3 Reasons Why WWT Is at the Forefront of Cisco Networking

This year's Cisco Partner Summit was an exciting one for WWT. We were honored with many awards, among them a global award for the Americas in Technology Excellence: Enterprise Networking & Cloud.

The honor is a product of work we started a few years ago. We recognized then that traditional networks simply weren't ready to handle the increase in traffic and changing traffic patterns on the horizon.

We doubled down on helping our customers use Cisco technology to stay ahead of the curve in three areas: SD-WAN, campus switching and Wi-Fi 6. 

Reason 1: SD-WAN

Because we were working with Viptela before Cisco acquired the company in 2017, we had a head start in cultivating expertise around SD-WAN. As we learned more about the technology, it became clear that IT operators would need a place to learn about Cisco SD-WAN hands on. 

We knew that the sooner they could get a jump on using software-defined tools to manage their WAN, the better positioned they'd be when SD-WAN came of age.

As soon as we built our Cisco SD-WAN Foundations Lab, it became a hit. The on-demand lab has been the most popular lab on the WWT Platform with 2,000+ launches. This lab, along with several complimentary Cisco SD-WAN labs and training modules, have become invaluable tools for our customers to learn about SD-WAN. 

At the same time, we conducted proofs of concept with customers to accelerate and de-risk future SD-WAN investments, giving them the ability to understand exactly how Cisco SD-WAN could integrate into their production environment. Now that SD-WAN has come of age, we're working with these same customers to roll out full-scale deployments of Cisco SD-WAN.

Reason 2: Campus switching

Similar to SD-WAN, we saw that organizations would have to handle campus traffic in a new way. With so much traffic coming from wireless access points, the focus on the campus network would become a wireless backhaul architecture.

Our customers knew the days of using command line to manage the campus network were coming to an end, yet they were still struggling to understand the best way to move forward.  

To help, we delivered training around Cisco DNA, which applies a software-driven approach to managing the campus network.  

Our customers got hands-on experience with DNA Center's user interface and built-in tools. More importantly, they became comfortable creating software-defined access fabrics and implementing software-defined segmentation.

This training, coupled with pilots of DNA Center, helped our customers handle an incredible increase of wireless campus traffic with ease.  

Reason 3: Wi-Fi 6

A couple of years ago, we began to notice a lot of confusion from our customers about Wi-Fi 6, particularly how Wi-Fi 6 factored in with all the hype they were hearing about 5G. To simplify the concept, we published articles that demystified Wi-Fi 6 and 5G. 

With early education out of the way, we're now helping customers understand the design patterns they'll need to deploy Wi-Fi 6. And we're making sure they will be able to maintain these new designs moving forward. For example, our customers are benefitting from our Ekahau toolboxes. Ekahau is the leader in Wi-Fi 6 design. 

Conclusion

The adage "change is the only constant" rings especially true when it comes to technology. And more change is on the way for enterprise networks as traffic continues to head for the edge and the cloud.

One thing, however, will not change. As networking evolves, WWT will always invest in the education and innovation our customers need to use Cisco technology to stay one step ahead of the curve.