It is an exciting day for Cisco and IBM; as it marks the next step in our long-term strategic relationship. I've blogged recently about the importance of industry collaboration. Within the vast world of technology, there isn't one vendor who can address all challenges with a single product. This is why alliances like Cisco and IBM are so important. It brings together industry leaders, best in class technology and collective minds in an effort to address collective challenges.

Cisco has been on the cutting edge of innovation for many years. Like trailblazers, we have always been forward-looking; searching for new territory to explore, tame, and make useful for others. Sometimes we do it on our own and sometimes we do it with other like-minded and proven companies. That is why today, we are combining our edge and fog analytics capabilities with IBM's Watson IoT Cognitive Computing to create a first of a kind technology collaboration.

This new venture combines Cisco and IBM's collective strength to make data and analytics the key to abstracting value in hyper-distributed environments. Hyper-distributed environments develop as massive amounts of data are being created in a very distributed way, outside the four walls of the data center. As you can imagine, to control and leverage this data has been a complex undertaking to say the least. However, that was then. This is now.

Now, industrial organizations and those in remote locations with intermittent network connectivity can take advantage of the cloud, cognitive computing and network intelligence, working together -analyzing sensor reading at the point of collection, eliminating the need to transfer all, or unessential data to the cloud. The combination of these technical capabilities provides the flexibility of processing and analyzing data everywhere, at the edge and in the cloud, so it can be leveraged in time and context as the business needs to use it.

Early adapters across verticals are transforming their business by taking advantage of this technology. Bell Canada has improved performance reporting and reduced service interruptions by only transmitting the most important data from remote locations over the mobile network for analytics. The Port of Cartagena has increased productivity and streamlined operations with condition monitoring analytics to spot patterns in vibration, temperature and speed on shipping containers, which might have been otherwise missed when manually processed. SilverHook Powerboats can now detect the need to throttle back and reduce speed for one-half second to help ensure engine governors can continue to keep the boat's speed steady and performing optimally.

I am personally very excited about this announcement and our ongoing collaboration with IBM. Through this integration of connected things and people we can enhance the quality of each business decision -whether it be right now, next month or next year -this is value of a complete data and analytics strategy.

There's never been a better time to blaze new trails with data and analytics.  Check out the press release for more information.

Be sure to join us at Cisco's Data & Analytics Conference, where you'll get a deeper dive into the technical capabilities and its further impact on our customers' businesses.