By Igor Dayen, SP Product and Solutions Marketing

When I look at the sky, I see an infinite number of stars. It is a moment of inspiration when I gaze at the sky in hope of spotting something miraculous. Looking at the Telecom industry and its new innovations, I feel the same. A new star is rising almost every day. Well ... to find Cisco innovations and its stars look no further: the Service provider booth at Cisco Live Milan 2015 is bringing everything that you every wished to see under the stardom of the service provider. Please let me take you through the "starlog" of innovations and demos that will be available for you to engage in and learn about how they advance your business.

Stardate 2015. You may know that the Cisco NVI forecast predicts significant traffic growth and Moore's Law has never failed us. Therefore Cisco's service provider strategy is to stay ahead of the curve and deliver SP solutions tohelp you transform your business. This strategy will not only maintain the speeds and feeds but will also provide comprehensive ways of growing your business through the virtualization and programmability of services based on SDN and NfV innovations.   We want Cisco SP technologies and solutions to help increase your profitability and reduce your operational costs while reducing time to market. Cisco's Open Network Strategy is our vision that fosters new solutions positioned to help you transform the way you handle your day-to-day operations and let you become an empowered provider.

So what can you expect when you "get behind the driver's seat" and take the tour of the SP booth?   It is the world of open network architecture. You will appreciate the power of the Evolved Programmable Network built on virtualization, programmability and control, and convergence. As a result, technology innovations such as Segment Routing, Autonomic Networking and nV Technology when put to work, can significantly simplify your network operations and reduce total cost of ownership.

As far as the optical networking is concerned, we will be showcasing advances in ROADM technology and the Optical Network Transport.  With NCS 2000ROADM we will demonstrate innovations critical to the flexible and dynamic needs of networks and what new capabilities are on the horizon. Our NCS 4000 solution will enable convergence between Packet, Optical Transport Network (OTN) and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM).  This convergence solution is the foundation for business flexibility, enabling network operators to support traditional subscribers, wholesalers, and data center interconnect all in one.

nV Technology, in addition to simplifying the management plane, can also render a plug-and-play solution for interconnecting IP and Optical devices and thus integrating IP and Optical networks. To make it even more exciting we will use the industry's most efficient Cisco CPAK 100G pluggable transceivers in this setup. This demo will be popular, so please schedule your time in advance of the show to ensure you don't miss it! CPAK solutions for the Data Center, Core Routing, Multiservice Aggregation and Optical Transport continue to drive down CapEx and OpEx.

All of the above-mentioned products and technologies constitute the Evolved Programmable Network of physical and virtual resources that get successfully orchestrated by the Evolved Services Platform.  We will take you through and show how the ESP engine orchestrates and automates EPN resources.   We invite you to test drive the ESP framework and gain understanding of the benefits and capabilities. Not only will you learn to operate within this framework but you will also understand how the ESP allows end users and enterprises to focus on their core business and lower their OpEx in their own turn.

The best way to explain the ESP is to illustrate its power with important user cases, which is why we are bringing three diverse examples of ESP to Cisco Live Milan. First, the Virtualized Broadband Node (Q-vBN) offers individual device management with cloud-based QoS that is accessible by home network environment.  Q-vBN is our virtual residential vCPE use case. Second use case is virtualized Managed Services that explains how Cisco ESP allows you to rapidly create and automate the self-service, cloud-based delivery of managed network, and security services. This is our business use case of vCPE for Enterprise and SMB users.  Cisco has expanded its Evolved Services Platform for virtualization and orchestration to deliver managed cloud VPN. The platform enables operators to virtualize, automate business services and to help end-users scale their services on-demand.

Last, but not least, with the QvPC example you will learn how virtualized mobile packet core redefines agility for mobile carriers.  You will find out how this solution, based on NFV and SDN, implements the functionality that helps SPs scale new packet core systems.

We wanted to give you a sneak peak of the Cisco strategy of transformation through innovation. Drop by the booth to say "Hi" and run through the demos of your choice or even better sign up for a concierge style SP booth tour and we intend to solidify your understanding of EPN and ESP by taking part in these demos. See you in Milan the week of January 26^th!

Are you going to be at Cisco Live Milan? We would love to hear from you! Tweet us at @CiscoSP360 for questions or comments.