Who doesn't like to be told that they're doing a good job? It's ingrained in us when we're kids and never leaves you even when you're an adult. Being praised is always a good thing. Whether it was an ice cream sundae for scoring a goal in soccer or receiving five dollars for every "A" I earned on my report card, a reward for a job well done is always appreciated. That's why I was so excited to learn that Cisco has been recognized by the IDC MarketScape as a leader in the Worldwide Enterprise WLAN 2019 Vendor Assessment (doc#US45066719, October 2019).

We work pretty hard at Cisco, but during the last year we have been doing a lot of work listening to our customers, talking to industry experts and making a real effort to insure that we're providing you with the products that you need. This focus and direction showed with the release of this paper's results.

Like the ice cream or the few dollars from my parents, the IDC MarketScape recognized the breadth of how far Cisco reaches and how diligently we have worked to make sure that Cisco and Meraki are integrated as a strength when they said, "[Cisco] recently unified the sales teams and created an architecture where enterprise could use both Cisco and Meraki products."

The company opined that with Cisco's scale and organization health, if there are any geopolitical uncertainties in the future, Cisco will be able to weather that storm. The IDC MarketScape mentioned two more strengths of Cisco - the broadness of our wireless portfolio and our end-to-end networking through intent-based networking.

The IDC MarketScape also suggested to consider Cisco "for organizations seeking a robust single-vendor enterprise networking ecosystem including WLAN." In addition, those in the healthcare, retail verticals as well as Smart Cities should give Cisco a long look due to our "full-stack deployments [and our] relationships across service providers."

The review wasn't based solely on hardware, as our management software, Cisco DNA Center, received a heaping of accolades. The security portion of Cisco DNA Center (SD-Access) got special recognition as did Identity Service Engine (ISE) and Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA).

From top to bottom, that's a great review and it feels good to have our hard work recognized.

But what exactly is IDC MarketScape and how did it come up with the data needed to position the industry's players? During the last year, IDC has conducted a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the characteristics that explain a vendor's chances for present and future success worldwide. In other words, IDC reviews a company's recent path, examines where they think that company is going, speaks to the company's customers and comes up with a positioning based on these parameters.

With the way Cisco was recognized in this year's IDC MarketSpace, I wonder what size sundae I'll get?

Read an excerpt of the report:
IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise WLAN 2019 Vendor Assessment