Cisco Shapes the Future of Work with New Solutions
Enabling Trusted Workplaces and Safe Return to Office
- New Cisco networking, security, cloud and collaboration
solutions help businesses reimagine how they work while keeping employees
safe, connected and productive.
- Solutions address fears over the return to the office,
the demand for a safe workplace, and IT tools that connect hybrid
workforces in new ways.
- Builds on Cisco’s continued commitment to drive an
inclusive recovery, including addressing the need for a secure and
collaborative work environment that is accessible from anywhere.
From the
beginning of the pandemic and throughout the recovery journey, Cisco has
remained committed to helping people and communities around the world drive an
inclusive recovery. As part of the ongoing effort, today, Cisco announced the
availability of purpose-built technology and solutions that help companies
reimagine how they work - and keep employees safe.
Whether an organization’s goal is to
bring people back into the office, or to evolve support for a remote or hybrid
workforce, Cisco’s new innovations – and the breadth of Cisco's networking,
security, cloud and collaboration portfolio - support multiple options to
create a Trusted Workplace that helps enable a Safe-Return-to-Office and
enables a Secure Remote Workforce: from automating, securing, and
scaling network connectivity, to social density and proximity insights for
employee health and safety, to securely bringing people together to work
however and wherever they want through Webex and collaboration devices that
leverage AI, sensors and alerts.
Recent research shows:
- A real fear of returning to the office, with 95% of respondents are uncomfortable about
returning to the office given the current health crisis1
- The desire for more advanced tools, with 96% of
respondents wanting intelligent technology to improve work
environments2
- More prioritization of the employee experience, with 86% of
respondents stating that empowering a distributed
workforce with seamless access to applications and high-quality
collaborative experiences is important or very important -
this jumps to 95% for companies with 1000+ employees3
In response, organizations are
looking to transform their workplace for a hybrid workforce and create a more
inclusive future of work for all. This transformation requires organizations to
prioritize adaptable, engaging, and trusted work experiences for their
employees, customers, communities, and ecosystems. Business agility and
resilience are core to this transformation, with research revealing 90% of CIOs
and IT decision makers saying that, in the future, business agility and
resilience will be inextricably linked 4. This exemplifies the need
for tools that connect, secure, and automate technologies and applications in
order to transform at scale and bring the workforce and workplaces together –
regardless of where employees work.
Cisco’s portfolio and deep expertise
in helping customers navigate challenging technology transformations, provide
the tools to:
- Empower a workforce to securely work from anywhere, on
any device, anytime.
- Enable a safe return-to-office by transforming offices
and facilities optimized for productivity into trusted workplaces connected
for health and wellness.
- Break down the barriers of different geographies,
personality types (such as introverts and extroverts), language
preferences, and tools to fully realize communication experiences where
everyone is included.
“As we think about the return to
office, Cisco is helping our customers find solutions that work best for their
teams. Whether they are in the office, at home, or on the road, every employee
deserves the best experience,” said Todd Nightingale, SVP and GM, Enterprise Networking
and Cloud at Cisco. “We are committed to delivering solutions with the
simplicity, agility, and resiliency businesses require to meet today’s needs
and thrive in the face of tomorrow’s challenges.”
Highlights include:
Trusted Workplace and a Safe Return
to Office
- Cisco Webex collaboration
devices enable a safe return to office with capabilities like wayfinding,
digital signage, touchless calls and meeting joins, room capacity alerts,
environmental sensors, and more.
- DNA Spaces
Back to Business suite of applications provides location analytics
and insight into user behavior to support customers’ safe return to office
strategies. With features including proximity reporting, and real-time and
historical density and traffic monitoring, Cisco Catalyst and Meraki wireless
customers can deploy DNA Spaces in less than 30 minutes for immediate
business impact. Since their release, DNA Spaces Back to Business
applications have been deployed in over 50,000 business locations.
- Cisco Meraki cloud-first
comprehensive platform includes MV smart cameras for reliable security
monitoring to keep people, workplaces, critical infrastructure, and
sensitive inventory secure. Using Meraki MV and Cisco DNA Spaces, building
managers can see real-time footfall and presence, along with actionable
analytics for safer, more productive spaces. New Meraki MT sensors provide
more insight with real-time environmental monitoring, from temperature to
humidity and leaks, to opened/closed doors and cabinets.
- Cisco Industrial Asset Vision helps businesses simplify asset and facility monitoring
with IoT sensors. To ensure workers are safe, remote monitoring provides
real-time data from both IT and industrial environments and enables
businesses to know workers’ locations and minimize contact. In addition,
actionable data from office space and assets help to better manage network
equipment performance and maintenance.
- Workplace Zero Trust for Industrial Networks brings IT and Operational Technology (OT) security to
the next level for organizations to protect operations while enabling more
remote accesses and cloud applications in their industrial environments.
It leverages Cisco Cyber Vision and Cisco ISE/DNA Center to create trusted
production zones and ensure security policies are not disrupting
industrial processes, ultimately providing consistent, identity-based,
secure access to the network for users and devices.
Secure Remote Workforce Solutions
- Cisco Secure Remote Worker is a simple, scalable, integrated security solution
that delivers the strength and breadth of the Cisco platform approach to
protect a remote workforce. Verify the identity of all users before
granting access to corporate applications with Cisco Secure Access by Duo;
enable secure access to the enterprise network for any user, from any
device, at any time, in any location with Cisco AnyConnect Mobility Client
(VPN); and coordinate defense against threats with Cisco Umbrella for
internet security, Cisco Secure Email for email protection and Secure
Endpoint for endpoint security. This solution is part of Cisco’s
cloud-native and integrated platform, SecureX.
- Cisco Managed Remote Access from Cisco Customer Experience (CX) provides
businesses with the expertise needed to ensure long-term remote or hybrid
workforces are secure. With Cisco Managed Remote Access, businesses can
leverage Cisco CX experts to not only build and scale up VPNs across their
entire ecosystem, but leverage management and oversight services handled
entirely by Cisco.
- Seamless Collaboration for Secure Remote Work solutions enable a hybrid workforce and the flex worker
with seamless calling, meeting and messaging. Organizations can empower their
teams to securely communicate, ideate and iterate - working in sync with
the apps they love. The latest advancements to Webex create more
personalized experiences with customized layouts, advanced calling
features and Webex Assistant intelligence for real-time translation,
automated note taking, action items and more.
“Organizations are facing the need
to transform their workforce and workplace amid unprecedented change, while
maintaining productivity and avoiding complications. Those who didn’t already
have a plan to digitally transform have moved rapidly toward prioritizing one,
and those that did have accelerated those plans. The need for a workforce
that’s protected and connected from anywhere, on any device requires businesses
to be more agile and prioritize digitization, automation, security, and
collaboration in order to create trusted work experiences for employees and
customers,” said Maribel Lopez, Founder and Principal Analyst at Lopez
Research.
1 Cisco Global Workforce Survey, October 2020; 2 Cisco Global Workforce Survey, October 2020; 3 Accelerating Digital Agility, March 2020; 4 Accelerating Digital Agility, March 2020
Source: Cisco media announcement