California dreaming on such a 5G day (OK, three days)
Well that was a really great conference. Yes, Mobile World Congress -Americas 2018 has come and gone, and Cisco had a very positive impact during this past week. I'm writing this blog to provide you with a recap of the event and activities where Cisco was a participant.
Oh, yes, and indeed it never rains in southern California (at least last week) -the weather was nice the entire week with blue skies and comfortable temps.
We led off this event with some major announcements:
All of these solution showcases have been recorded by Cisco TV and will soon be available as Video-on-Demand demos. So stay tuned...
We also introduce three (3) new white papers on 5G cloud native packet core and innovations in self-optimizing networks (SON).
Making it a better experience by thinking out-of-the-box:
Cisco chose to "upscale" our customer's experience with the use of a suite that included meeting rooms and solution showcases (live demos) rather than the noise and crowd of the exhibition floor. This proved to be a good move as several of our guests and executives commented on the reduced stress and better quality conversations.
Figure 1: View entering Cisco suite.
We had over 80 meetings over the two and a half days at the event. During these meetings we strengthened our relationships and shared Cisco's vision and strategy for a 5G world and the solutions that can make it a profitable reality. These meetings included both service providers and enterprises who look to Cisco as the unique market leader for the four critical components of 5G success -Cloud, Network, Security and Enterprise.
The solution showcases further emphasized this leadership by providing live demonstrations of what is possible today and included the following:
Hearing from Cisco experts on key topics:
Cisco participated in seven different speaker sessions covering range of interesting topics. All were well attended.
Sponsorships and activities:
Aside from several speaker sessions, meetings and showcasing "success-in-action", Cisco was the MWC-Americas 2018 sponsor for 5G IoT -this is another Cisco strength as a unique partner able to bring leading edge IoT solutions for ANY ACCESS which is key in a 5G world.
Cisco also teamed with the GSMA to sponsor a dinner for invited customers and partners at the top of the Ritz-Carlton at Wolfgang Puck's WP24 restaurant -it was a fun and delicious evening for all.
Figure 3: Our customers and executives enjoying dinner.
Speaking of food for the mind and the tummy, Cisco's own Bob Everson, Global Director for 5G and Mobility Sales was the speaker at Fiercewireless's breakfast symposium on RAN Innovation. This is a natural topic for the founding member of the Open vRAN alliance.
So concludes our summaries of an event that exceeded even our lofty expectations. Looking forward to out-doing ourselves at next year's MWC-Americas, and in the meantime -See you all in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress in February 2019.