Information Technology has been at the center of business transformation for a while now. Organizations look up to IT for business innovation, productivity improvements, and competitive edge. Most recently, businesses relied on IT to not just survive but thrive during disruptions caused by global shutdowns and supply chain issues.

Enterprise networks are at the core of digital enterprises and are business-critical. Networks must deliver application services securely while ensuring the best possible end-user experience. Networks must adapt to ever-changing business needs, adopt business and technology innovations, manage challenging work environments, and support business innovation and growth while improving connectivity, security, and reliability. To top it all, enterprise networks must provide a competitive advantage for the business with agility and automation.  How does IT create and manage such a network? The answer lies in your choice of network technology and network management system (NMS).

Are you getting the most out of your network?

Well, are you?

If you built your network on the industry-leading Cisco Catalyst family, you are already headed in the right direction.

If you are managing your network with Cisco DNA Center, you're ahead of the game. If you're not, ask yourself the following questions about your NMS. Does your NMS

• Support the digital agility of your organization?
• Scale your network at the speed of business?
• Reduce downtime and business interruptions?
• Reduce the burden on IT staff?
• Secure the digital enterprise?
• Deliver exceptional end-user experience no matter where the users are and how they are connected?

If you are not using Cisco DNA Center, it is likely that your answer to one or more questions is 'No'. And that can be an issue because you need a powerful network manager that simplifies management, streamlines operations, and maximizes return on your Cisco investments, that's Cisco DNA Center.

How does Cisco DNA Center help you?

Cisco DNA Center is a powerful network management system that leverages AI to connect, secure, and automate network operations. Cisco DNA Center leverages AI/ML to bring business agility and operational efficiency by creating a consistent orchestration across a wired and wireless network. Cisco DNA Center along with the Cisco Catalyst hardware family empowers IT to connect seamlessly and securely with anyone and anything from anywhere. As part of the Cisco smart building solution portfolio, Cisco DNA Center helps you achieve sustainability goals with its energy management and automation capabilities. As part of the Cisco Zero Trust for the workplace solution, Cisco DNA Center helps secure access to your digital enterprise.

Why choose Cisco DNA Center?

There are many reasons for you to choose Cisco DNA Center.  Let's take a deeper dive into connectivity, security, and automation; and explore how Cisco DNA Center delivers value.

Connectivity

IDC Future of Connectedness Survey found that connectivity and network transformation are among the top priorities to improve business and operational efficiency. More than 50% of IDC survey respondents expect to increase their spending on 5G and Wi-Fi 6 infrastructure. You may wonder why? Users are mobile and demand seamless connectivity from multiple devices. They are innovative and more productive when they receive exceptional application experience no matter how and where they are connected. The increasing use of IoT adds to the need for more versatile connectivity. To satisfy these needs, enterprise networks must handle an increasingly large number of connections, support mobility across the campus, and carry large volumes of data securely and reliably.

Cisco makes it easy to build, scale, manage and secure both wired and wireless networks with Cisco DNA Center. Let's explore some ways in which Cisco DNA Center can help.

• Cisco DNA Center makes building and scaling networks quick and painless. Using built-in guided workflows and plug-and-play (PnP) capabilities, you can provision and configure switches, Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs), and Access Points (APs) quickly and in a consistent manner.
• Using Cisco DNA Center dashboards and AI analytics, you gain insights into the health and performance of your network and quickly resolve issues.
• Cisco DNA Center includes dashboards to help you assess Wi-Fi 6/6E readiness of your network and client devices. It provides insights into performance and capacity, and guidance on the upgrade process, thus helping you modernize your wireless network, and increase capacity and reliability.
• It helps you visualize and understand Wi-Fi signal propagation and coverage across workspaces with Wireless 3D Analyzer.
• With AI-enhanced Radio Resource Management, Cisco DNACenter monitors various parameters such as RF coverage, channel interference, spatial density; and makes configuration recommendations to improve performance, coverage, and capacity.

To top it all, with intent-based networking, Cisco DNA Center ensures uniform implementation of policies and enables consistent user experience across wired and wireless networks.

Security

According to Gartner, the top trend in cyber security for 2022 is 'attack surface expansion'. The way we work (remote and hybrid work), and the adoption of public and hybrid cloud strategies are the primary reasons. How prevalent are these trends? Over 80% of IT leaders who participated in the survey for Cisco 2022 Global Hybrid Cloud Trends Report indicated that they have adopted the hybrid cloud. Accenture's Future of Work Study 2021 found that 83% of workers prefer a hybrid work model and 63% of high-growth companies adopted a hybrid workforce model. You need a multi-pronged approach and a comprehensive solution to reduce the attack surface and mitigate security risks.

Let's explore how Cisco DNA Center can help.

• With AI Endpoint Analytics and deep packet inspection, Cisco DNA Center makes it easy to profile and group endpoints and implement group-based access policies to reduce the attack surface.
• Together with Cisco ISE, Cisco DNA Center enables Zero Trust Network Access and secures the workplace.
• Cisco DNA Center's compliance verification and reporting ensure compliance with corporate security standards for software versions, security patches, and configurations.
• With advanced Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (aWIPS) and rogue detection, Cisco DNA Center enhances the security of Wi-Fi networks.

Furthermore, Cisco DNA Center's deep integration with Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Cisco Talos, and other Cisco Security solutions enhances network security by limiting exposure to security threats and identifying and remediating security problems before they manifest.

Automation

According to a survey conducted by Uptime Institute, about 70% of data center failures are caused by human error. Network automation helps eliminate these errors, enables standardization of processes, and improves resilience, reliability, and overall efficiency of the network. By automating routine tasks, enterprises can focus their valuable human resources on business-critical functions and innovation.

The following are some of the ways Cisco DNA Center automates your network operations.

• Cisco DNA Center automatically discovers and maps network devices. It periodically scans the network to keep the database of inventory up to date.
• It allows off-the-shelf Cisco Catalyst switches, WLCs, APs, and other network devices to be provisioned simply by connecting them to the network. Zero-touch provisioning capabilities save valuable time and resources and improve the speed and accuracy of deployment.
• With software image management (SWIM) and configuration automation, Cisco DNA Center helps you stay up to date on software versions and ensure compliance, all with little human intervention.
• Cisco DNA Center provides several workflow templates such as replacement (RMA) of network devices to help you streamline IT processes.

Additionally, built-in integrations with popular applications such as ServiceNow ITSM and Splunk help you improve business process efficiencies. You can further automate network operations to suit your needs using Cisco DNA Center's rich API and SDKs.

Conclusion

With Cisco DNA Center you can:

• Scale your network at the speed of your business with intelligent automation.
• Minimize business impact by preventing outages with AI analytics.
• Focus valuable human capital on business innovation by automating routine operations.
• Accelerate digital agility with a powerful Cisco ecosystem.
• Improve efficiencies with custom automation and integrations.
• Protect the digital enterprise and intellectual property with Zero Trust security.
• Get complete visibility into your network and deliver exceptional end-user experience.
• Assist your organization attain sustainability goals.

Using Cisco DNA Center, the network manager developed in concert with the latest innovations for Cisco Catalyst network devices, you can optimize your network and maximize return on your Cisco investments.

What are you waiting for? Start using Cisco DNA Center and get the most out of your network.

Learn more about Cisco DNA Center

Seeing is believing! Check out the Cisco DNA Center Demos.