhausted by 2026 according to some estimates. It is already evident that organizations will need to move toward ingesting private and synthetic data. Both private and synthetic data, as with any data that is not validated, can also lead to bias in AI systems.

This comes with the risk of unintended access and usage as organizations face the challenges of responsibly and securely collecting and maintaining data. Misuse of private data can have serious consequences such as identity theft, financial loss, and reputation damage. Synthetic data, while artificially generated, can also be used in ways that create privacy risks if not produced or used properly.

Organizations must ensure they have data governance policies, procedures, and guidelines in place, aligned with AI responsibility frameworks, to guard against these threats. “Leaders must commit to transparency and trustworthiness around the development, use, and outcomes of AI systems. For instance, in reliability, addressing false content and unanticipated outcomes should be driven by organizations with responsible AI assessments, robust training of large language models to reduce the chance of hallucinations, sentiment analysis and output shaping,” said Centoni.

Recognizing the urgency that AI brings to the equation, the processes and structures that facilitate data sharing among companies, society, and the public sector will be under intense scrutiny. In 2024, we’ll see companies of every size and sector formally outline responsible AI governance frameworks to guide the development, application, and use of AI with the goal of achieving shared prosperity, security, and wellbeing.

With AI as both catalyst and canvas for innovation, this is one of a series of blogs exploring Cisco EVP, Chief Strategy Officer and GM of Applications Liz Centoni’s tech predictions for 2024. Her complete tech trend predictions can be found in The Year of AI Readiness, Adoption and Tech Integration ebook.

Catch the other blogs in the 2024 Tech Trends series.

"}]]  This year we’ll see a movement for responsible, ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) that begins with clear AI governance frameworks that respect human rights and values.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Understanding how to best serve customers is a primary focus for retailers. However, gaining this understanding can be complex. Retailers need to know what their customers are buying, when they’re b… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Understanding how to best serve customers is a primary focus for retailers. However, gaining this understanding can be complex. Retailers need to know what their customers are buying, when they’re buying it, and their feelings while shopping. Stationing staff members in the store to gauge customer reactions is not an efficient solution. This is where Meraki and EVERYANGLE come into play, enhancing the customer-focused daily operations of the Cisco Store.  

The MV12 and MV63 are directional cameras. The indoor MV12 offers a choice of a wide or narrow Field of View (FoV) and provides intelligent object and motion detection, analytics, and easy operation via the Meraki dashboard. The outdoor MV63 monitors the entrances and exits of the store.  

Meanwhile, the MV32 and MV93 are 360° fish-eye cameras. The indoor MV32 combines an immersive de-warped FoV with intelligent object detection and streamlined operation via the Meraki dashboard, in addition to addressing major security vulnerabilities. The outdoor MV93 offers panoramic wide area coverage, enhancing surveillance capabilities even in low light.  

The data from these Meraki cameras is utilized by EVERYANGLE in the Cisco Store in various ways.  

Footfall Intelligence and Customer Demographics  

A challenge for physical stores is obtaining metrics comparable to online stores, making it difficult to tailor the retail experience effectively. EVERYANGLE’s technology levels the playing field for physical retailers.  

EVERYANGLE uses data from the directional cameras MV12 and MV63 to help the Cisco Store better understand its visitors. The Next Generation Footfall App breaks down customer genders and ages, monitors their satisfaction levels post-visit, and tracks the time spent in various store sections. For example, data from a Cisco Live event revealed a 50:50 male to female customer ratio, contrary to the expected 60:40, leading to adjustments in the Store’s product range.  

EVERYANGLE determines purchase conversion rates at physical locations by analyzing integrated sales data and foot traffic. Their machine learning and AI algorithms provide 95% accurate customer insights. Staff members are automatically excluded from these insights, ensuring data accuracy. 

EVERYANGLE’s True Customer Identification accurately distinguishes genuine shoppers from non-customers. This empowers retailers with precise customer data, crucial for targeted strategies and store optimization, ensuring decisions reflect real customer activity. 

Improving Audience Understanding and Store Operations with EVERYANGLE and Meraki

The Cisco Store can thus easily gauge customer demographics, engagement, and group dynamics without a heavy in-store staff presence, adjusting displays and marketing tactics accordingly. Fortunately, we have seen an increase in positive sentiment from when customers enter the Cisco Store to when they exit!  

