cisco smart and connected communities...transform the community. 03:02 pc: yeah. that makes total...

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Next Generation Tech-Talk

Cisco Smart andConnected Communities


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[music]

00:06 Phil Calzadilla: Oh yeah. Don't stop that feeling. Welcome to Next Generation TechTalks.

My name is Phil Calzadilla. I'm the CEO and founder of NextNet Partners. And I am very pleased

to have with me today, someone who doesn't stop believing, Mr. Tim Lake, Regional Manager at

Cisco Systems for the State Local and Education team. Welcome Tim!

00:29 Tim Lake: Thank you, Phil. It's great to be here.

00:31 PC: I love having you. Tim has a storied career at Cisco, started in 2007, so it's almost going

on 10 years out there.

00:40 TL: Starting season number 10.

00:42 PC: That's amazing. Time flies. Was in the commercial team, enterprise, financials, and

then moved out to Arizona in 2008. Somebody dragged you out here back then, right?

00:52 TL: Yes.

00:52 PC: Yes. You work in SLED.

00:54 TL: The tech community has never forgiven you for bringing me out to Arizona.

[chuckle]

00:58 PC: Yeah, I had the great pleasure of that bringing Tim over, and now Tim runs the State,

Local Education team for Cisco System. And actually, they just called a Cisco nowadays, they

drop the Systems, didn't they?

01:12 TL: Yeah. I think our legal name is Cisco Systems. I use it so the people don't confuse me

with the food truck.

[chuckle]

01:17 TL: I still have a family members that think I deliver food, and they think that's cool. Yeah.

01:23 PC: I actually went on a sales call once and sold green peppers, onions, and all sorts of

stuff. Yeah. Way back when I was at Cisco.

01:29 PC: So really happy to have Tim here and very excited to talk about the State, Local

Education business, which is being led for NextNet right now by Jerry Pierce who's our Director

of Public Sector practice. Tim, we're really excited to talk to you. Your particular team actually

runs Arizona and New Mexico.


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01:49 TL: Yes.

01:50 PC: Excellent. What are some of the trends you're seeing right now in SLED, in State, Local

and Education?

01:57 TL: Well, it is an amazing time in Public Sector right now. All of the things you've been

hearing about for years on smart cities IoE, IoT, all of those get used interchangeably. Now we're

seeing that happen, and we are seeing some very innovative things happen at our customers.

And we're seeing a lot of innovative people reaching out, speaking to us, asking how we solve

some complex problems, go after some really great opportunities, and really transform the way

citizens interact with our government.

02:25 PC: That's great. And in Smart and Connected Communities, man, Cisco has been talking

about that for awhile. What's different nowadays? What's really happening out there? And first

of all, at a high level, Smart, Connected Communities, you wanna talk about that?

02:38 TL: Yeah. That's a term that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. And I don't say that

in a bad way. It means that if someone at a city, whether it's a leader, an elected official has an

idea, whether it's an app or a way to change the transportation system or something around

economic development, it's sort of a catchall way to use technology and digitization efforts to

transform the community.

03:02 PC: Yeah. That makes total sense. So if you're connecting the community, you're talking

not just the people but the services that are being provided and everything else that goes long

with it. And when they refer to it as being smart, it means that you're able to get the right

service at the right time, right? Things like that?

03:20 TL: So, I think that one of the services that is of interest is actually trash collection. I never

thought I'd be talking about smart garbage cans in my career, but it's really impressive the way

modernizing garbage collection could allow trash routes to be more intelligent so you're only

picking up the garbage when it's full. And that does a few things it allows the city or entity to be

more efficient with their trucks, reduce the amount of fuel they are using, reduces the amount

of carbon emissions. And you think, "My goodness. We put a chip on a garbage can, and we

really impacted the world." And it's silly to think about.

03:54 PC: It's silly, but it's life changing. Does this mean that my wife wouldn't yell at me

anymore about not taking the garbage out the night before. [laughter] I would just be able to

roll it out whenever I wanted. That would be magical.

04:04 TL: Well, I don't think any amount of technology is gonna help, I guess, make you more

reliable on taking the garbage out. [laughter] There's only so much processing power in the

world.

