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Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

Stephen Speirs is part of the Cisco Customer Experience Product Management team. This team is tasked with developing major new professional service offerings for Cisco. Stephen has worked on a range of technologies - 5G, NFV, Cloud, Data Center, SDN, DevOps and more. Working with customers and partners worldwide, Stephen has over 30 years industry experience in software development, IT, Data Centers and Service Provider Network Management.

Working with and building a 30 partner consortium, Stephen brought to life the 5G RuralFirst project - potentially the world's most ambitious rural 5G trial - winning part government funding to take 5G to Orkney and Somerset in the UK. Before joining Cisco Services in 2009, Stephen was senior manager, product management, in Cisco's Network Management Technology group, where he brought to market the multi-award winning Cisco MPLS Diagnostics Expert product. In Cisco Services, Stephen drove development of the Cloud Enablement Services - rated #1 by IDC in their 2013 client survey.

Stephen is based in Cisco's offices in Glasgow, Scotland, and was "acquired into" Cisco in 2000 through the acquisition of Atlantech Technologies Ltd. Since 2019, Stephen has served as non-exec director on the Ofcom Advisory Committee for Scotland (UK communications regulator). Stephen has a BSc (1st Hons) in Applied Physics from the University of Strathclyde, an MSc in Digital Systems Engineering from the University of Heriot Watt, and an MBA from the University of Strathclyde Graduate Business School.

Outside of work, family, cycling, running, and skiing keep him busy. Since 2019, he has been a member of the Ofcom (UK telecoms regulator) Advisory Committee for Scotland. Believing in "Giving Back" with work-related skills, Stephen also is a guest speaker on the Strathclyde University MBA program, an advisory board member on MaaS Scoltand (Mobility as a Service), and a student project mentor with Dundee University's Product Management BSc/MSc

Articles

November 30, 2016

DATA CENTER

Top 5 Takeaways from the London Gartner Data Center Conference 2016

2 min read

Over the past few years, I've attended Gartner's Data Center Conference in London (see 2013, 2014, and 2015 !). As always, it was...

October 13, 2016

DATA CENTER

Buying New Gear? Have You Invested in Operations Management to Assure Your RoI?

3 min read

Are you investing in new IT equipment – or for that matter, any IT services including SaaS/Cloud services?  If so, I wonder how much you have invested in your operations management...

August 24, 2016

DATA CENTER

Go Slow to Go Fast: Why Cisco Services Invests More Up Front

3 min read

There are 2 questions I am asked from time to time: The first is related to my job – “OK I understand what's involved in product development, but why do ‘service...

June 9, 2016

DATA CENTER

Yes Adopt DevOps But Don’t Forget The Pain of Re-Writes: My Biggest Software Lesson Ever

2 min read

As we deliver more and more software projects in my part of Cisco Services, I have a keen interest in software development best practices.  And concerns on poor practices.  A...

The Connection between Long Ski Centre Queues and the Cloud: The Service Provider Internet of Things Opportunity

6 min read

Back in 2010, not long after I started blogging here on Cisco.com, I discussed some of the challenges customers were fearing regarding the feasibility of cloud adoption. In my market...

February 3, 2016

DATA CENTER

The Most Boring Service We offer … And how to bring down a data center in one easy snip!

2 min read

I do enjoy the (sometimes irreverent!) perspectives of some articles on data center in the UK publication “The Register“, and the story of how a data center change went wrong made me laugh, cringe and cry at the same time – the change being when an electrician cut the wrong wire and brought down a […]

January 12, 2016

DATA CENTER

Your New Year’s Resolution for 2016: Start with a Cisco Domain Ten Workshop

2 min read

A few years ago, I wrote a series of blogs on Cisco’s Domain Ten(SM)  framework.  Since then, we’ve used this simple yet powerful analysis tool to help guide many customers on data center and IT transformation projects.  I personally found it quite notable that leading market analyst firm IDC, recognizing Cisco as the worldwide leader […]

December 8, 2015

DATA CENTER

Part 2: Ten Learnings and Observations from the 2015 London Gartner Data Center Conference

2 min read

Last week I attended the 2015 London Gartner Data Center conference. In my first blog (part 1) on this event,  I covered some of my main learnings and...

December 4, 2015

DATA CENTER

Ten Learnings and Observations from the 2015 London Gartner Data Center Conference (Part 1)

3 min read

This past week I attended the 2015 Gartner Data Center Conference in London.  This is always a great conference to learn from, although it always pays to look out...

September 23, 2015

DATA CENTER

Part 2: Why not Initiate a “Save to Invest” Program for your Data Center?

