Technological Synergy

“Best-of-Breed”. I’ve always found that term interesting. It means selecting the best product there is in the market for your specific need. When you think about it, it is a great idea. Why not reach out and acquire the best widget for every single project? Different companies make different widgets and solutions for different purposes. Some are good, some are better, and some are the best. As you shop around the world of technology and acquire different solutions, you start to notice something…making these widgets and solutions work together requires a lot more time and attention than you realized. If you ever read the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, each choice could lead to success or headaches and disasters. Choosing solutions for the org should not be like that.

That is the problem with “Best-of-Breed”. Solution A does not really talk to Solution B. But it would be very beneficial for your company to make sure both of these can work together. It’s called synergy. However, because the onus of building that synergy is on you, making A and B work together is more of a side quest. Anyone who is into role-playing games is familiar with side quests. They are separate from the main story of a game. They have you deviate from your primary objective. Now you are spending time in these side quests. Before you know it instead of the game being being 20 hours long, you are making it 35 hours will all the side quests you are jumping into. Side quests are fun in an actual role-playing game, but not so much with an organization’s technology goals. They add more time to what you are trying to accomplish. And when it comes to security, time is not something to play around with. This is where the One Cisco story comes in.

Prior to joining Cisco, I spent a decade wearing a Network Engineer hat. Before that I had other hats I wore in different IT roles. During those 15-16 years, I spent my time in multi-vendor environments. Things worked well. There is nothing wrong with multi-vendor environments. However, I came to realize that in each of those instances I had different solutions and different solutions don’t make a “platform”. Solution A and B did not really work with each other. I had to figure out how to get that going myself. Coming over to Cisco did give me a different perspective. Cisco is the one company that has network, security, collaboration, and observability solutions. All four of these areas come together to to help organizations accomplish their goals. Solutions in each of those areas are weaved together, creating a platform. A great example of this is Cisco Hypershield and how it is weaved into the infrastructure. When it comes to security, It is important to have the right tools in place that allow you to pivot at a moment’s notice. Having network and security infrastructure come together with the visibility Splunk offers creates that platform that will elevate organizations.

I invite you to have the conversation with your friendly-neighborhood Cisco account teams. You already have some of Cisco’s solutions. Making sure you are using all the capabilities they offer is important. Having the conversation on how to bring your organization into this “platform” is something else we can spend time talking about. Make having technological synergy a goal in 2025.