Cisco Live: Who Needs Flying Cars?

Futuristic technology was on display at the Cisco Live conference. And service providers have to provide the bandwidth to make it go.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

July 15, 2016

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LAS VEGAS -- Cisco Live -- In the middle of a virtual reality demo of the Internet of Things for transportation, my smartwatch buzzed my wrist with a notification from the real world. Later, I got into a spirited disagreement with a woman from a company called Gupshup about how much personality chatbots should have.

"We're living the future!" I thought, and used my pocket computer, connected to a global wireless network, to instantly shared the insight with thousands of friends all over the world.

We're almost never amazed anymore by technology miracles like IoT, chatbots and wireless networks. We take them for granted. And yet, as Yvette Kanouff, SVP/GM service provider business for Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), observed at a Thursday session here, it's up to service providers to deliver the bandwidth to make it all go. "It's wonderful for the world to talk about how everything, everywhere is going to be connected, but the pressure is on us to provide the bandwidth and make it work," she said.

Cisco Live is the company's annual conference for its enterprise customers. Light Reading was there with its trusty camera. Here's some of what we saw.

Figure 1: Showtime A performance worthy of a Vegas show got the crowd of 28,000 warmed up for CEO Chuck Robbins's keynote. I shot this photo about a half-hour before the keynote began; by the time it started, every seat in the arena was filled. One of those giant white 10-foot globes almost beaned me on the head while I was distracted by my camera. 

A performance worthy of a Vegas show got the crowd of 28,000 warmed up for CEO Chuck Robbins's keynote. I shot this photo about a half-hour before the keynote began; by the time it started, every seat in the arena was filled. One of those giant white 10-foot globes almost beaned me on the head while I was distracted by my camera.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud.

About the Author

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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