Cisco brings technology to future-proof Bangladesh’s businesses
Deepening its commitment to accelerate Bangladesh’s digital transformation and help build business resiliency for its businesses, Cisco on Tuesday unveiled its Resilient Distributed Enterprise product portfolio. In addition, Cisco will also be doubling down on its partner engagements and expanding its Networking Academy programme to empower Bangladesh’s businesses in the next normal. This is an extension of Cisco’s ongoing initiatives to bolster the country’s digital foundation and help achieve the government’s vision of ‘Digital Bangladesh’.
Even before the pandemic, Bangladesh was witnessing rapidly rising mobile and internet penetration, with 166 million mobile users, and 108 million internet users in August 2020, up from 99 million in just January 2020, according to the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC). Today, Bangladesh is at a crucial point in its digital transformation journey, as the pandemic shapes a new world, with new rules and behaviors, where consumers are becoming more committed to their health, more isolated and independent, accompanied by a rising propensity for low-touch, contactless services. For instance, online sales in Bangladesh have increased by 70-80% compared to pre-COVID levels, and its e-commerce market is expected to reach USD 3 billion by 2023.
These trends are necessitating the reimagination of businesses to keep pace with a rapidly evolving and dynamic ecosystem. Therefore, organisations' ability and willingness to disrupt themselves will be the key to navigating the new world. Having recognized this, small and large organisations in Bangladesh across its major industries like e-commerce, IT/ITeS, and manufacturing are recalibrating their processes and reinventing their business models to cater to the emerging digital consumer demographic. This includes shifting their processes to the cloud, switching to fully remote or hybrid work models, and leveraging industrial automation technologies to make their supply chains more flexible and resilient. At the same time, they are prioritizing the security of their company assets and employees’ privacy, as increased connectivity also expands the threat surface.
To make these transitions easy and seamless, Cisco is enabling the transformation of Bangladesh’s businesses into “Resilient Distributed Enterprises” (RDE), bringing the capabilities of a resilient technology infrastructure that permits them to work from anywhere, collaborate from any device, manage from anywhere (including automation, data analytics, assurance, and policy) and maximize experience and productivity by serving distributed workers, applications and cloud services, with security front and center.
As part of its new RDE portfolio, Cisco is introducing SecureX, an easy-to-use, cloud-native platform that unifies visibility across companies’ security portfolio, including detection of unknown threats and policy violations through security analytics for more informed actions. Furthermore, Cisco is enabling access to Intersight Workload Optimizer, an AI-powered, software-as-a-service platform that offers an intelligent level of management and allows organizations to simplify and automate IT operations. Through Intersight, firms can gain visibility to their full stack – from infrastructure to apps – on-premise and in the cloud while optimizing costs, performance, and compliance in real-time.
This is the latest endeavor in Cisco’s ongoing initiatives to fast-track Bangladesh’s transition into a digital economy. In addition to fostering RDE capabilities for its businesses, Cisco is continuing to help build a digitally proficient workforce in Bangladesh through its Networking Academy. This program has trained almost 49,000 students so far and is one of the fastest-growing countries under the Cisco Networking Program in the APJ region in 2020. Cisco aims to increase this to 70,000 students by the end of 2021.
Cisco is also focusing on expanding its partner ecosystem across the country to deliver the benefits of its resilient technology architecture to many more businesses in Bangladesh.
Commenting on the development, Sudhir Nayar, Managing Director, Cisco SAARC, said: “We have been in Bangladesh for over two decades, and have witnessed firsthand how technology has empowered its people and businesses. We believe that the pandemic has significantly amplified the opportunity for digital innovation in the country. We are proud to introduce Cisco’s new 'Resilient Distributed Enterprise' portfolio to help Bangladesh’s businesses capitalize on this opportunity and digitally disrupt themselves.”
“This latest offering has been curated keeping in mind the future needs of enterprises, and leverages Cisco’s vast experience and expertise in cloud infrastructure, automation, and security. Bolstered by our continued commitment to creating a skilled workforce in the country, along with an extensive partner ecosystem to ensure maximum reach, Cisco aims to empower Bangladesh’s businesses to thrive in the new normal through this initiative,” he concluded.
This commitment is aligned with Cisco’s goal of positively impacting 1 billion people globally and seeks to arm the nation’s businesses with the right tools and technologies and highly-skilled technology professionals to support Bangladesh’s vision of becoming a leading digital economy.