Has this happened to you? The line of business comes to you one day and says they have this great new idea to train the sales teams.  "Let's use YouTube videos", they say.  Or the CMO comes to you and says, "digital signage will increase our revenue if we can promote this next new line of products that is about to launch".  Or "This new cloud application looks great and it will increase employee productivity!"

But all you could say was 'no, that's not possible'.  Not because you didn't want to enable each of these groups but because 1) you are short of resources or 2) budget is tight or 3) the infrastructure just isn't ready yet.  Any or all of the above?

With 80% of the workforce in a non-HQ location, enabling these digital services is daunting to IT.  What happens to other business critical applications if the WAN is flooded with YouTube videos?  Digital Signage is a great idea, sure, but how do I distribute those HD videos or images to the stores?  Cloud applications may seem like not much as a user but what happens if all my users are accessing the cloud at the same time?

All these questions can be answered with Cisco Intelligent WAN and specifically with Akamai Connect.  YouTube videos can be cached locally in the branch router so that if one person watches a video, another person can watch the same video without overloading the WAN again.  HD videos and content can be cached locally either by one person accessing it or by prepositioning it during the night when the WAN usage is low.

All the 'new idea's your business counterparts want to do, you can now say with confidence 'Yes' and if they ask 'when', you can say 'Now".

Watch how Akamai Connect is easy to deploy and manage:

https://youtu.be/K_j-NnErGoo

Akamai Connect is now orderable in Cisco CCW.  Contact your account team for a more details or if you're ready to order, be my guest!

For more details on Akamai Connect, check out:

• Cisco IWAN with Akamai Connect Datasheet
• Analyst Whitepaper: Cisco and Akamai Elevate the Customer Digital Experience

Check out these other IWAN capabilities to learn more!

• AVC and Prime: http://youtu.be/_9jyszAn8e0
• WAAS and AppNav: http://youtu.be/6kJALFwlerk
• PfR and QoS: http://youtu.be/7CHsJrDhuV8