Before spring 2020, many organizations didn’t let people work from home for one reason: security.

Sure, business leaders also may have had concerns about potential issues with productivity and collaboration if people weren’t in an office. But perhaps more than anything, there was concern about the heightened possibility of critical data breaches.

The coronavirus pandemic, of course, left many companies with few, if any, other options. In March, managers were forced to send employees home to comply with regional lockdowns and protect the safety of their workers. For the most part, organizations have been pleasantly surprised with the ability of their employees to work productively outside the office. And, with a few exceptions, organizations are also largely finding that their technology tools are up to the task of keeping their environments secure.

In particular, Cisco Systems has gone to great lengths to make enterprise security a key component of the popular collaboration platform Webex. Here are some important features to be aware of that are helping keep organizations safe.

Welcome back to the third part of this blog series, where I’ve been exploring the options available in the cloud contact center space. A quick recap of who we have talked about in this series: The first post was on the power of RingCentral, the second was showing off the red-hot Five9.

In this third blog, I will explore where Cisco Systems is at in this cloudy landscape. In a business landscape influenced by the pandemic and remote work, cloud computing has been a valued resource for many companies, especially those relying on cloud contact center technology. Let’s dig into where Cisco, one of the on-premises leaders of contact center, is with cloud.

Across industries, IT networks are becoming more complex. The number of users, the number of devices and the amount of bandwidth being consumed are all growing at exponential rates. But resources dedicated to the network largely remain flat. At some point, something has to give.

The only way to battle complexity is with the simplicity offered by features such as automation and orchestration. This is where software-defined approaches to networking come in. Particularly, the software-defined access approach pioneered by Cisco Systems (SD-Access, or SDA) can simplify network deployment and management, freeing up more time for IT departments to focus on strategic projects.

Digital transformation initiatives can make workers and processes much more efficient and productive. But are the actual initiatives as efficient and productive as they can be? This isn’t a brain teaser. It’s about identifying ways to maximize each digital transformation project’s return on investment while minimizing its overhead costs. Organizations often have multiple digital transformation…

Cisco recently released a new major update to its SD-WAN solution. This release introduced advanced security features baked directly into IOS XE SD-WAN. The release notes can be found here and more information about the SD-WAN security features can be found here. With SD-WAN security, Cisco was looking to solve four common branch security use…

When people talk about a paradigm shift, it’s often an exaggeration. But intent-based networking is one of those rare exceptions that actually represents a departure from the past. Intent-based networking leverages software-defined networking (SDN), artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a fundamentally different — and better — way to provision, manage, scale and secure…