Over the past few weeks, I've shared how we are helping our customers address one of their toughest challenges brought on by the Internet of Everything (IoE), Big Data and hybrid IT environments: effective management of the massive amounts of data, types of data and in various locations. With solutions like Data Virtualization , Big Data Warehouse Expansion and Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler, we give our customers the tools to address this challenge head on.

Once you have access to all of your data...what next? The second challenge is to extract real-time valuable information from data in order to make better business decisions. As I've said before, more data is only a good thing if you use that data to better respond to opportunities and potential threats. Our customers certainly understand this and, in a recent Cisco study, 40% of surveyed companies identified effectively capturing, storing and analyzing data generated by connected "things" (e.g., machines, devices, equipment) as the biggest challenge to realizing the value of IoT.

The majority of data analysis has historically been performed after moving all data into a centralized repository, but digital enterprises will have so many connections creating so much widely distributed data that moving it all to a central place for analysis will no longer be the optimal approach. For insights needed in real-time, or data sets that are too large to move, the ability to perform analytics at the edge will be a new capability that must be incorporated into any comprehensive analytics strategy.

Analytics 1.0 was all about structured data, in centralized data repositories.  Analytics 2.0 added unstructured data and gave rise to Big Data. Analytics 3.0 will require all of those existing capabilities but will also require data management and analytics capabilities closer to where the data is created...at the edge of the network.

With this new approach in mind, today we announced Connected Analytics for IoE, packaged, network-enriched analytics that leverage Cisco technologies and data to extract real-time valuable information called:

• Optimize the fan experience-Connected Analytics for Events monitors Wi-Fi, device and application usage along with social media to deliver insights on fan engagement and business operations.

• Improve store operations and customer service -Connected Analytics for Retail supports analysis of metrics, including customer and operational data in retail environments, to help stores take new steps to assure customer satisfaction and store performance.

• Enhance service quality, customer experience and unveil opportunities for new business -Connected Analytics for Service Providers provides near real-time operational and customer intelligence from patterns in networks, operations, and customer system data.

• Understand how to get the most out of your IT assets-Connected Analytics for IT provides advanced data management, data governance, business intelligence and insights to help align and get the most out of IT capabilities and services.

• Reveal hidden patterns impacting network deployment and optimization-Connected Analytics for Network Deployment analyzes devices, software, and features for inconsistencies that disrupt network operations and provides visualizations and actionable recommendations to prioritize network planning and optimization activities.

• Understand customer patterns in order to meet quality expectations and uncover monetization strategies-Connected Analytics for Mobility analyzes mobile networks to provide network, operations and business insights for pro-active governance to Wi-Fi solution customers.

• Gain a holistic view of customers across data silos-Cisco Connected Analytics for Contact Center delivers actionable customer intelligence to impact behaviors and outcomes during the critical window of customer decision making. Having the right offer at the right time will drive market leadership.

• Measure the impact of collaboration in comparison with best practices-Cisco Connected Analytics for Collaboration measures the adoption of collaboration technologies internally. It leverages data collection using the Unified Communications Audit Tool, from sources such as WebEx, IP Phones, Video, Email and Jabber.

The portfolio also includesCisco Connected Streaming Analytics, a scalable, real-time platform that combines quick and easy network data collection from a variety of sources with one of the fastest streaming analytics engines in the industry.

In the world of IoE, data is massive, messy, and everywhere, spanning many sources -cloud, data warehouses, devices -and formats -video, voice, text, and images. The power of an intelligent infrastructure is what brings all of this data together, regardless of its location or type. That is the Cisco difference.

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