In the kitchen, you strive to use the highest-quality ingredients possible. But you don't typically serve one or two ingredients on a plate. Instead, you build a plan for what to serve and how to combine the ingredients to achieve the desired results. Unless you're a culinary whiz, you probably want that information from someone who has experience preparing that meal -and a track record of creating a great-tasting result.

In other words, you want a recipe from a proven expert for a proven result. Anything else is just a science experiment.

The same holds true in the IoT realm -where the stakes, are considerably higher than the quality of a dinner. That's the driving principle behind Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs). We know our products have proven to be the industry's best "ingredients" for IoT networks. But we also know there can be complexity in designing, deploying and managing those products into a "meal" -a complete solution to support all courses of a real-world use case.

For every CVD, our engineers create detailed design and implementation guides that use Cisco and our partners' products to address critical business needs. We then engineer, test and validate each design for our customers' industry specific requirements, to guide their own deployments.

At Cisco Live Europe in Barcelona, we unveiled new and enhanced CVDs for oil and gas, manufacturing, power utilities and any organization seeking to extend its enterprise network beyond traditional carpeted spaces:

• NEW CVD for Oil & Gas Process Industries:From delivering greater visibility and efficiency to enhancing worker safety, wireless connectivity has become a critical enabler for every oil and gas business. This CVD provides a roadmap for implementing Cisco Intrinsically Safe Wi-Fi to realize those benefits more quickly and reliably.
• UPDATED CVD for Industrial Automation:Yes, you want to feel secure that you can implement a business changing solution. But you also want to know that the solution will reliably secure your manufacturing environment. This CVD incorporates the capabilities of Cisco Cyber Vision to address and mitigate the growing risk of cyberattacks from within your automation control systems.
• UPDATED CVDs for Utilities:We're announcing a holistic Grid Security CVD for protecting power substations from cyber threats. This CVD includes operations asset and traffic visibility, network segmentation, authentication and access, threat detection and protection, as well as data encryption, enabled by Cisco Cyber Vision, ISA 3000, IE switches, ISE and Stealthwatch. We've also enhanced our Secondary Substation CVD with the next level of easy deployment, resiliency and edge applications.
• UPDATED CVD for Extended Enterprise:When asked to add connectivity to kiosks, remote payment sites, warehouses or distribution centers, IT managers can't simply deploy the same gear they use in a data center or traditional carpeted space. But with this updated CVD, they can still enjoy same centralized, automated management through Cisco DNA Center. By incorporating SD-WAN capabilities, this design supports security and consistent quality of experience for up to 500 tenants and 10,000 devices across even the far reaches of the extended enterprise network.

As your appetite for IoT grows, count on the#1 provider of industrial networking solutions to serve up validated solutions that help assure your success.