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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

April 5, 2014

DATA CENTER

Are You Ready for Dev Ops and SDN Software Development with Cisco ONE?

One of the great challenges of SDN – that many in my view underplay – is the change in paradigm from having a vendor deliver your network (hardware...

February 27, 2014

DATA CENTER

How a Snowboarding ‘Wipeout’ Can Guide You On SDN Deployment

  As I was thinking about how best to advise you on how to "experiment" with SDN technologies, and more specifically why you should run a formal pilot to evaluate...

February 14, 2014

DATA CENTER

Get Started on SDN and Cisco ONE: Learn from Our New Technical White Paper

If you were to believe the industry press, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that many companies across the world were rolling software defined networking (SDN) technologies into their...

December 23, 2013

4

DATA CENTER

SDN Adoption Challenges: My Wrap Up For 2013

2013 was the year I started working on SDN - specifically in the area of devising professional services for Cisco ONE and Application Centric Infrastructure, ACI.  A few...

December 17, 2013

4

DATA CENTER

Use SDN Strategically – and NOT as a “Band Aid”

The other week I attended the “Software Defined Networking 2013” conference in London.  This is a UK-based event for...

December 11, 2013

8

DATA CENTER

SDN Reflections on the London Gartner Data Center Conference – Part 2

Last week I started my SDN reflections on the London Gartner Data Center Conference, and I found I had quite a lot to discuss. Last week I covered: Do we need SDN? SDN and the Gartner Hype Cycle SDN Deployment Models So here is the concluding part. This week I’ll cover: Overlay-Based SDN — and the […]

December 6, 2013

DATA CENTER

SDN Reflections on the London Gartner Data Center Conference – Part 1

Last week I was in London for the Gartner Data Center Conference.  As always there was a wide range of interesting topics being discussed, all very useful.  Working in Cisco...

November 19, 2013

DATA CENTER

The Quickest Way To Get Started with ACI

By now, given all the launch and blogging activity activity over the past week or so, I am sure your understanding of and interest in

November 5, 2013

2

DATA CENTER

Navigating Your OpenStack Roadmap: Why You Should Run a “Pilot”

The road in my picture below – the A82 that winds through Glencoe in Scotland – was used in the James Bond “Skyfall” movie in one of the amazing car chase scenes.  This road winds through sparsely inhabited territory, has lots of ups, downs, bumps and turns and if you’re not careful it can be […]