Footfall Intelligence 

Customer Demographic Breakdown

Queue Counting and Dwell Times

This data is used to maintain smooth store operations and continuously improve performance. The fish-eye cameras MV32 and MV93 are used to monitor the checkout lines: a threshold on the queue count allows for staff adjustment at checkouts as needed. If people spend a comparatively longer time at certain stations, we can begin to understand if that longer dwell time means more sales of those specific products.  

In-Store Security

Meraki’s people detection capabilities, integrated with EVERYANGLE, help the Cisco Store maintain top-notch security. Cameras, integrated with the point of sale (POS) system, anonymously track high-value purchases and returns, aiding in fraud prevention.   

Meraki and EVERYANGLE enable the Cisco Store to better understand its customers and serve them effectively, prioritizing their security and privacy. The analytics and dashboards facilitate customer service improvement, ensuring customers leave with a positive shopping experience.  

"}]]  EVERYANGLE and Meraki cameras work together to improve customer insights and streamline store operations while still maintaining store security.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

This is the first of our three-part series on Cisco Foundation grantees working in the Amazon and South America region. This series will introduce you to eight Cisco Foundation Climate Impact &… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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This is the first of our three-part series on Cisco Foundation grantees working in the Amazon and South America region. This series will introduce you to eight Cisco Foundation Climate Impact & Regeneration grantees working to support preservation and protection of the Amazon basin through three main avenues, all of which are deeply entangled and in tandem serve to promote enduring environmental protection and preservation: Prioritizing Indigenous Sovereignty, Promoting Sustainable Livelihood Opportunities, and Scaling Innovative Financing Opportunities.

This article was constructed in partnership with my colleagues at Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance: Atossa Soltani, Uyunkar Domingo Peas, Rafalea Iturralde; and Digital Democracy: Jen Castro, and Megan Barickman.

Aerial view of the Yasuní National Park in the Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon. Photo Credit: Juan Manuel Crespo

The Amazon is a vast tropical rainforest, spanning nine South American countries, and is known for its rich biodiversity and cultural vibrancy. Indeed, the numbers are breathtaking: the Amazon covers 6.7 million square kilometers, is home to over 47 million people, (about 2 million of whom are Indigenous), stores an estimated 200 billion tons of carbon, and is home to approximately 10% of the world’s remaining biodiversity (World Wildlife Fund: Living Amazon Report, 2022). Beyond these regional numbers, though, the Amazon is important at a wider scope: large swaths of water vapor known as “atmospheric rivers” above the Amazon help to stabilize global temperatures and rainfall patterns around the world.  

And yet, the ecosystem is facing enormous pressure from extractive industrial practices such as gold mining, oil drilling, and deforestation for timber and agricultural land. The scientific community now warns that if such unchecked degradation continues, the Amazon could reach a “tipping point,” triggering a massive and irreversible ecological die-off within decades. While such headlines may be concerning, radiating out from within the region is a spirit of energy, hope, and opportunity that sparks optimism and weaves together a collective vision of a resilient and inclusive future.  

Cisco’s Chief Sustainability Office and the Cisco Foundation’s Climate Commitment seek to build capacity for our social and environmental systems to heal and thrive by working toward an inclusive, resilient, and regenerative climate future. Our work in the Amazon seeks to uphold these values, and enthusiastically supports several partners operating from within the region.  

Indigenous Lands of the Amazon 

The ecological significance of the Amazon bioregion is clear, but what often takes a backseat in modern discourse is its immense biocultural vitality. We cannot discuss Amazon preservation without centering and prioritizing Indigenous voices and acknowledging the necessity for Indigenous peoples to exercise self-determination within the lands they steward. Around the globe, some of the best-preserved and most resilient bioregions are those areas inhabited by Indigenous peoples. For example, land stewarded by Indigenous communities holds 80% of the world’s biodiversity. Within the Amazon, there are over 500 Indigenous groups who have inhabited over 300 million hectares of land since before European recorded history; and satellite imagery from the rainforest does show that land fully managed by Indigenous nations is the most well preserved. The Coordinator of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) is the preeminent leading organizational body acting on behalf of all 511 Indigenous groups in the Amazon (Please note: COICA’s primary language is Spanish). 

