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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

May 3, 2015

2

CLOUD

Identifying and Solving the Cloud Sprawl Problem

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

6

DATA CENTER

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

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

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

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

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...

November 3, 2014

1

DATA CENTER

The Top 5 OpenStack Adoption Challenges – View from Cisco Services’ Experts

OpenStack is gaining increasing industry attention and, while it can deliver huge...

June 26, 2014

2

DATA CENTER

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

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 […]

June 25, 2014

CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

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

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

2

DATA CENTER

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

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