CIOs: From IT leader to digital business leaderDriving change with next-generation technology

It’s time for a new approach.In today’s rapidly changing enterprise environment, disruption is a given. CIOs are seeing their roles shift from transactional—simply keeping the IT engines running —to transformational, truly leading innovation. To that end, CIOs must embrace that disruption or risk the business becoming irrelevant.

The time to act is now. Innovative technology is needed to simplify, secure, and speed deployment for initiatives such as cloud, the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and mobile. Accelerating these digital initiatives can mean the difference between success and failure. As a CIO, this is your opportunity to become a change agent. Embracing disruption is just the first step.

Where do you land?According to Gartner, nearly 40 percent of CIOs report that they are the leaders of digital transformation in their enterprise.1

1. “Top 10 Strategic CIO Priorities for 2017,” Forbes, Jan. 2017. 2

Critical imperatives for CIOs to consider:

1Embracing

automation to drive efficiency

2Creating a new

workplace for a better employee experience

4Managing IT

complexity with cloud technology

3Taking a proactive

approach to security

5Reducing costs and increasing return on

investment (ROI)

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1

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Embracing automation to drive efficiencyAs digital becomes the new normal, traditional technologies often struggle to keep up. Time-intensive, legacy processes have become redundant, causing an exponential waste of resources and negatively impacting business outcomes. Moreover, since these processes offer limited visibility into what’s going on across the organization, technology spending tends to escalate and spread within different line-of-business (LOB) silos.

Organizations must find fresh ways to manage complexity and costs with a consistent, strategic approach to driving efficiencies with automation. One that leverages new technologies to intuitively respond to business needs—instead of the other way around.

Building a powerful network foundationImplementing responsive, foundational network technology for increased automation can have far-reaching effects across departments and the organization as a whole. For example, whenever a new application is deployed, it can automatically respond to meet service levels and security requirements, from the client to the data center and cloud.

Network automation can empower your organization to:

• Improve application performance and overall security across the enterprise.

• Focus personnel on higher-value innovation and creativity, rather than repetitive processes.

• Become more agile and productive by applying open, extensible management policies.

• Make better decisions based on real-time data with deeper insights into products, regions, and customers.

Transform your workplace.

Intent-based networking

Discover the power of a new network that can help you make decisions faster and better protect your business with the ability to detect and mitigate threats.

• Provide business agility and scale with policy automation.

• Reduce operating expenses (OpEx) without compromising security or performance.

• Predict performance with machine learning that delivers actionable insight.

Learn more

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2 Creating a new workplace for a better employee experienceIt’s one of the biggest challenges facing IT departments today: Can your company attract the best and brightest talent?

The IT talent shortage—and the ability to find, attract, and retain the right people—is compounded by changes within the IT industry. Digital, automated infrastructures are requiring IT to evolve its role into one that must bridge the gap between the business and technology. IT is driving business priorities forward. Agility and innovation are nonnegotiable.

Moving toward a culture shiftThe real challenge is that company culture can often stagnate. And not surprisingly, so does its technology. While making changes to either is no small effort,

starting with the right technology can help attract the right employees and pave the way to better workplace experiences.

By shifting to a modern, collaborative workplace, you can win the IT talent war—for both recruitment and retention. The right collaboration technology creates an open environment that flexes to meet the needs of any worker in any location.

This change drives the culture shift. In a connected yet open environment, productivity rises: Employees are empowered to work in the way they want, so they are more engaged and get more work done.

2. David F. Carr, “Defining Today’s Work Space,” Connected Futures.

“For a culture to be the strongest it can be, … the transformation can’t feel like an HR initiative. It needs to be a leadership commitment.”

— Greg Besner, founder and CEO, CultureIQ2

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Make sure you can empower today’s global, multigenerational workforce talent with the ability to:• Create an intuitive experience on any device with knowledge sharing

that is just a click away.

• Simplify problem-solving and ignite innovation with meetings that are interactive and engaging.

• Tailor the entire workplace experience to meet the unique needs of your business.

Transform your workplace.

Next-generation collaboration

Start by finding the right collaboration technologies to meet the unique needs of your business.

• Choose from conferencing, calling, or unified communications solutions.

• Provide a simple, secure place for meetings so your team can create and share together with ease.

• Use scalable voice and video-conferencing solutions for real-time collaboration, anywhere, anytime.

Find out more

3. Kevin Delaney, “When Digital Is Business, Transformation Never Stops,” Connected Futures.

“Human ingenuity remains a company’s most important asset, especially in the digital age.”3

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3 Taking a proactive approach to securityAcross all industries, organizations have one thing in common: Enterprise security remains at the top of the list of challenges for the CIO. An evolving threat landscape requires a new approach to security. It’s a daunting task, and the stakes are higher than ever.

Mobility and cloud computing are blurring network boundaries as employees work from a range of devices, wherever they are. This ever-expanding attack surface—combined with growing threats via email—means that cybercriminals are actively looking for new ways to get in.

In recent years, cyber attacks have sought to steal intellectual property, lift customer data, and even extort money from organizations large and small. Successful attacks can have dire business consequences,

whether it’s a tarnished company reputation, lost customers, or financial loss. And CIOs’ reputations are often at risk at well.

Mitigating threats to stay aheadWhen it comes to breaches, it’s no longer a question of if…it’s a question of when. It’s time to take a proactive approach to mitigating threats. With the right strategy in place, you can do more than protect your company’s data and reputation: You can gain a competitive edge.

