At this week’s Cisco Live in Amsterdam, Cisco added cloud services to its IoT operations dashboard.

The aim is to increase industrial asset visibility, securely manage assets from anywhere and provide industrial IoT users with a seamless path to cloud automation for operational technology (OT) teams.

Also, Cisco ThousandEyes introduced support for OpenTelemetry, unlocking internet and cloud intelligence across monitoring and IT platforms for expanded visibility, correlated insights and optimised digital experiences.

And the tech giant’s unified SASE offering, Cisco+ Secure Connect, now supports integration into Cisco SD-WAN fabrics leveraging Viptela technology, providing any Cisco SD-WAN user with access to fast, secure private application and internet access.

With cloud management tools for industrial IoT applications, simplified dashboards to converge IT and OT operations, and flexible network intelligence to see and secure all industrial assets, Cisco says it is delivering a unified experience that provides true business agility.

“The most effective way to manage growing complexity and provide more insight into business operations is through reliable connectivity and complete visibility across an organisation’s operations and assets,” said Cisco’s Vikas Butaney. “A strong partnership between all technology teams – security, networking and operations – is essential. With these new innovations, we’re excited to equip organisations with the tools needed for a unified, cloud-delivered approach that brings the power of the enterprise IT network to scale and secure the industrial edge.”

Organisations are extending their networks to new places. They need to connect core enterprise operations to industrial spaces, spanning utility grids, manufacturing facilities and transportation networks. They are also prioritising sustainability and resiliency in their operations, driving the need for greater visibility across their environments. The distributed nature of these operations makes these networks complex to manage and, as these industries digitise their assets, the cyber-security attack surface grows.

Cisco is introducing cloud services in its IoT operations dashboard to increase industrial asset visibility and securely manage assets from anywhere.

Cisco Cyber Vision is now integrated with the IoT dashboard to grant IT and operations teams full visibility into IT and OT devices to manage threats across the organisation, providing a unified security posture across the entire network.

Secure Equipment Access Plus makes it easier for IT and OT teams to deploy, manage and troubleshoot connected equipment remotely. This service now provides access to any connected equipment with IP connectivity, so operations teams can run native applications on their workstations to access remote assets more easily.

These innovations, along with Cisco’s extension of its portfolio of its Catalyst industrial wireless and switching portfolio, provide more common tooling and data so IT and OT teams can work more efficiently together to reduce downtime of critical infrastructure, drive greater business productivity and efficiencies, and enhance overall safety and security.

Having the relevant data at the right time is necessary to optimise users’ digital experiences, but data may not always be easy to collect and correlate. To help users tackle this, Cisco ThousandEyes now supports OpenTelemetry, the open-source framework and industry standard that partners, customers and providers rely on to generate, collect, process and export cloud-native and distributed telemetry data.

As the first network visibility option to support OpenTelemetry, ThousandEyes is making it possible for users to interconnect cloud and internet intelligence for data correlation and insight. With ThousandEyes OpenTelemetry, Cisco is enabling end-to-end correlated insights across multiple domains, from user to application, for better digital experiences.

To simplify network security and policy management, Cisco+ Secure Connect now supports integration into Cisco SD-WAN fabrics using Viptela technology. Cisco SD-WAN users now have access to fast, secure private applications and internet access, enabling them to deliver a secure experience to their employees anywhere.

This unified option converges networking and security to provide users with a single platform and a streamlined operational model that simplifies and scales the visibility, management and control over a hybrid work environment. This converged operating model also provides IT teams with enhanced visibility and control over the network, making the experience easier for them to manage.