Despite this data, very little funding for conservation and climate mitigation actually reaches Indigenous territories in regions across the globe. The Amazon is no exception. To effectively invest and support resilient ecosystems, it is crucial that we shift the main paradigm of ecosystem preservation and protection into the hands of the forest’s original stewards: Indigenous peoples. Two Cisco Foundation grantees are taking monumental strides to herald in that future by prioritizing Indigenous sovereignty through governance and digital access.

Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance: Indigenous Governance & Self-Determination 

Cisco Foundation grantee Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance (ASHA) is an alliance founded in 2017 by Amazon Indigenous federations in Ecuador and Peru, including COICA with a goal to permanently protect and restore 86 million acres of rainforest within the Amazon headwaters, in the Napo, Pastaza, and Marañon basins. The alliance has now grown to include 24 Indigenous organizations and 3 non-governmental organizations (NGOs). According to Uyunkar Domingo Peas, the President of ASHA’s Board of Directors, these organizations are “joining together to mobilize significant financial and technical resources to ensure that our voices are heard, our rights are recognized, and our territories are protected.”  

Jessica Guatatuca presenting Bio Warmi, a coalition of Kichwa women in Pastaza that together create natural hair products. Photo credit: Lorena Mendoza (Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance)

Domingo explains that comprehensive alliance is vital for the region, because “we all belong to the same interconnected web of rivers and forests. We are all kin, and when we unite, we can better protect our lands and our rights.” The guiding vision for ASHA, and many people within the region, is Buen Vivir, or the concept of collective well-being. To bring Buen Vivir to life, the Alliance co-created the Bioregional Plan 2030, which seeks to address five shared objectives: “improving living conditions, advancing Indigenous rights and territorial governance, stopping deforestation and degradation, conserving forests and restoring degraded areas, and stopping the advancement of extractive industries (ASHA).”  

Domingo Peas, President of ASHA addressing the Binational Congress of Achuar People of Ecuador and Peru (COBNAEP). Photo Credit: Lorena Mendoza

The Bioregional Plan emphasizes working closely with government leaders to promote a new economic paradigm, where extractive industries are foregone in favor of what Domingo describes as a “regenerative standing forest bioeconomy.” This future, according to Domingo, is not actually a sacrifice but instead a “Win-Win-Win: For Indigenous peoples, the Earth’s biosphere, and the nation’s long-term economic prosperity.” And how to practically bring Buen Vivir to life? Well, according to ASHA, it will take “significant levels of international funding, investments and financial mechanisms (e.g. debt forgiveness, climate and biodiversity adaptation and mitigation funds, philanthropy) can be mobilized and leveraged to incentivize the protection of the Sacred Headwaters region.”

Digital Democracy: Co-Building Indigenous Digital Futures 

Another Cisco Foundation grantee, Digital Democracy, partners with remote front-line communities to help them address climate change and defend their rights through accessible technology. Crucial to Digital Democracy’s approach is “co-creation,” wherein product development is led largely by Indigenous partners and involves deep listening practices. In their own words: “Co-creating digital tools with Indigenous land defenders is critical because very little technology currently exists that meets their needs. Instead, technology is often used against Indigenous Peoples who are living in close relationship with nature and trying to protect vast, climate-sensitive ecosystems from destructive industries.” 

Mabel Celma López Cruz (Yanesha mapping specialist) shared her design ideas with Kichwa, Wampis, and Shipibo peers at a Mapeo workshop Chazuta, San Martin, Peru organized by Forests Peoples Program. (November 2023)

According to Co-Director Jen Castro, at the organization’s inception in 2008, their partners needed technology that didn’t yet exist, such as “mapping tools that worked offline, allowed for offline collaboration amongst users, and supported data sovereignty, and tools that help them tell their own story in a digital world.” In practice, Indigenous earth defenders in the Amazon require tools to document threats such as oil spills or illegal logging. That data can then be used in legal cases or when seeking resources. Digital Democracy’s custom and flagship product Mapeo fills this gap: it is a free, open-source digital toolset that allows users to document, monitor, and map many types of data, completely offline. Digital Democracy’s work has contributed to 70 projects in nearly 40 countries with 7 million hectares of territory mapped and defended.  

Digital Democracy’s Co-Director Jen Castro conducting user-research as part of the Mapeo co-design process, with Nayap Santiago (Wampis) and Evila Shupingahua (Kichwa) at the Earth Defenders Toolkit gathering in Tena, Ecuador, May 2023.

