Cisco Live and Rockwell Automation TechED Showcase IIoT and Partnership Strength (Part 2)

In our previous post we highlighted the co-located Rockwell Automation TechED event in San Diego; in this post we'll discuss the Cisco Live event as well as the Rockwell Automation and Cisco alliance.

Cisco Live focuses on both training for the IT professional and thought leadership for industry with a year-long series of worldwide regional events with the largest event being Cisco Live U.S., showcasing over 250 exhibitors and over 26,000 attendees. Cisco Live also housed C-Scape, Cisco’s three-day analyst event that featured a manufacturing specific track for the second year in a row.

Jesse Freund, Director Analyst Relations, kicked off C-Scape and quickly passed the floor to Mike Flannagan, Vice President and General Manager Data and Analytics with a presentation on Internet of Everything (IoE) Data and Analytics in a Digital World. Mike presented a compelling story highlighting the need for establishing a more agile and flexible way to bring distributed data together for analytics, while also leaving data where it sits and fetching in real time. Mike also presented a framework for thinking about how in the past composite software was architected to avoid the network and real-time streaming data because it was a bottleneck.

Today, that bottleneck is going away, and analytics need to be able to deal with (take advantage of) three distinct types of data: structured data warehouse, unstructured big data store, and data streaming at the edge.  A recent LNS blog post on Big Data Analytics in manufacturing supports much of this discussion as did his Oil and Gas customer example.

A large Cisco Oil and Gas customer was using downhole sensors in manned offshore platforms to collect process data. Every 24 hours each sensor collected 10TB of data, and with a 2MB satellite link, clearly all data could not go to the cloud and considerable amount of edge analysis must occur to capture the value from this data. In fact, Cisco reports with the UCS Server located on manned platform some relatively simple rules that came from historical analysis enabled pre-processing at edge that was able to reduce data coming out of sensor by 1,000 times; giving visibility to data outside of range and when equipment is not working as designed, a.k.a., "management by exception."

Beyond C-Scape, a clear highlight was John Chambers’ final keynote as CEO and his passing of the baton to CEO-designate Chuck Robbins. The overall message of John’s presentation was the need for digital transformation and the role that Fast IT and the architecture will play. In his usual dynamic and engaging way, John Chambers argued that data is going to be massively distributed for the rest of time and that nobody is better positioned to address this than the company providing the intelligent connections. He also argued that every company in every industry is going to have to become a digital company or face disruption. In support he provided the Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO, quote “Silicon Valley is coming,” as well as the digital transformations that GE, GM, and Rockwell Automation have made in pursuit of the estimated 10-year, $19T value-at-stake the IoE presents.

The opening keynote ended with John Chambers interviewing Chuck Robbins. Much ground, and obligatory back patting, was covered in the dialogue but we also got a sneak peek into the perspective of the CEO-designate. Chuck Robbins displayed a clear understanding of the needs, challenges, and opportunities faced by customers. He also made it known his belief that Cisco’s biggest challenge in the coming years would be focus. For a company that has almost $50B in revenue and came up with the tag line “The Internet of Everything,” few could argue against the importance of remaining focused as a key element of success.

There were also a number of notable discussions and announcements within the manufacturing track of C-Scape, including:

• Connected Supply Chain – In an internally focused Cisco briefing, John O’Connor, Vice President Supply Chain Transformation provided insights into how Cisco has transformed its own supply chain and particularly its quality testing application across suppliers. In particular, Cisco has moved a home grown application called AutoTest from on-premise, appliance-based to the cloud and also moved from collecting only finished test data to real time in process data. This transformation has improved responsiveness of Cisco’s supply chain, cost and risk management, as well as dramatically reduced dead on arrival challenges with products. It was also interesting to learn that Cisco now has a team of 80 data scientists to deal with the new wealth of data coming into these cloud based applications. Of note is the fact that these 80 data scientists were entirely homegrown through a two-year internal training program. Much in the way that companies home grew six sigma black belts 20 years ago; Cisco may be providing a best practices example of how most companies will not hire data scientists from academics and attempt to teach them manufacturing but instead teach internal subject matter experts the ins and outs of data science.
• Connected products – In a connected products briefing, Jason Tsai, Vice President Product Development FANUC Automation, shared the story of the move to providing smart connected robotics to the automotive industry. With 100,000s of robots in the field, FANUC is partnering with Cisco to connect and analyze data from robots in support of a Zero Down Time (ZDT) promise to customers. In a quickly moving market, the entire partnership, technology, and customer offering was developed in under a year and since going live several months ago, not a single robot has suffered unplanned downtime.
• Security was another topic discussed at length. In manufacturing, effective security is still mostly about the blocking and tackling, i.e. firewalls, malware, physical security, patch management, good governance, and perhaps most importantly a defense-in-depth strategy with effective segmented and virtualized plant-wide network architecture. There are, however, some new innovations coming into the space, and Cisco specifically announced a new Identity Services Engine that offers an additional layer of protection with access controls and policy enforcement through the architecture to industrial automation networks and devices.
• Mobility in manufacturing was another area of discussion, especially with some of the innovations and pilots that have been coming out with use of near field communications and blue tooth. Cisco provided an update on new capabilities with Hyperlocation through Wi-Fi that can provide location of a device/individual to within three feet, further adding to the value wireless infrastructure in the plant as well as the location based capabilities that can be built into mobile applications on the shop floor.

The Rockwell Automation – Cisco Alliance

The Rockwell Automation and Cisco alliance continues to provide a shining example of how to internally manage a corporate relationship and deliver value to customers. Now in its ninth year, the alliance continues to grow and evolve.

• Training and Education has been a hallmark of the relationship and internally it is clear that Cisco and Rockwell Automation have both learned a great deal about the others’ respective areas of subject matter expertise. Glenn Goldney, Global Business Manager Rockwell Automation briefed us on this portion of the event. Externally, both companies continue to invest in the ODVA, Industrial IP Advantage, and various other IIoT organizations to push the whole industry forward. The two organizations have also increased in training courses focused on IT-OT convergence with the launch last year of Managing Industrial Networks with Cisco Networking Technologies (IMINS) and Cisco Industrial Networking Specialist certification, where these courses have been the most successful training program launched by the companies--92% of courses already sold out.
• New Products and Architecture Evolution continue to also be produced by the alliance like the Gigabit switching product, Stratix 5400, which enables future proofing of the network architecture to support video and high speed motion in the plant.

Although not exclusive, the Rockwell Automation and Cisco alliance is one of the strongest in the industry. As the market continues to move forward, we expect to see both companies continue to expand their relationship to meet the needs of customers for deploying IIoT technology. It’s also important to note that a number of new opportunities still remain for both companies to pursue together, especially around Big Data Analytics.

Key Observations

The co-located events of Rockwell Automation and Cisco exemplified the IT-OT convergence trends that are taking over manufacturing today. IIoT technology is going to transform manufacturing and the resulting enterprise, no matter if they are referred to as The Connected Enterprise or Digital Enterprise, will look dramatically different than it does today. Change is coming, companies have to be ahead of the curve to survive disruption, and it is going to take an ecosystem of solution providers with strong and aligned thought leadership to help these companies push ahead.