04:12 PC: You're right. And my wife Kaycee out there, yeah, please forgive me, but that's


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hilarious. And you also talked about IoT, Internet of Things, and IoE, Internet of Everything. And

so talk about that in regard to State, Local and Education, what are you seeing out there?

04:27 TL: Well, they're the first ones that can really take advantage of that at scale, and they have

a responsibility to monitor things that are out there. Whether it's air quality, whether it's devices,

whether it's citizens' safety, there's so much data that comes into these public sector entities,

and it needs to be made available sometimes for legal reasons or just because they wanna

provide that information out to the community. And they're in a very interesting point right now

where they're being handed these challenges first, whereas private industry may not have these

concerns unless you're large manufacturer, or you truly have a very big presence. So this is one of

those very exciting times where IoE and IoT hits the public sector first and foremost, and then

the private sector later.

05:11 PC: Yeah. Are you seeing any specific verticals within SLED, so state, local, or education,

that's actually doing something around IoT or IoE that is driving... That you think, "Well, that's a

good one. We should all be doing that," or "Every... " Are you seeing anything like that out there?

05:27 TL: Absolutely, and I think a lot of that is in process now, and I'm excited to be able to talk

about it probably in a year with some of the customers that we're working with. I'm seeing

some very interesting ideas around transportation. Proof of concepts getting underway. And I

would definitely like to share them but I think it would more appropriate...

05:47 PC: Sure, sure. Once it's out?

05:48 PC: Once we get out.

05:49 PC: Yeah, no. That makes total sense. And we're seeing in the private sector... It's funny you

mentioned transportation, because in the private sector, we're seeing the same thing.

Transportation is... Because you've got a vehicle or a truck or something, you can get data off of

that device. You also can get GPS information off of that. You can also get logistics, and if you're

trying to manage like a contact center, and you've got a truck, whether it be a garbage truck or

a delivery truck or whatever, and now it just becomes another point, like another thing on the

Internet of Things. I can totally see that being an easy fit for both public sector and private

sector.

06:27 TL: Oh absolutely. Think about school buses. That's probably a huge part of the discussion

now. Especially when you have this giant expensive vehicle rolling down the freeway with a

bunch of people's children on it.

06:39 PC: Yes.

06:39 TL: So that is a very serious...

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06:41 PC: Really important.

06:41 TL: Right. People care about that and get a little spun up if there's any concern around

buses. So looking at that I think there's a great example in New York of a school district thats

doing this now, but we connect into the school buses' systems and were able to make sure it's

maintenanced correctly, monitored correctly, if it goes off route, we know why it went off route.

There was an accident so the bus driver can take it off its normal route, but if that's not the case

then we know we need to look into that. We can put a camera on the bus very easily to monitor

and provide safety that way. The school bus is this big huge thing that moves, and is a huge part

of the IoE and IoT conversation.

07:21 PC: That makes total sense. Plus, I imagine you can check a kid on to the bus, you can

check them off of the bus, maybe even automatically where there's something happening that

gets him on and off. So I know what bus my kids on, whether or not he got off the bus at the

right stop, or whats going on. Thats great.

07:37 TL: And that's one of the great things about being at Cisco, and it always has been. We

build these platforms, and other companies build amazing integrations and these amazing

applications. We're kind of connecting it together, and we've got some great applications, but

it's really powerful to see what people do with technology, and usually it's coming to us solving

that underlying platform and then allowing school districts, allowing integrators and app

developers to build those next generation applications.

08:08 PC: That's great and very exciting. I know we're really excited about some of the things

we're working on within SLED, or State, Local, Education for those of you that aren't familiar with

that lingo. It is really all about solutions now, and folks are actually more interested in buying a

solution that they pay for by the drink versus maybe necessarily making a capital expense, and

we're able to do that actually with Cisco hardware. We can take a HyperFlex or a product like

that and offer it as a service versus actually do a capital outlay for it, especially within SLED,

where sometimes that works for them.

08:40 PC: What products are you seeing? What's hot in State, Local and Education right now

from a product perspective?