When asked about their current vision for the future, Digital Democracy painted a very clear picture: “The future we imagine is one of abundance and climate justice, in which Indigenous communities have sovereignty over their territories and their digital futures. We hope the tools we are co-building with our Indigenous partners will help lay the groundwork for this future.”

Uniting the Cisco Foundation, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, and Digital Democracy is a singular vision: one of a thriving, harmonious and resilient Amazon ecosystem, in which local Indigenous communities are active leaders, fully sovereign on their lands, leading the driving paradigm of preservation and protection.  

The thread that weaves together three very different organizations is the pursuit of this vision — whether through Buen Vivir, Digital Sovereignty, or Resilient Ecosystems. If our goal is regeneration and a future where environmental systems are healthy and thrive, we get there by protecting human rights; facilitating diversity, inclusion, and equitable opportunity; and empowering local communities.  

Stay tuned for the next article in our series about ecosystem restoration and regeneration through sustainable livelihood opportunities in the Amazon and South America.

"}]]  Meet two Cisco Foundation Grantees working toward Indigenous governance and digital sovereignty in the Amazon.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Start a new year of tech learning with the experts from Cisco Learning & Certifications. Whether you’re looking to kick off your learning journey and power up to a Cisco certification or dip your… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Start a new year of tech learning with the experts from Cisco Learning & Certifications. Whether you’re looking to kick off your learning journey and power up to a Cisco certification or dip your toes in to test the waters of tech, the 12 Days of Learning gives you the insight you need to get on the path to tech career success and stay on track.

Make sure you scroll all the way to the end for the chance to win a FREE Cisco certification exam voucher.

Three (3) winners will be selected at random on February 1, 2024.

There’s a certain kind of magic that happens at the start of something new.

Fresh. New. Reset. Intro. Begin. Start. Launch. See what we mean? Sometimes, just seeing the words gets us excited. (Don’t lie, you know you felt it.) Unfortunately, starting something new can be more intriguing than the actual follow-through.

“Not me,”  you think to yourself. “I’m committed, diligent, reliable…” 

Well, we hope you are right. Really—but even those with the best intentions and inspiration stray from the path. We start off strong and motivated, but once that fresh-new-feeling begins to dissolve… the likelihood of reaching that initial goal does, too. The truth is, we are all human—faults and failures included. But if you want to achieve your dreams, you have to be willing to accept the challenge to get there.

Sure, there’s something magical about a new beginning, but nothing compares to an epic, heroic ending. Ask any Cisco Certified individual to name the best part of their Cisco certification story, and you’ll likely hear about the moment they first saw that big bold PASS appear on their exam score report—the heroic end of their journey towards that particular certification.

The next part of the conversation usually goes something like this:

“Congrats! What did you use to study?”
“How long did it take you?”
“Can you share some advice for those preparing for Cisco cert exams?”

The truth about Cisco certification exams is that they are tough. They’re supposed to be. (Yes, that does include the CCNA.) But if you are willing to put in the work and be diligent, you can become the next certification success story. And we’re going to help you get there, starting with 12 days of learning.

12 Days of Learning at Cisco

When it comes to your Cisco certification journey, we’re here to help you succeed. That means helping you find the resources, support, and advice you need to keep learning, stay inspired, and continue to feel empowered to achieve your goals.

So, without further ado, let’s get started with 12 days of learning tips, and advice, directly from our technical advocates, experts, instructors, and wrapped up with a bow from all of us in the Learning & Certifications organization.

Subscribe to Cisco U. by Learning and Certifications on YouTube.

Whether you’re just getting started or you’re a seasoned member of the Cisco learning community, remember that consistency is key. We hope that you found the 12 Days of Learning helpful.

Feel free to bookmark this page and return any time you want to revisit one of our 12 Days of Learning resources. Before you go, we would love to hear about your Cisco certification plans. Leave a comment below and tell us which exam you’re working towards right now and how we can help you get there.

Keep learning. Keep going. You have got this!

Thanks for reading,
Stef & Emma

Enter to win a FREE Cisco certification exam voucher!

Three (3) winners will be selected at random on February 1, 2024. | Enter giveaway

Join the Cisco Learning Network today for free.

