Over the last decade, Cisco has been one of the leading pioneers of the IoT megatrend, developing a dedicated IoT and digital transformation solutions portfolio for customers and establishing ourselves as one of the leading corporate investors in IoT. Just in the last seven years, the Cisco Investments IoT team has invested in more than two dozen startups and four venture capital funds and executed three acquisitions to bolster Cisco's IoT offerings for customers.

Thanks to two major forces -the technology innovations in low-cost sensors, connectivity standards, cloud, and big data as well as the acceleration of digital transformation due to COVID-19 -IoT adoption has hit the mainstream.

Now, we're ready to enter a new era, as customers look to leverage their "sensorification" investments over the last decade to unlock tangible value by measuring, analyzing and automating operations over the next 10 years.

That's why on March 3, 2021 (9 -10:30 am PT), the Cisco Investments team will be hosting an engaging and live virtual summit, Magnetic IoT, bringing together Cisco executives, Cisco Investments leaders, startup founders and VCs to share their unique insights about market trends and advice for scaling companies in the IoT market.

The event will kick-off with fireside chats with Cisco's IoT and Meraki business leaders Vikas Butaney and Chris Stori, focusing on areas in which enterprises are looking to make significant investments in digitization and automation in the post-COVID world. Butaney manages a global team of IoT Product Managers, Technical Marketing and Business Development specialists who have enabled more than 50,000 successful customer deployments. Stori and his team have scaled Meraki's cloud-based IT and IoT businesses to more than 145 countries while adding an average of more than 200 new customers a day. Both will share how they are looking to partner with the IoT innovation ecosystem to bring cutting-edge solutions to the market.

Rounding their points of view will be the Innovation Panel discussion with leading IoT startup CEOs and VC investors. Whitney Rockley of McRock Capital and Axel Bichara of Bolt are two prominent IoT investors with a successful track record of enabling early stage IoT innovation. Sharing the virtual stage with them will be Cisco Investments' portfolio company leaders Steve Sliwa of Seeq and Lawrence Whittle of Parsable. Sliwa and Whittle have scaled their IoT startups and successfully raised growth financing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This panel discussion promises to be an enriching conversation on key IoT market themes to track this decade. The veteran panelists will also share lessons and best practices from the trenches around scaling IoT startups, hiring and fostering an innovation culture, and funding and M&A trends.

Don't miss Cisco Investments' Magnetic IoT. Sign up and join the conversation around building the next decade of IoT on March 3 here.