Cisco released Wi-Fi 6E access points and a private 5G managed service designed specifically for the hybrid work environment
Cisco clearly believes that work from home is here to stay, at least to a certain extent. The company has introduced Wi-Fi 6E and private 5G solutions designed specifically to help businesses scale networks and digitize operations to enable connectivity for a hybrid work environment.
Specifically, Cisco released two new high-end Wi-Fi 6E access points, the Catalyst 9136 and Meraki MR57, which the company said will “address the most demanding hybrid business environments,” as well as a private 5G managed service and high-powered Catalyst 9000X series switches with Cisco Silicon One.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic confined us all to our homes, improved connectivity tools were promising to usher in a shift to a more remote or hybrid workforce, particularly as younger generations began to feel more comfortable collaborating and interacting virtually than previous generations. COVID, then, merely sped up this process, and Cisco is far from alone in its opinion that this change is likely permanent.
Salary.com surveyed employers from 743 organizations and 549 individual employees and found that a hybrid model is a popular option among both groups. Forty-eight percent of employees expressed a desire to be fully remote, while 44% of employees favored hybrid working arrangements. Fifty-one percent of employers said they support the hybrid work model, but only 5% viewed fully remote work as desirable.
However, as Todd Nightingale, executive vice president and general manager of enterprise networking and cloud at Cisco, put it, “[h]ybrid work doesn’t work without the network.”
“The network is the foundation of all hybrid work solutions. The capabilities of the network empower the capabilities of the workforce. The more performance, agility and flexibility built into networks, the stronger the workforce. Our new wireless networking solutions together with the new Catalyst switches powered by Silicon One will support our customers’ ambitions for hybrid work, enabling productivity, resiliency and agility by connecting everyone and everything from everywhere,” he said.
Chandan Mehndiratta, senior director of Cisco’s Enterprise Wireless and Volume Business, previously told RCR Wireless News that nearly all of its customers are looking to deploy Wi-Fi 6 and that Wi-Fi 6E — which refers to extending Wi-Fi 6 capabilities into the 6 GHz spectrum — delivers “spectrum-level determinism with almost ultra-reliable connectivity that we could never imagine.”
And private 5G, said the company, can offer more network flexibility, resiliency, customization and security, all of which are necessary when connecting more people and more devices across more places.