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Read next:

5 Steps to Plan Your Cisco Certification Journey like a Project Manager  

"}]]  At Cisco, we believe that learning is the key to unlocking your full potential, especially in the ever-changing tech landscape. That's why we've compiled 12 Days of Learning at Cisco, to bring you 12 tips directly from our experts to help you become Cisco Certified in the new year.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

NRF (Retail’s Big Show) is an event focused on “what’s next” for retailers. It’s an opportunity to showcase our innovation, sustainability, and business value. This year, we featured over 40 theater s… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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NRF (Retail’s Big Show) is an event focused on “what’s next” for retailers. It’s an opportunity to showcase our innovation, sustainability, and business value. This year, we featured over 40 theater sessions helping retailers tackle their biggest challenges. The different sessions leveraged topics like cybersecurity, digital merchandising, personalized engagement, behavioral insights, and queue management. Despite the wide array of topics, three themes resonated throughout each day of the event. Here’s what I saw. 

1. Rich personalized communication drives the right engagement 

Boston Consulting Group has said personalization of the consumer journey can drive up to a 40% larger basket, meaning more revenue for the retailer. Webex Connect can deliver a rich, personalized engagement on a consumer’s device, both outside and inside the store, without having to install a client app. Webex Connect can also provide additional channels for Cisco Contact Center, allowing consumers to engage digitally, allowing more efficient utilization of CC agents, freeing them to focus where 1:1 personal engagement is required.  

Engagement isn’t only for consumers. In a time where many retailers struggle to attract and retain sufficient quality staff, the ability to engage with staff, streamline hiring processes, onboard staff, and digitally enable HR systems to attract the next-generation associates, can make the difference in whether they chose to work for one retailer or a competitor. 

2. Loss and Fraud are a huge concern 

Theft and fraud are two of the largest challenges facing retailers today. As theft and fraud grow exponentially, the issue has been exacerbated by retail labor shortages. Investigating loss is costly, requiring “Loss Prevention” staff to go through hours of video in the hope of seeing something useful. Traditional loss prevention is simply passive loss recording. We offer solutions that move retailers to active loss and fraud detection where suspicious activity is detected, flagged, and sent to the security team right away. While there’s no one-size fits all approach, we work with a number of partners to bring the right options to the table. 

3. Tech only matters once you’ve solved a problem 

Retailers go to NRF because they are open to understanding how they can improve their store experience, both front of house and back of house. By focusing on the outcome, we deliver game-changing experiences for both customers and associates. A few examples: 

We demonstrated how our Meraki platform can unleash the power of real-time footfall analytics to track traffic-to-conversion ratios, provide store operations insights and enhance store layouts and product placements. 
ThousandEyes gives retailers unprecedented visibility into their operations environment and allows real-time monitoring for anomalies or outages. This means they can act before that outage impacts business. 
Cisco Spaces helps retailers visualize their stores, distribution center, or carpeted spaces, in a single pane of glass. It displays data from a variety of sensors and systems, like temperature, occupancy, air quality, and other data in a location-based information, in an easily digestible interface. 
Duo’s Access Management solutions help retailers meet key FTC and PCI DSS compliance requirements by preventing credential attacks and limiting lateral movement.  
Cisco AppDynamics empowers retailers to deliver an impeccable buying experience by allowing our retailers to track every aspect of the customer journey across various digital platforms. 

Your trusted technology partner in retail 

If you had the chance to stop by our booth, thank you! The conversations and face-to-face interactions my team and I had with our customers, peers, and partners were nothing short of inspiring. We learned a lot too! Cisco is doing some incredible work driving true outcomes for our customers, and NRF ‘24 was a great showcase of where we can go from here.  

I hope you enjoyed our theater sessions, demo area, and (my personal favorite) Café Cisco. I was able to mobile order my coffee as soon as I stepped into the booth and once I got to the drive-thru window, it was ready for pick up. For all our Cisco NRF content, I encourage you to visit our microsite. 

Big thank you to all of the partners, customers, and the Cisco team who made NRF successful. See you all next year! 

