Internet of Everything attracts more than 1,900 IT professionals to Cisco Connect 2014

The annual event for IT professionals, Cisco Connect 2014, took place this year at the Kinépolis in Madrid, bringing together more than 1,900 attendees. Un encuentro que giró alrededor del IoE y las tecnologías que lo sustentan.

Yesterday at Kinépolis in Madrid you could see the latest technological trends that are emerging around the Internet of All Things, as this was the setting chosen to celebrate Cisco Connect 2014, an annual event in the Cisco y sus partners en España reunieron a más de 1.900 profesionales.

José Manuel Petisco, general director of Cisco Spain, was in charge of opening the congress who highlighted the great impact that the Internet of Everything is having, how "it is transforming the way we live and work and that it is affecting both people, things and companies. We are not talking about science fiction but about a revolution that is already here. Companies that are already implementing it in their business or have plans to do so will be able to be part of the 600 billion dollars that the Internet of Everything is expected to generate this year. Companies will have to work in hyper-real time, be predictive and agile.”

To achieve these objectives set by the general director of Cisco Spain, the key lies in innovation and speed, but as Ileana Rivera, CIO of Cisco Latin America, explains, "companies cannot innovate if IT does not do it, if it is not fast, simple and secure. For people and companies to be prepared for the future, it is necessary to be innovative and fast and, for this, we need IT service providers to provide us with the technologies we need."

Ileana highlighted the importance of connections, since "connections are relationships between people, processes and devices. And these relationships will be the ones that will transform the future. People will be the ones who will obtain the greatest benefits from this new economy in a safer world. We will live longer, transportation will be safer, everything will be virtually in the cloud and this explosion of data will allow us to make better decisions."

Unas tecnologías que han podido verse en este evento anual de Cisco Connect 2014 y que giran alrededor de la movilidad, el cloud, la seguridad y el big data. También se ha mostrado el papel que juegan cada de ellas en esta transformación que se está produciendo y como están involucradas en la conexión los dispositivos, personas, datos y procesos.

El futuro de la inteligencia ubicua

En esta sesión plenaria también intervino Jorge Lang, director de Innovación y Soluciones de Intel Corporation for the Southern Europe Region, who emphasizes the importance of communications and collaboration, and how this data economy will allow us to address prediction. "We are heading towards a society that will be able to predict things since it will have historical data. This is another of the fundamental elements of this intelligent world, anticipation. At Intel we want to make everything intelligent."

Intel's vision of the Internet of Everything is based "on all the things around us being intelligent, able to make decisions for themselves, protecting themselves and collaborating with people. This is the future. We are experiencing a social revolution where digital technology is the key and what is coming is ubiquitous intelligence. A world where everything will be intelligent and connected, where there will be a large amount of information and will focus on the individual to anticipate the group, achieving a more sustainable world."

With this objective, Intel is providing devices with greater intelligence and security, connecting them to the Internet cloud and facilitating real-time data analysis through Big Bata. “We have changed our product catalog to adapt to this new reality, incorporating a new family of solutions, Quad.”

Technologies that support IoE

Organized by the company, with the collaboration of Intel as sponsor Iridium and Cisco's main strategic allies and channel partners, the event combined presentations with technical demonstrations and practical cases around the Internet of Everything and the technologies that support it: cloud, mobility, collaboration, SDN (software defined networks), Internet of Things, security and Big Data.

“The increase in connections between people, processes, data and objects (13 billion currently and 50 billion expected in 2020) represents a revolution that will be five to ten times greater than the impact of the Internet in its entire history,” highlights José Manuel Petisco, general director of Cisco Spain. “Cisco Connect has demonstrated that the IoE is already generating enormous opportunities for progress for organizations and society.”

The parallel presentations were given by BT, Citrix, EMC, IBM, Microsoft and NetApp, in addition to the participation of Ono. In turn, demonstrations were carried out throughout the day, some by Cisco and others by Acuntia, Aryse, Azlan-Tech Data, Comstor, Dimension Data, Iecisa, Impala, Ingram Micro, Sothis and VMware.

The 20 demos carried out by Cisco were divided into three zones (Internet of Everything, Business Center and Technology area), highlighting the sessions on Fog Computing and IPv6, video collaboration integrating multi-manufacturer tablets, the configuration of a virtual desktop from the cloud with Cisco UCS or the analysis of WiFi network users based on location using Cisco CMX and Meraki.

The exhibition area was attended by Av@anza, Avnet, CommScope, Ermestel, Fluke Networks, Global Knowledge, IPM, Jabra, Mira Telecomunicaciones, Nexica, SCC, Tecnocom and Unitronics; and AEIT (Spanish Association of Telecommunications Engineers), COIT (Official College of Telecommunications Engineers), Audi, Bodegas Barbadillo, ITH (Hotel Technology Institute) and Aerobic Mode participated as collaborators.

Cisco Spain Challenge

In parallel, the selected projects were presented in the Cisco Spain Challenge, a program created by volunteers from Cisco and the Inlea Foundation, with the collaboration of COIT and AJE (Association of Young Entrepreneurs), to help students and professionals convert their business idea around the IoE into a business project.

The two selected projects have been Sparking, a business proposal for the cars of the future to detect the best parking spaces, access them when identified and pay the payment for the stay automatically and intelligently, for the greater convenience of users; and SmartPacking, a sensor for courier and transportation that allows you to control, among other parameters, the temperature, humidity, position or integrity of fragile or high-value shipments.