Hundreds of exhibitors, thousands of attendees and just one booth with smart solutions for resilient networks, another Cisco Live is in the books! From race cars on the show floor to Sam Hunt performing, it’s safe to say the show had both attendees and exhibitors on an information overload, imagining the possibilities.

As you know, Cisco Live is one of the premier technology events where organizations from across the globe attend to learn, connect and get inspired. The itinerary was jam packed, four days filled with educational sessions, the ability to hear from experts and it also providesd the opportunity for organizations to find solutions for challenges that they’ve identified.

Between the giveaways, free food and masses of people walking around the Orange County Convention Center, you may not remember everything you learned at booth 1527. You may remember us sporting our red baseball shirts, seen our cool booth or gotten a pair of our Opengear socks, however you might not remember just everything that you discussed with our out-of-band experts – so let’s recap.

SD-WAN and Smart OOB

Enterprise-grade WAN starts with having Smart Out-of-Band (Smart OOB^TM). Organizations are beginning to understand that SD-WAN is more than just a buzzword, it’s a necessity. Those organizations that are wanting to utilize SD-WAN deployments understand that they are then able to increase the flexibility of network configurations, balance traffic across wide area networks (WAN) and reduce costs by eliminating the need for expensive MPLS circuits.

Although SD-WAN provides many benefits – it also has a few points of failure. For example, SD-WAN routers are complex which means they constantly require software updates to ensure connectivity and functionality. These firmware updates mean that there are more risks of failure. If a bad configuration is pushed, you will need access to unit and this can leave your organization vulnerable to potential downtime – which no one can afford.

Smart OOB support SD-WAN deployments, ensuring secondary access in the event of an outage. Network administrators can access the router and power cycle or reflash to get the network backup remotely. If any software is damaged or corrupted Smart OOB may allow you to access the CLI. True out-of-band and Failover to Cellular^TM are enabled by adding Opengear solutions to each SD-WAN deployment. Remember, SD-WAN + Smart OOB = Enterprise-Grade WAN.

Get always-on access

For a single view across your devices – Lighthouse 5 is the solution. Always-on resilient access is a necessity for network administrators when it comes to connected IT infrastructure. Lighthouse 5 connects and manages devices remotely. It decreases manual operations, guarantees repeatability and reduces deployment costs. A scalable network hub, this centralized management system secures all communications with VPN tunnels, automates the configuration process, integrates with other platforms through a RESTful API and provides a Java-free, vendor-neutral management solution.

Cisco ISR 2900 replacement

Do you need a replacement for EOL Cisco ISR2900 terminal servers? Then the IM7200 Infrastructure Manager is the solution.  A drop-in replacement, it ensures always-on connectivity and safeguards your business continuity. Purpose-built for out-of-band and 100% Cisco compatible, this device utilizes Smart OOB to allow secure and reliable access. The perfect solution for data center applications, this high density console server has up to 48 ports allowing you to manage many devices at once. It also provides software selectable pinouts, dual SFP fiber modules and even the option for cellular. For streamlining remote management of your network in data centers and remote environments, this console server.

Secure and reliable access

You’ve gotten that dreaded call at 3:00 am when the internet can’t be accessed. Well, instead of getting in your car, driving hours to get onsite to reboot a server, this cellular-enabled console server will do all that for you, but remotely. The Resilience Gateway enables you to connect into remote locations, serially connect into routers, switches and firewalls to troubleshoot that equipment remotely. The cellular interface provides 4G LTE so in the event that a line or cable was cut and the site is down, the network can be brought on line by simply dialing into the unit. It also increases WAN resilience with failover to cellular and provides automated alerts. That means reduced costs, peace of mind and more sleep for you.

Streamline network and infrastructure operations

At Cisco Live, Opengear debuted our NetOps Automation^TM Platform.  When designing this solution we talked to our customers. They discussed the need of a product that would help them with their biggest challenge – Day 1 provisioning. The NetOps Automation Platform provides organizations the ability to significantly streamline network and infrastructure operations with a full-featured automation solutions. This will provide enterprises with embedded security allowing applications to be run at the edge of the network. By utilizing an open architecture, this platform is utilizing the same technology that most data centers are already using to automate network operations – Ansible, Docker and so on. At our booth, Opengear CTO, Marcio Saito demoed how using this platform network devices can be brought up without any human intervention – now that is zero touch.

The adrenaline, the excitement, the masses of people, no we’re not talking about Universal Studios, Cisco Live 2018 was a whirlwind. Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth and for those who weren’t able to please let us know and we’d be happy to give you a demo or quote.