"]]  Leadership, forward-looking growth, new business models, customer experience, operations, and talent were major themes from NRF. Here's how Cisco is enabling retailers to thrive in all areas with digital solutions and network management.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Connect, Code, Create

As we eagerly anticipate Cisco Live Amsterdam 2024, one aspect that stands out for technology enthusiasts and developers alike is the array of Meraki developer sessions that… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Connect, Code, Create

As we eagerly anticipate Cisco Live Amsterdam 2024, one aspect that stands out for technology enthusiasts and developers alike is the array of Meraki developer sessions that promise to be both informative and transformative. From sustainability goals to seamless collaborations and innovative API strategies, the Meraki developer sessions are set to be a highlight of this event. As always, I want to ensure that you are thoroughly informed about the exciting Meraki developer sessions that are occurring on-site.

For sessions focusing on Meraki API & Ecosystem, register for these talks led by Meraki subject matter experts.

Meraki API & Ecosystem focused sessions

APIs for a Greener world – Achieve Network Sustainability goals with Meraki Dashboard APIs – DEVNET-1379

Listen to success stories of customers who have harnessed Meraki APIs to create sustainable networks. Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the transformative potential of Meraki APIs in achieving your organization’s sustainability goals.

Meraki and Ansible: A collaboration made in the cloud – DEVNET-1399

During this engaging session, participants will embark on a journey through the seamless integration of Ansible with Cisco-Meraki, enabling businesses to achieve unparalleled automation capabilities.

Monitoring at Scale with Meraki APIs – DEVNET-1449

Take your network monitoring up a level. Combine the power of Meraki APIs with some open source tools, and know how you can achieve what the art of the possible is.

Unlock API Innovation with the Meraki Ecosystem – DEVNET-2378

This session will cover specifics on how APIs can help mass provision your network, create network automation, set up advanced monitoring services, provide advanced analytics with cameras and many other cloud integrations.

Why Developers Don’t Care About OAuth – DEVLIT-2145

In this session, you will learn how OAuth enhances data security and user experience by granting secure access to protected resources without sharing sensitive credentials. We will share practical insights through real-world examples and best practices for successful OAuth implementations.

Transforming Network Operations: How Cisco Meraki’s licensing automation elevates productivity and simplifies subscription management – DEVLIT-2144

This interactive and insightful session at Cisco Live will delve into Cisco Meraki’s Subscription APIs, the cornerstone of efficient network and subscription management. Tailored for the intermediate technical level, this 20-minute DevNet session is designed to empower you with the tools for automation and orchestration within your architecture

API design principles and considerations for massive scale – DEVNET-2710

In this session we will tackle a number of API design principles we have developed and how these designs solve problems for application developers managing data and networks at massive scale.

Meraki hands-on workshops in the DevNet Zone

Do you want to roll up your sleeves and start building? We have instructor led workshops for people with different experience levels.

Application Creation Through Customizable Webhook Templates – DEVWKS-1035

This hands-on workshop will explore the new webhook payload template features, related APIs and how you can get started writing your own templates using the Liquid template language.

Automate Meraki Alerting & Response with Webhooks and AWS Lambda – DEVWKS-2845

In this workshop, participants will learn how to respond to alerts being sent from the Meraki dashboard in an automated fashion. To achieve this goal, you’ll learn how to create a webhook and have the Meraki dashboard send events using this webhook. How to create an AWS Lambda function with an API endpoint to process these events. Finally, you will learn how to send API calls to the Meraki API from the Lambda function to instantly respond to the event.

APIs are the new SNMP! – DEVWKS-2036

This workshop will focus on showing real world use cases leveraging APIs to solve challenges in managing and monitoring your company’s network.

Unite Meraki, Catalyst, and ISE with Ansible! – DEVWKS-2301

Discover the future of network automation as we unveil the seamless integration of Ansible with Meraki, Catalyst, and ISE. In this workshop you will experience first-hand how the powerful alliance simplifies network management, strengthens security, and empowers organizations to scale with unparalleled efficiency.

Meraki MX Security: Simplified with Programmability – DEVWKS-2003

This session will guide participants through working with Meraki MX appliances using the Meraki Dashboard API. They will learn how to modify and apply security policies programmatically and query security incidents from firewall appliances. Both NetOps and SecOps engineers will benefit from learning how to interact with their infrastructure using the API interfaces.

Cisco U sessions

There are some exciting sessions scheduled in the Cisco U theatre

Introducing Meraki Integration in Webex Control Hub – CISCOU-1016

Discover in this session how this integration empowers you to effortlessly troubleshoot audio and video meeting quality on Meraki networks.

