Cisco Live Berlin 2016 is almost here and we would like to highlight a few key points that this event can bring your way. As you know networks are an essential part of business, education, government, and home communications. Every company in every vertical industry is facing unprecedented competitive pressure from new players making innovative usage of software and data analytics. It forces companies to embark on a digitization journey, which ends up having profound consequences on network infrastructure. You may also already know that the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) forecast predicts significant traffic growth in such networks and Global Cloud Index (GCI) forecasts data center and cloud growth showing that total DC traffic will be 3X going from 2014 to 2019. So we worked out a Cisco service provider strategy to help you to stay ahead of the curve and we are delivering SP solutions to help you transform your business. Such strategy will not only increase the speeds and feeds, but will also provide comprehensive ways of growing your business through the virtualization and programmability of services based on Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) innovations. We want Cisco SP technologies and solutions to help increase your profitability and reduce your operational costs while reducing time to market. Cisco's Open Network Strategy is our vision that fosters new solutions positioned to help you transform the way you handle your day-to-day operations and let you become an empowered provider.

Come visit the Service Provider booth to see how Cisco's Service Provider Cloud Scale Networking Solutions for the Software Defined Operator are driving transformation through innovation at Cisco Live Berlin, February 15-19, 2016. We will feature demonstrations, product strategy overviews, and much more!

Last November, we announced our latest innovations in Cloud Scale networking. Here is the challenge that a typical operator is facing: over 20,000 CLI commands are issued and scrapped every five minutes. Over four million lines of configuration files are under management at any given time. It's a huge operational burden. We at Cisco believe that a new operational and architectural approach is needed. Architecturally, you need a way to converge the data center and the WAN-an approach optimized for cloud scale and appropriate for the largest providers. Scaling the network in near real-time while optimizing performance and dramatically increasing operational efficiency is what's required. It's all about cloud scale.

To illustrate this concept of Cloud scale, we are bringing newly announced routers: NCS 1000, NCS 5000, and NCS 5500. NCS 1000 is all about optical transport modernization. You'll learn how circuit emulation can be used to migrate away from an old, obsolete SONET/SDH and DCS infrastructure to a future-proof, scalable, and converged MPLS based packet infrastructure while maintaining carrier class and transport with 50ms path protection, rich OAM, and ease of use. We will discuss the data center intra/interconnect bandwidth requirements, as well as a new challenge in central offices' demand to enable the future scale at sustainable cost.

When it comes to the innovation in WAN aggregation, you will learn how a new router NCS 5000 Series is designed to economically scale large enterprise, over-the-top (OTT), and service provider data center networking architectures, while NCS 5500, is designed to efficiently scale between data centers and service provider WAN and aggregation networks. Cloud-scale infrastructure demonstration will also include a programmable, dense, low-power solution for metro aggregation and ISSU capabilities.

Cisco IOS XR platform-a common media for WAN devices-can be augmented with third-party application hosting to deliver greater value to customers and to foster innovation. We will demo model-driven telemetry that increases visibility into networks and helps service providers take near real-time action.

We will be hosting 20 powerful demos; however, Service Provider presence goes beyond the demos. There are 70 plus sessions and they are being led by the innovation talk and the product and solutions overviews:

Service Provider Innovation Talk:
Service Provider: Transformation Through Innovation
Speaker: David Ward, CTO and Chief Architect, Cisco
February 16, 2016 at 16:45-17:45

Service Provider Solution Overview Sessions:
Independent Validation of Cisco NFV Infrastructure
Speakers: Sanjeev Mervana, Senior Director, Marketing, Cisco, Carsten Rossenhovel, Managing Director, EANTC
February 16, 2016 at 13:15-14:15

Software Innovations for Cloud Scale Networking
Speaker: Frederic Trate, Sr. Marketing Manager, Cisco
February 17, 2016 at 13:15-14:15
We wanted to give you a sneak peak of the Cisco strategy of transformation through innovation. Drop by the booth to say "Hi" and run through the demos of your choice as we intend to solidify your understanding of EPN and ESP by taking part in these demos. See you in Berlin the week of February 15!