3 min read

Two weeks ago, in my previous blog, I invited you to consider ways in which you could initiate a “Save to Invest” program for your data center. That is, how can you save money from your current data center spend, in order to re-invest it into currently un- or -under-funded areas of your data center. Thanks to […]

September 9, 2015

DATA CENTER

Why not Initiate a “Save to Invest” Program for your Data Center? (Part 1)

3 min read

 As a Scot, I have a natural predisposition – almost a gene – for money saving initiatives!  As I’ve been researching new initiatives in my work for Cisco Services over the past few months, I’ve become aware of – for the first time I am ashamed to say in some cases – some huge sinks […]

August 25, 2015

DATA CENTER

5 Top Challenges of SAN Design: View from our SAN Design Experts – Part 2

3 min read

Last week, here, I started my 2 part blog on some of the top SAN design and deployment challenges we see.  As I mentioned, I put this together...

August 18, 2015

DATA CENTER

5 Top Challenges of SAN Design: View from our SAN Design Experts – Part 1

3 min read

One of the aspects I really enjoy about my job is that I get to learn from some of the world’s top network and data center design engineers, and...

July 21, 2015

DATA CENTER

Part 2: How Many Servers Do You Have …. Comatose and Sitting Idle?!?!

3 min read

Last week I introduced this topic, the pervasive problem of “comatose” servers in data centers, based upon an interesting recent eWeek article entitled “30 Percent of Servers Worldwide Sit Idle”, which in turn was based upon the research report by Stanford University in conjunction with the Anthesis Group.  In my blog, I described the costs […]

July 15, 2015

DATA CENTER

How Many Servers Do You Have …. Comatose and Sitting Idle?! (Part 1)

3 min read

In my role in Cisco Services, I’m more interested in the challenges of technology adoption and deployment than I am in speeds and feeds, statistics and technology fads. ...

May 28, 2015

DATA CENTER

Criteria for SDN/NFV Vendor Selection – Heads Up on Cisco Live

3 min read

Cisco Live US 2015 is just around the corner, and will start in San Diego on June 7th, running through Thursday 11th June.  I’m surprised and honoured to...

May 13, 2015

DATA CENTER

Discovering Application-Server-Network Dependencies to Facilitate ACI and Application Migration

3 min read

Earlier this month, I blogged about the challenges of Cloud Sprawl.  Let’s now turn to the challenges of “Application Sprawl”!If you are planning migration of applications inside or between data centers, or if you are planning a migration to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), the understanding of your applications and how they tie to the […]

May 3, 2015

CLOUD

Identifying and Solving the Cloud Sprawl Problem

3 min read

An interesting read for me one day last week was the Wall Street Journal reporting on the exploding yet ungoverned use of cloud services by employees in just...

February 5, 2015

DATA CENTER

Your Design Engineers Need Support and ‘Expertise on Tap’ Too!

3 min read

If you are involved in designing, supporting or managing a data center, you will undoubtedly rely on technical support services from one or more vendors.  Running your data center, there...

December 3, 2014

DATA CENTER

Part 3 – SDN Questions to Ask at the Gartner Data Center Conference

5 min read

My final observation from my days at the London Gartner Data Center Conference is related to SDN and ease of network management – or otherwise.  Hopefully this discussion will give...

December 2, 2014

DATA CENTER

Part 2 – SDN Questions to Ask at the Gartner Data Center Conference

3 min read

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, last week I attended the Gartner Data Center Conference in London.   I came out of the conference with some questions...

December 1, 2014

DATA CENTER

SDN Questions to Ask at the Gartner Data Center Conference

5 min read

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Gartner Data Center conference in London.   I attended 3 different sessions on SDN-related topics.  Here are some...

June 26, 2014

DATA CENTER

Observations from London SDN Conference… “Wait, it’s coming…” … But Can You Afford T …

4 min read

Last week I spent some time at the “Software Defined Networking 2014” conference in London.  It’s a relatively small conference I would say however given the growing interest in SDN and rapid progress of the technology it’s always good to hear alternative viewpoints and experiences.  And I certainly found the previous conference here in December […]

Cisco, Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and My Day in the Queen’s Baton Relay

2 min read

It’s an exciting year for Scotland, with several very high profile events happening. On our doorstep in July is the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games – what we call “Glasgow 2014” – which, after the Olympics and World (soccer) Cup, is the third largest multi-nation sports event in the world.  (The Commonwealth Games is sporting celebration among the 53 member […]

June 18, 2014

DATA CENTER

Delivering Business Outcomes: When Did You Last Reduce Time To Market?

1 min read

Working in the Data Center and Cloud Professional Services team in Cisco on cloud and software defined networking, I am sometimes asked "What do...