Vanilla ISE: Building your own User-Friendly Custom UI – CISCOU-2027

Participants will learn how they can leverage Cisco APIs to tailor any solution to their own needs. Vanilla ISE is a simplified UI that allows organizations to empower their help desk personnel to troubleshoot and operate Cisco ISE, thus offloading the networking/security team to mundane tasks.

API Hacks: Mass-Scale automation for Catalyst and Meraki networking – CISCOU-1793

The session will cover clever methods, techniques and tools that can significantly improve scale, reliability, and functionality of Meraki’s API. The breakout will include actual customer use-cases. These topics will cover both Meraki (all products) and Catalyst Switching(Cat9k) product portfolios.

Meraki spotlight day

Make sure you don’t miss out the Meraki spotlight day which will take place on Wednesday, February 7th in the DevNet Zone. This is a great opportunity to meet and network with Meraki folks.

Can’t make it to Cisco Live? Follow the live stream

Alongside the in-person event, Cisco Live 2024 Amsterdam will feature a live streaming event from February 6-8, accessible to all without any cost or registration. Engage with us in real-time for Keynotes, Innovation Talks, studio interviews, and additional content.

Access to Keynotes, Innovation Talks, and breakout sessions will be provided in the Cisco Live On-Demand Library by the conclusion of February 2024.

"}]]  From sustainability goals, to seamless collaborations, and innovative API strategies, Meraki developer sessions are set to be a highlight of this event.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

I often hear in today’s cybersecurity landscape are “intricate,” “daunting,” and “complex.” However, the fundamental idea behind security is straightforward – safeguard individuals during their i… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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I often hear in today’s cybersecurity landscape are “intricate,” “daunting,” and “complex.” However, the fundamental idea behind security is straightforward – safeguard individuals during their interactions with applications and proactively stop threats before they can compromise users or networks.

Establishing a unified and comprehensive security framework in a multicloud, hybrid work environment is challenging. Attackers are more sophisticated than ever, coupled with a need to constantly ingest new vendors and new tools—we are at an inflection point.

Cisco’s technology combined with Kyndryl’s cybersecurity expertise can help customers navigate this challenge.

Kyndryl, the largest technology infrastructure services provider globally, just announced two new security edge services featuring Cisco Secure Access:

Kyndryl Consult Security Services Edge (SSE) with Cisco Secure Access: designed to provide a modular and unified approach for consulting and implementing an SSE architecture with Cisco’s technology.
Kyndryl Managed SSE with Cisco Secure Access: introduces a new category of network security services that integrates security into a cloud-delivered service model. It also offers an end-to-end solution for transition, implementation, and managed services of SSE solutions with Cisco’s portfolio of products and services.

This announcement is another example of Kyndryl and Cisco coming together to create services and solutions that will help customers modernize their applications, secure infrastructure with a zero-trust network, and navigate the world of hybrid work. With a great user experience at the center, it’s as easy as “connect and get to work.”

“Partnering is where great ideas are born. Pulling from our collective insights and expertiseallows us to create better, more robust offerings for our customers.”

— Michelle Weston, Kyndryl Vice President of Global Offerings for Security & Resiliency

Customers are turning to valued partners and the managed services they provide to deliver comprehensive security that is both flexible and scalable as their needs change. That’s why Cisco is committed to investing in creating products like Secure Access that are managed services ready.

I’m excited to see these joint SSE offers come to life and opportunities ahead in this partnership.

Learn more about the new security offers

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with #CiscoPartners on social!

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"}]]  Establishing a unified and comprehensive security framework in a multicloud, hybrid work environment is challenging. Attackers are more sophisticated than ever, coupled with a need to constantly ingest new vendors and new tools—we are at an inflection point. Cisco’s technology combined with Kyndryl’s cybersecurity expertise can help customers navigate this challenge.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

For most organizations, the journey to a digital-first business is not yet complete. While many have implemented new technologies to enable digital capabilities across the business, modernizing IT… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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For most organizations, the journey to a digital-first business is not yet complete. While many have implemented new technologies to enable digital capabilities across the business, modernizing IT infrastructure and applications requires ongoing planning and investment. In fact, a recent IDC survey found that 49% of respondents identified their organization as only “somewhat digital,” with many in the process of transforming portions of the business to digital (IDC Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey, Wave 8, September 2023). With so much transformation still required, many CIOs and IT managers are prioritizing projects that will help drive new digital-first business models.

