Beyond Legacy Networks: How Cisco is Innovating to Secure Enterprises in the Digital Era

​Cisco, a major player in networking, has been operating in India for the past 27 years, creating a record of building networks and connecting enterprises. With their network products and devices, they claim to connect 80% of businesses worldwide. As more businesses of all sizes become digitized, the vulnerability scale also increases, making it necessary for Cisco to extend beyond networking and into securing these enterprises.

Express Computer recently spoke with Mukund Pandey, Managing Director, Enterprise Business at Cisco India about the company’s transformative journey from a hardware-centric to a software-centric model. Along the way, Cisco has revolutionized the future of the enterprise by reinventing its network and now focuses on building trust for the digital world. The representative shared insights on what the journey has been like, and how Cisco is preparing its customers to navigate the digital landscape.

The digitization movement and the growth of the startup ecosystem in India have led to significant changes in the way businesses operate. Previously successful companies like Meru are now struggling to stay afloat in the face of increased competition from digital startups like Uber and Ola. This increased convenience for end-consumers has also led to a push for digitalization from traditional enterprises, such as with Paytm’s transactions. The agility of these new startups, combined with the widespread availability of the internet and mobile devices, has made it easier for businesses to respond quickly to changes in the market.

For Cisco, as a provider of the backbone infrastructure for close to 80% of internet traffic worldwide, it is important to be a part of both the physical and digital realms. They focus on creating an architecture that seamlessly integrates the old and new worlds of technology, while also offering full stack observability, application management, and security management to ensure a unified and secure experience for their customers. Through investments in new acquisitions and R&D, they strive to offer a comprehensive suite of collaboration, application management, and security tools.

Pandey informs, “We also provide full stack observability, application management and the security management, so the entire architecture is based on our inherent strength and also based on the new acquisitions and the R&D dollars that we are spending in to give a complete unified experience across security, collaboration, application management, application resource management and security stack. Lot of investments are going in that direction to provide a composite experience to our customers”

Enterprises are facing challenges in integrating infrastructure, security, and development teams for securing networks. Cisco sees this as an opportunity for integration and is investing in strategies to assist clients in securing their networks. As an industry leader, Cisco can utilize its expertise to help clients reduce risk. The company considers securing the multiple hybrid workplace and data centers a natural extension of its network-building expertise for organization and enterprises. It sees this as a next step and leverages the synergy between these efforts.

In emphasizing the company’s focus on aiding enterprises in their digital transformation, Pandey highlights the challenges of having dispersed ecosystems, multiple devices, and data centers, and how enterprises can maintain control over their application performance and business risk in such an environment. He goes on to note that achieving a comprehensive understanding of these factors is an ongoing journey and requires a significant amount of support.

The company is shifting its focus towards aggressively providing proof of balance to clients. They offer a short duration proof of value, leveraging their assessment and monitoring tools to conduct quick POCs of small scope for clients. This enables clients to experience the benefits firsthand and make confident decisions about the next steps. The company’s strength and differentiation make it one of the most preferred options for this approach instead of relying solely on presentations or whitepapers.