Cisco: Five Key Digital Transformations To Build Business Resiliency During 2021 and Beyond

Businesses experienced significant disruption to their operations during 2020 but through technologies such as video conferencing and collaboration solutions people were still able to collaborate effectively while working remotely. Last year witnessed a range of technologies being deployed such as connecting home offices to work applications to deal with the shift to working from home.

New challenges now await and according to the Cisco Intent-Based Networking Group there will also be a host of new opportunities to leverage digital transformation to meet them head on. Osama Al-Zoubi, CTO, Cisco Middle East and Africa shares 5 key areas to be aware of.

1. Returning to Work with Connected Workplaces

Post-pandemic, roughly 30% to 50% of the workforce will work partially or entirely at home. The resulting hybrid workforce will see some return to the office for hands-on collaboration, while others either work full time at home or occasionally visit the communal office space. It is therefore crucial to reconfigure the workplace by adapting to new health safeguards. That means dynamically allocating workstations based on daily capacity with video conferencing replacing in person group meetings.

Cisco believes workplace infrastructure must also be upgraded with streaming video, improved Wi-Fi coverage and capacity, and updating to Wi-Fi 6 or 6e to alleviate the extra demand that video places on a network. Businesses should use location detection and tracking to monitor activity within buildings to ensure that distancing rules are enforced as well as retrofit buildings with sensors and Operational Technologies (OT) for improved facility management.

2. Make Buildings Smarter to Improve Energy Efficiency and Safety

Governments increasingly require new and old buildings to be smarter, healthier and more energy efficient to meet global climate change agreements.  As such new smart buildings will feature more sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor lighting, energy, occupancy and more. Adding Wi-Fi 6 and 6e enables IT departments greater flexibility in meeting these needs. New systems such as fault-tolerant Universal Power Over Ethernet+ (uPOE+) provide up to 90 Watts of power and will play an important role in smart buildings. They allow phones, video conferencing systems, displays, computers and more to be powered and connected with existing Ethernet connections. IT must also leverage Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning analytics for their operations to rapidly discover issues related to business resiliency and realize true digital transformation.

3. Unmanaged devices will Increasingly be targeted in cyber threats

Any device that has the ability to connect to the internet is subject to malware and other threats. Unmanaged IoT devices are in homes, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and transportation hubs and the threats they face are increasing.  The number of cyber threats on IoT devices surged by more than 300% in 2019, and over 75% of vulnerabilities discovered in 2019 were from IoT devices. Cisco expects Intent-Based Networks to become the first line of defense. They employ a combination of device classification and monitoring, software-defined access, and intelligent segmentation to limit transmission of cyber threats and automatically quarantine devices when unusual behavior is detected.

4. Working at home will remain the norm for many

Remote working not only reduces environmental impact but allows for greater flexibility in work life balance. But for this to be effective IT departments will need to provide office-like connectivity to their remote workers while keeping enterprise assets secure. As such, secure end-to-end connectivity is essential to avoid congestion from multiple devices at home, or bottlenecks across the internet. Cisco advises supporting a more diverse range of office equipment in the home. Home video conferencing systems with cellular LTE / 5G connectivity can improve business continuity and improve collaboration. Cisco also believes IT departments must deploy advanced SD-WAN solutions to homes to improve the quality of experience for users.

5. Unification of Ops Teams in the Applications Everywhere Paradigm

With operations now increasingly distributed, workloads are quickly moving to multiple clouds. A hybrid environment featuring specific cloud-native applications and existing non-cloud applications will exist for the foreseeable future. A Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework will be required to manage such a complex network. Both edge and cloud-delivered security services are essential and combine the capabilities of Secure SD-WAN and cloud SASE, enabling IT teams to jointly deploy security to where it is needed.

The resilience of organizations depends on how quickly they can adapt to new disruptions while keeping their workforce productive and the workplace safe. Cisco firmly believes in connecting people to the resources they need for businesses to stay competitive, safe, and resilient. As a result, these trends will play a more prominent role in the coming 12 months. By remaining aware of these issues, organizations will keep pace with the challenges 2021 and beyond will bring.