Unfortunately, while technology innovations promise to deliver significant results for business managers, the reality of implementation and adoption is often very different. CIOs and IT managers are increasingly tasked with not just deploying and integrating these complex solutions, but with delivering specific, measurable business outcomes to key stakeholders across the organization. IDC surveys show that most organizations continue to prioritize strategies focused on improved customer and employee experiences, better operational efficiencies, achieving sustainability goals, and expanding products into new markets. Delivering critical insights to business managers to enable real-time data analysis and decision-making is key to driving these strategies. While the specific business outcomes vary by industry and region, they are united by one common thread: they are all driven by technology.

Conversations with CIOs and IT managers reveal that a critical and difficult first step is making sure IT objectives and KPIs can be aligned with measurable, specific business outcomes across the organization. Aligning IT and business strategies has long been a goal, but managing a digital-first business to achieve desired outcomes across the organization has increased its importance. Such alignment is a difficult challenge for IT organizations that often lack the skills and resources for this exercise. Business managers also struggle to understand underlying IT infrastructure, further complicating the process of aligning strategic outcomes across IT and the digital-first business.

To help, services partners are offering comprehensive portfolios of outcomes-driven, life-cycle services designed to help customers align technology, operational, and business outcomes to accelerate value realization. These services are typically featured in packages that include planning and advisory, implementation and deployment, adoption and ongoing optimization, and support and training. IDC believes life-cycle services partners committed to demonstrating the value of technology for a digital business should incorporate the following capabilities:

Early emphasis on defining desired technical, operational, and business outcomes with required stakeholders across the organization.
Developed methodologies that can help align technology implementations and operational outcomes with business goals by establishing key performance indicators and objective metrics for tracking progress.
Highly skilled talent with the right mix of business, technology skills, and certifications on new and emerging technologies across IT and network solutions, with continuous engagement throughout the life cycle.
Ongoing monitoring and reporting through dashboards that clearly demonstrate how the IT organization is leveraging technology to meet the needs of business managers.
Extensive technology-driven capabilities that can help meet key risk management objectives, both as part of technology implementations and ongoing operations.

In addition, CIOs should ensure that services partners can demonstrate an integrated approach to identifying, measuring, and monitoring key technology, operational, and business KPIs throughout the life cycle. While most organizations focus on implementation and onboarding, the value of most technology solutions is delivered well after the initial project is complete. Life-cycle services partners should be able to identify and track key objectives that demonstrate ongoing adoption and optimization to ensure organizations are realizing the full value of technology solutions.

Not surprisingly, IDC research shows that organizations are seeing a number of benefits by using life-cycle services partners focused on achieving customer success. Respondents in a recent IDC survey highlighted the following:

40% reported improving the overall performance of the solution.
40% were able to deliver more value to business managers.
38% indicated they adopted new implementations faster.
36% reported expanding adoption to improve business results.

Source: IDC Software Support and Customer Success Survey, December 2022

For CIOs looking to transform the IT organization from a cost center to an “innovation driver” across the business, these benefits are critical to realizing the promise of complex technology solutions. Life-cycle services partners with proven processes and methodologies connecting technology, operational, and business outcomes can help resource-strapped IT organizations demonstrate the full value of technology innovations and drive direct, tangible business results. IDC believes life-cycle services partners who can demonstrate these capabilities are well-positioned to help organizations seeking to drive faster adoption while delivering the desired outcomes across the business. Read more about life-cycle services partners in the Cisco-sponsored IDC spotlight, Achieving Successful Outcomes with Advanced Life-Cycle Services Capabilities.

Message from the Sponsor

Cisco Customer Experience (CX) Services help organizations realize tangible business outcomes faster with Cisco software, products, and solutions – at every step of their technology lifecycle journey. From architecting and deploying new solutions, and streamlining operations, to optimizing the IT environment, Cisco and its partners can help IT teams achieve their desired outcomes faster.

To learn how to transform with less risk and effort, visit Cisco Services.

For more information on how to accelerate business outcomes, visit Cisco Lifecycle Services.

"}]]  While technology innovations promise to deliver significant results for business managers, the reality of implementation and adoption is often very different. This blog from IDC shares how life-cycle services can help.  Read More Cisco Blogs