I’m happy to report that Cisco was named Industrial IoT Company of the Year 2025 within the IoT Breakthrough Awards Program. Since 2017, IoT Breakthrough has made annual awards to industrial IoT corporations and merchandise based mostly on high quality, distinctive expertise, and market management. I wish to thank our prospects, companions, and the complete Cisco industrial IoT group for making this award attainable.
“Most people know Cisco for their enterprise networking products, but for over 20 years, Cisco has been instrumental in making enterprise technologies decisive for digitizing industrial operations.”
– Steve Johansson, Managing Director at IoT Breakthrough
In this weblog I’ll summarize the the explanation why the analysis committee awarded Cisco high honors as Industrial IoT Company of the Year. Our options allow our prospects to guard their operations and lay a strong basis for AI, all with seamless IT-OT collaboration and validated designs inbuilt partnerships with main industrial automation corporations.
“The same robust security as the enterprise”
In the award announcement, IoT Breakthrough emphasizes Cisco improvements in industrial cybersecurity and AI readiness, which it phrases paramount issues for industrial operations. The announcement says, “Designed specifically for industrial needs, Cisco’s switches, routers, and wireless equipment share a common foundation with their enterprise counterparts… A shared operating system, management platform, and security measures facilitate collaboration between IT and OT teams.” As proven within the determine, Cisco industrial networking options include built-in visibility, segmentation, zero-trust distant entry, and the menace intelligence wanted for efficient incident response. A case research: Brazil’s CPFL Energia makes use of Cisco options to robotically detect and profile OT property in substations and establish vulnerabilities and anomalies.
Figure 1: Visibility, segmentation, and safe distant entry are constructed into Cisco community material
Johansson from IoT Breakthrough says, “By enabling IT best practices in OT, Cisco has freed industrial networks to scale and be flexible, while enjoying the same robust security as the enterprise.”
“The power of AI/ML”
I meet commonly with main industrial corporations, a lot of them already utilizing AI to modernize operations—as an example, for predictive upkeep, manufacturing anomaly detection, robotics and autonomous autos, provide chain optimization, and extra. For instance, Audi makes use of Cisco options for digital actuality prototypes and predictive upkeep. Argos Cement makes use of AI to research historic knowledge and construct digital twins and predictive fashions to keep up high quality, scale back power consumption, and enhance throughput.
AI functions like these place excessive calls for on the community. Think of the community because the nervous system connecting the brains within the knowledge heart to the commercial IoT property in crops and within the discipline. In the award announcement, IoT Breakthrough states, “Cisco’s industrial solutions empower industries to leverage the power of AI/ML to drive innovation to meet current and future needs. The network’s high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity between OT and IT domains transports large volumes of data generated by sensors, machines, controllers, and other devices to analytical applications in datacenters and the cloud.”
“Validated design guides that are blueprints”
Besides our expertise, IoT Breakthrough additionally calls out Cisco for “publishing validated design guides that are blueprints for successful networking and security deployments… that achieve business objectives.” We present greater than 80 Cisco Validated Designs and architectures for industries together with manufacturing, energy and water utilities, oil and fuel, mining, ports and terminals, roadways and intersections, and public transportation. My colleague Keith Higgins, Director of Product Marketing at Cisco, provides that “Validated designs improve IT/OT collaboration, which helps to reduce risk, increase operational efficiency, and accelerate implementation.”
Industrial corporations additionally profit from our partnerships and joint designs with Rockwell Automation®, Schneider Electric®, and CODESYS. Integration with Splunk provides OT groups the observability that’s wanted for digital resilience.
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