08:47 TL: So luckily, many of our products are popular...

08:51 PC: Routers and switches.

08:52 TL: All of them Phil. No, no, no. Cisco's a software company now, dude. We don't make

router and switches. We're all software, Phil. We've made the transition. I don't even... No, it's

funny. We have had to transition because of those consumption models with customer and a

lot of unique needs in public sector, and we are moving to more of a software subscription and,

as you said, paybythedrink model, and that's hard for a big company to do, but I'm very happy


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with the execution.

09:18 PC: Cisco ONE, you guys have done a great job making that move. And we love it on our

site 'cause it's very disruptive.

09:24 TL: And we've all had to learn a new way of operating. I used to think we got paid by the

pound.

[laughter]

09:30 PC: Its not by the palletfull anymore.

09:32 TL: What do you mean there's no tracking number?

09:36 PC: No, it's just a serial number. License Key.

09:38 TL: Exactly. On a paper.

[laughter]

09:43 TL: When you look at the public sector and the ability to control and have predictable

spin, that's incredibly important. So it was really great to find out from our customers that our

new licensing models, our ELAs, software subscription models, one, allows them to be able to

predict costs which is very important to a procurement or sourcing department in the public

sector. And two, allow them to be more innovative. So security is the fastest growing service and

product in my market. It's just been phenomenal.

10:13 PC: Makes total sense.

10:14 TL: But when you purchase a security ELA or one of our software models, you get multiple

products that are all 100% virtualized. You can put... They don't need to be on Cisco hardware

necessarily. But what that allows them to do is increase their security posture for the immediate

need they purchased it for, but then as they have it, be able to roll out additional products and

additional services to their constituents to increase their security posture over time. And so that

type of consumption model, one, provides reliable cost structures, but two, allows folks in the

public sector to be innovative and provide additional services throughout the lifetime of that

contract.

10:50 PC: Yeah that makes total sense and especially on the security side. It is a perfect thing

that you can layer 'cause security really should be a layeredtype approach. So you buy the

licensing, and then you go as you're ready to consume that next layer of security?

11:05 TL: Yeah.


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11:06 PC: That's great.

11:06 TL: Yeah, you may be focused on endpoint protection, but then ultimately, you wanna

move into a whole new set of products, intrusion prevention, next generation firewalls, whatever

the case may be.

11:17 PC: Yep, makes total sense. Well, gosh, time goes fast. I can't believe that. We like to keep

these short and sweet and in bites. Is there anything else you wanna leave folks with before we

go? Should we talk about contracts real quick?

11:31 TL: Well I think one of the things I would say, depending on the audience, doing business

with the public sector is a very interesting, sometimes challenging, opportunity, and I think as

people, vendors, look at wanting to do business with the public sector, they need to go in with

eyes wide open, and understand while it is a different market, it's still a very innovative group of

people. And NextNet understands this. You as well as anyone know how much opportunity

there is doing business with the government, but that you've got to go in knowing your stuff

and willing to work in ways that are helpful to them.

12:11 PC: And you gotta have a vehicle as well. Whether it's... We just got on the Maricopa

County SAVE contract, which we're really excited about.

12:19 TL: That's... I'm so excited.

12:20 PC: Yeah, City of Phoenix Services contract and on the Knowledge Services contract. We're

really excited about our... Jerry Pierce has done a great job getting us on those contracts. Tim,

thank you so much for being here today. We appreciate it. It's great to learn about SLED. We're

excited about our engagement in the SLED market as well. This year is really our first year going

after it a little harder than before because we now have vehicles.

12:42 PC: Yes, and that's part of the barrier to entry there, right?

12:45 TL: And we are so excited to work with you.

12:47 PC: Yes, thank you.

12:47 TL: It's great to have you in the market.

12:48 PC: Thank you, Tim, and thank you everybody for listening. You can always learn more at

nextnetpartners.com, we have a bunch of other podcasts on all sorts of technology and things

you can listen to there. Send us an email: [email protected] or give us a call,

6022478600. Thank you! Look forward to talking to you next time.

[music]


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