Leapfrogging into the future with Cisco’s Digitize Delivery

As companies ‘rewire’ for digital solutions and move away from a hardware-centric environment to a more software-centric one in a cloud-enabled space, we can tackle some of the biggest pain points in their digital transformation journey. Among the recurring challenges faced by corporations in the ‘race to digital’ is how to deal with their operational needs with their current technology while keeping their implemented technology alive. With Digitize Delivery we can address these problems much faster than ever before in both the operational space and the implementation phase.

Saving Time, Energy, Money – and paper!

Digitize Delivery is the DevOps transformation in reality. We help customers move from ‘manual’ environments to ‘automated’ ones, eradicating mundane tasks and freeing up time so they can focus on more complex tasks. As a result, we are seeing much more streamlined and de-risked operations, faster times to market, reduced costs, and an increase in productivity as well as an uptick in innovation.

No matter where you are on your digital journey, companies have historically struggled to attract talent to support their digital transformation. This is where Digitize Delivery kills two birds with one stone, as it frees up time to reskill and upskill employees with relevant digital expertise for the future. In addition, studies show that the more innovative a company is, the more likely it is to attract accomplished professionals.

Markus Gierlich, VP, CX EMEA (Germany & Central) says, “Leading on Automation will make Cisco and our partners a more attractive job prospect, while supporting our retention programs. It also applies to our customers who are transforming with us. That’s because of less standardized day-to-day activities on Command Line Interface (CLI) and documentation and more focus on creative high-impact work.”

Where Code Meets Best Practice

Using Cisco ACI-as-Code in Datacenter environments (Application Centric Infrastructure as Code) – a software-defined networking solution – we are helping organizations manage complicated and arduous environments by delivering network automation to increase operational efficiencies. It’s more sustainable too, as we are moving away from physical assets, which become outdated very quickly, to digital ones!

An example of this is in a Network Implementation Plan, which is typically read by humans and put into action manually. With Digitize Delivery, we provide that plan digitally so it can be put into action via automation. This means changes to the infrastructure can be done very quickly and without human intervention. What’s more, it can be constantly updated. The same concept can be applied to other concepts and deliverables too, like an Acceptance Test, where instead of relying on an engineer to go through the motions of performing and documenting tests, we can automate the process in a repeatable, consistent, and standardized manner.

Automation Everywhere

Infrastructure as Code comes into play for the Automation Provisioning, Testing and Operations as an integrated process for Customers Network Infrastructure. What that means is, we automate the provisioning and management of the technology stack and translate manual tasks successfully into reusable, robust, replicable code. It relies heavily on practices that have been tried and tested in software development for many years. And the great news is, our customers benefit from this new paradigm with increased reliability and rapid speed of change. Added to this, SDWAN-as-Code manages and automates a Cisco SD-WAN overlay, which can easily be integrated into the CI/CD workflow. What’s more, it is developed in a way that can be extended to support additional features without the need to rewrite the full solution!

As well as saving time, customers are seeing incredible cost benefits. Michael Kaemper, our CX SP Architecture Lead, based in Germany says, “We are creating the base to react to operational needs much faster and create a robust state-of-the-art technology environment from implementation to operations all in one go. Customers are seeing immediate value, with operational savings of up to 80 percent”.

Gierlich concurs, saying the benefits of Digitize Delivery are clearly visible, citing additional advantages, “Our automation solution will enable a ‘consumer first’ strategy as it will allow IT organizations to hide the complexity of IT solutions from their customers, the application owner, or the developer. Hence, they will be able to take control back and make their IT a business advantage.”

Digitize Delivery could be just the key you are looking for to unlock innovation, drive down costs for your business, and fast-track your digital transformation journey while attracting top talent at the same time.

Learn more about Automation and how we use it to deliver even better Customer Experience in the latest Not too Techie podcast with Michael Kaemper, Sr. Director CX SP Architecture at Cisco.