A new threat: business email compromiseBusiness email compromise (BEC) is an even bigger threat than phishing or ransomware. It’s also a big moneymaker. BEC persuades high-value targets in the business to send funds or sensitive information to malicious individuals.

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Take a simple, open approach to security that can:

• Automate security tasks and processes to better allocate resources and stay focused on driving innovation.

• Integrate people, processes, and security technology across all organizational functions.

• Increase compliance by better protecting your company’s sensitive business information—including outbound and inbound email.

Transform your workplace.

Proactive, automated security

With an integrated, simplified, and automated approach to security, you can more effectively eliminate risks.

• Detect and identify billions of threats—even in encrypted traffic—and stop them within seconds.

• Increase network security with better visibility into who and what is connecting to your network.

• Take advantage of a network that offers 360-degree visibility and comprehensive automation.

Step up network security

4. Maria Korolov, “Ransomware Took In $1 Billion in 2016—Improved Defenses May Not Be Enough to Stem the Tide,” CSO from IDG, Jan. 5, 2017.

Ransomware—a type of malware that blocks a company’s access to its own data—caused losses of US$1 billion in 2016.4

Learn more

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4 Managing IT complexity with cloud technologyAs you move toward a hybrid IT environment, cloud technology is a powerful way to combat complexity and reduce some of the burden on your IT resources.

Whether it’s by providing IT services to internal stakeholders or enabling self-service, cloud-ready apps, you can gain greater control of the environment with more visibility and less effort. For example, business units can quickly and securely purchase and deploy the compliant cloud-ready products and services they need—with little IT intervention.

As your users, data, and applications continually move across devices, clouds, and geographies, security becomes even more critical. Your business needs the ability to protect users, data, and applications at all times—anywhere users are.

Gaining greater flexibility and controlWhether your organization opts for a public, private, or hybrid cloud strategy, cloud technology helps close the gap between what users need and what your IT department can reliably support in terms of people, processes, and tools.

5. “5 Trends in Cybersecurity for 2017 and 2018,” Gartner, June 14, 2017.

According to Gartner, when it comes to cloud, security experts will need to decide who they can trust and who they can’t.5

1010

Create a cloud strategy that can help your business: • Deploy a flexible and secure hybrid IT environment that prioritizes and

adapts to your organization’s interests and requirements, rather than those of a specific cloud approach.

• Implement cloud-based infrastructure and development tools to enable faster, more cost-efficient innovation.

• Get more from a digital-ready infrastructure foundation that is designed to scale capacity, simplify network management, and provision services as computing needs evolve.

Transform your workplace.

Cloud intelligence

Discover how you can apply cloud intelligence across your hybrid IT world, from infrastructure to application.

• Simplify management for cloud and noncloud environments.

• Increase security with cloud-based threat protection for users, applications, and platforms.

• Prevent attacks with industry-leading secure Domain Name Server (DNS) services.

Find out more

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5 Reducing costs and increasing ROIInnovation is difficult. It can also be costly. And because reducing business expenditures is often a key priority, it can be hard to justify new technology initiatives.

However, when you can clearly demonstrate a reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) as well as a measurable ROI over the life of a given initiative, CIOs and other executives can often find the proof needed for final approval.

Financing options are one way to ease the burden. When you can structure your investment and make payments over time, you can more clearly align payments to the actual benefits of using the technology. And by financing a complete solution that includes hardware, software, and services to ensure that you have the most current version, you can stay focused on key business objectives and innovation—and do it all with the predictability and peace of mind that comes with a payment plan.

Getting maximum value from your investmentsIn addition to reducing capital expenditures (CapEx) with flexible financing and consumption models, it pays to have services support to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your investments.

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Leverage services that can help your organization:• Accelerate technology adoption and keep pace with rapid change by making

better use of your talent and resources.

• Manage all of your business needs, ranging from advisory and implementation to training, technical, and security services.

• Lighten the load by taking advantage of managed services that can be provided by experts, 24-7.

Transform your workplace.

Flexible financing and services

Get the cutting-edge technologies you need to move your business forward, with the practical help to make it happen.

• Find the right solution using affordable financing and consumption models.

• Make it easier to buy, manage, and upgrade your network and infrastructure software with flexible purchasing options.

• Stay competitive in today’s fast-paced business world with expert services you can trust.

Learn more about financing

Explore Cisco Services

Simplify software purchasing

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Discover innovative solutions backed by unmatched leadership.Now is the time to accelerate your digital business initiatives. By leading the charge to embrace disruption and drive organizational change, you’ll gain the competitive advantage needed to succeed.

Cisco remains the worldwide technology leader with a continued investment in driving innovation. From networking and data center to security and collaboration, Cisco delivers the comprehensive, next-generation solutions that you need to become a true business leader.

Speed digital initiatives

Enhance mobile

experiences

Use customer data for

personalization

Better control costs and speed

innovation

Improve the customer

experience

Leverage analytics for

smarter, faster decisions

Implement and scale new

initiatives

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Discover how Cisco® solutions can increase business agility and security by:• Transforming the network to deliver unmatched intelligence,

simplicity through automation, and continuous threat protection

• Empowering collaboration so that your employees, customers, and partners can connect seamlessly, from any location

• Integrating and automating your security strategy so that it becomes a springboard for true business advantage

• Optimizing your cloud adoption strategy with a reimagined approach designed for a hybrid IT world

• Connecting everything for new insights that reveal revenue opportunities and lower operational costs

Collaboration

Data Center

Cloud

Security

Networking

Internet of Things

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