The Internet of Things (IoT) was a hot topic at Cisco Live last week in Milan. I got to spend a lot of time with customers, partners, and developers, and came home impressed by the tremendous focus on IoT applications. There is an enormous amount of energy directed at building on the foundation Cisco is creating.

If you weren't able to join us in Milan, here is my list of the week's highlights.

The opening day keynote"The Internet of Things-Making It Real" set the stage for how IoT enables the value of the Internet of Everything. It discussed Fog computing, explored the security requirements of IoT, and helped everyone understand the impact of data and analytics thanks to customer examples of business outcomes for IoT. This keynote was a valuable complement to the other technical keynotes in that it showed how Cisco's approach to IoT ties directly to delivering business value.

Next, the technical breakout session "Enabling the Internet of Everything: Cisco's IoT Architecture" drew a standing-room-only crowd. In this presentation, we talked about how IoT differs from typical IT environments, and we provided an overview of Cisco's IoT product portfolio. We showed how our various product lines help solve IoT problems and play a role in typical use cases. The audience asked many questions about Fog, our IOx platform, and data in motion.

The IoE and IoT Regional Forum also took place alongside Cisco Live last week. During a panel for Cisco partners titled "Realizing the IoE Opportunity with IoT," we discussed data and analytics, Fog/IOx, and open computing. There was a lot of excitement over the hackathon, which involved 100 developers on 20 teams, most of whom were building IoT-related apps! The panel emphasized that Cisco partners are building on top of Cisco's Video Surveillance Manager (VSM) and cameras platform to deliver unique solutions such as facial recognition, license plate recognition, and anomaly detection. We left the audience with the message that as we continue to roll out open APIs, more opportunities exist for partners to deliver unique value in the marketplace!

I was also invited to participate in a second panel titled "From Big Data to Fog: What It All Means to Your Business" alongside representatives from SAP, Bit Stew Systems, Atos, and AGT International, who collectively represented diverse perspectives on Fog. Our panel tackled standardization, developer and operational tools, enablement, and security challenges. The big takeaway for the audience was that it is really about "Cloud+Fog" rather than Fog as an alternative to Cloud.

We at Cisco have been busy since my last blog post. I hope you heard about Cisco's new data and analyticsIoE solutions(which use our Fog platform), as well as Cisco's new Industrial Operations Kit and Industrial Ethernet 4000 Series Switches, which give customers new networking options to support the growth of IoT applications and unlock the business value of IoT.

Stay tuned. We have a lot of exciting things on our roadmap this year, and we continue to get great validation from customers on those plans. Look for more announcements from us in 2015 and see you at Cisco Live US in San Diego this June.