As organizations race to meet customer and employee demands for seamless digital experiences, it’s the network operations team answering the call. But especially with users everywhere, applications in data centers and the cloud, and the mainstream adoption of AI, the complexity that IT faces grows.

Networking leaders know that to deliver unified, differentiated experiences—remote, branch, in-store, and other, encompassing a myriad of applications—they need to stop thinking about the LAN and the WAN as silos. Instead, they must ensure experiences work across a global area network, spanning campus, branch, cloud, software as a service (SaaS), and other connections.

In this environment, the challenge IT leaders face is maintaining the quality of every experience across infrastructure they own and don’t own.

Resilience through digital experience assurance, simplified operations, and enhanced security

One company that is embracing this challenge is modern home furnishings and decor retailer Room & Board. Their challenge —and competitive advantage—is building strong relationships with customers throughout the design process, delivering exceptional experiences that span both digital and in-store interactions. To make good on that promise, they need to ensure a seamless, secure, and data-intensive experience, no matter how customers connect. In order to solve this complex problem, Room & Board needed a networking and IT platform that could give them visibility and control across the owned and unowned parts of their global network, simplified operations across sites, and the ability to ensure security and customer data privacy. They found the answer in Cisco Networking Cloud, the only IT platform that can deliver:

• Digital experience assurance with AI-insights, proactive and pre-emptive recommendations, and automated operations to help deliver flawless digital experiences
• End-to-end secure networking for consistent policy enforcement and automatic security measures—regardless of how users and devices connect across the digital landscape—by integrating networking and security
• Simplified, AI-native operations to help efficiently scale support and drive business resilience by unifying and automating operations throughout the owned and unowned digital landscape

At Cisco Live US, we are unveiling new capabilities for Cisco Networking Cloud designed to help our customers at any scale achieve more resilient digital experiences across their diverse networks.

Delivering assurance across the global area network

At the heart of our ability to provide Digital Experience Assurance (DXA) across the global area network is Cisco ThousandEyes. With Cisco ThousandEyes, IT teams can instantly see every network they rely on, owned or unowned, as if it were their own environment. With ThousandEyes, identifying issues anywhere along the digital delivery chain is not only automated but proactive, preemptive, and simpler.

And importantly, ThousandEyes enables closed-loop workflows that automate and accelerate critical remediation and optimization actions for our customers across all domains. Room & Board relies on ThousandEyes to provide visibility into the cloud-hosted and internet-enabled services that are outside of the company’s direct control.

“ThousandEyes helps us deliver the quality experience that we want to put forward to our employees and customers,” said Mark Rodrigue, a senior network engineer at Room & Board. “It’s enabled our customers to feel confident in their interactions with us.”

High throughput, end-to-end security with zero trust protections

When users and apps are connected across the global area network, IT teams need a more flexible and resilient WAN backbone to connect and protect every interaction on the network. A Cisco secure WAN edge is the backbone for the digital enterprise, combining high-performance routing, intelligent SD-WAN with integrated Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), and flexible multicloud connectivity in an architecture purpose-built to extend security and assurance to every touchpoint across the network.

Managed through Cisco Networking Cloud, this WAN architecture defends the entire network by consistently enforcing security policy across campus, branch, industrial environments, remote users, and the cloud. It’s perfect for customers of all sizes, from local retailer showrooms to a global network of bank branches.

At Cisco Live US, we’re debuting innovations across the WAN edge to help our customers build this critical backbone for today’s dynamic workforce and tomorrow’s AI-powered workloads.

• The new Cisco Catalyst and Meraki SD-WAN fabric interconnect allows IT teams to select the best WAN platform for every type of site they operate, without sacrificing security, simplicity, or scale.
• Cisco Meraki Secure Connect is now integrated with Cisco Secure Access, our powerful cloud-based security service edge (SSE) solution, to help connect and protect dynamic remote workforces in a zero-trust model. Along with powerful next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities powered by Cisco Talos, this native integration gives customers a seamless path to a unified, scalable SASE solution.
• The new Meraki MX650 extends the Meraki MX secure SD-WAN portfolio, more than doubling throughput for high-performance branch routing and security.

Simplified operations with drag and drop, point and click automation workflows

In today’s complex, distributed networks, making a config change or spinning up a new site can be time-consuming and accident-prone. But now even entry-level admins can confidently create and run complex, multi-step workflows across campus, branch, and data center environments with Cisco Workflows.

Cisco Workflows is the new automation and orchestration service at the heart of Cisco Networking Cloud. Workflows simplifies complex automation through a visual, low-code interface to help admins quickly and confidently configure, provision, and approve networking changes.

New services can quickly be created by connecting and creating automations across Cisco and third-party systems. A catalog of templates, distilled from Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs), is available with drag-and-drop features that make it easy to create and customize automations. With Cisco Workflows, there’s no need to move between different dashboards, so organizations can achieve business outcomes faster while reducing human error.

Innovations with an immediate ROI

Great digital experiences, simplified IT, and stronger end-to-end security. These are just some of the significant benefits companies can enjoy as we help you harness the power of the global area network. Learn more about how Cisco Networking Cloud can help you achieve resiliency through digital experience assurance, end-to-end secure networking, and simplified operations.

See how Cisco Networking Cloud can help you achieve unified, differentiated experiences.