Carl has had a front-row seat to the evolution of enterprise networking, having been part of Cisco’s engineering leadership for nearly three decades. From the Catalyst 6500 days to today’s AI-driven infrastructure, his perspective underscores a fundamental truth: while technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, simplicity remains the ultimate goal.

“Change is the constant,” Carl said, reflecting on how the industry has transitioned from standalone networking products to integrated, security-first solutions. What was once a world of switches and routers has now become a landscape where networking, security, and observability are seamlessly intertwined.

Below are some of the key outtakes from my insight-filled discussion with Carl during Cisco Live.

Cisco’s latest innovations focus on three key areas:

– AI-Ready Data Centers – As organisations ramp up AI adoption, they require robust infrastructure that can support compute-intensive workloads. Cisco’s investments in high-speed networking, advanced silicon, and partnerships with AI chipmakers like NVIDIA and AMD are setting the stage for scalable AI-driven enterprises.
– Future-Proof Workspaces – The return-to-office trend has forced businesses to rethink their physical environments. Cisco’s latest collaboration tools—including AI-enhanced room configurations and workplace sensors—are helping organisations create more adaptive, productive, and sustainable workspaces.
– Digital Resilience & Security – Cisco’s new security paradigm revolves around the Cisco Security Cloud and innovations like Hypershield, a new application protection framework. With cyber threats evolving at lightning speed, integrating AI-powered security intelligence into networking infrastructure has never been more critical.

The AI & Cloud Rebalancing Act: Why Workloads Are Moving Back On-Prem

One of the most compelling insights from our discussion was the shift in cloud strategy among enterprises. While cloud adoption continues to grow, many organisations are re-evaluating where their workloads should reside.

“Eighty percent of organisations IDC surveyed said they’d be repatriating some or most of their workloads and data back on-prem,” Carl explained. The reasons? Cost, compliance, security, and latency concerns are driving enterprises to adopt a more balanced hybrid model.

AI is a prime example—training large models in the cloud is expensive, leading many organisations to consider on-prem AI workloads for efficiency and control. Smaller, domain-specific AI models are also emerging, allowing enterprises to deploy AI solutions at the edge rather than relying solely on hyperscalers.

The Power of Observability: Accelerating Incident Response with AI and Automation

With IT environments becoming more complex, observability has emerged as a top priority for enterprises. Cisco’s acquisition of Splunk underscores the growing importance of data-driven insights in security and network performance monitoring.

As Carl put it, “The more data you have, the more you see. The more you see, the more you can action.” By integrating ThousandEyes, XDR, and AI-powered automation, Cisco is enhancing its ability to pinpoint issues in real time—reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency.

One standout example Carl shared was an incident where a Cisco engineer, using ThousandEyes, was able to instantly diagnose an ISP-related outage for a customer. The ability to visualise the entire network path—from user to application—represents a paradigm shift in troubleshooting and network resilience.

The Evolving Role of the CTO: Driving Innovation & Business Strategy

As the pace of innovation accelerates, the role of the CTO has become more critical than ever. Carl believes that CTOs are now integral to shaping business strategy, not just overseeing IT operations.

“Every business is now a technology business,” he said. “Understanding how emerging technologies can create differentiation is crucial for staying ahead.”

He also highlighted the importance of fostering innovation within teams. Encouraging engineers—regardless of experience level—to challenge the status quo and bring fresh ideas to the table has been a key driver of Cisco’s success.

Final Thoughts: A Call to Action for IT Leaders

For those who couldn’t attend Cisco Live in person, Carl recommended exploring Cisco’s on-demand content and engaging with Cisco’s technical teams to better understand how these innovations can drive business outcomes.

As the enterprise technology landscape continues to evolve, IT leaders must remain agile, embrace AI-driven solutions, and prioritise security and observability. The shift toward integrated platforms and hybrid AI is already underway, and those who can effectively navigate this transition will be best positioned for success.

To hear our full conversation, check out our special two-part episode of Securely Connected Everything

Securely Connected Everything S5-1: The Future, Reimagined: A Look Ahead with Carl Solder [Part 1]

Securely Connected Everything S5-2: The Future, Reimagined: A Look Ahead with Carl Solder [Part 2]

The post Navigating the Future of Enterprise Technology: Key Insights from Cisco ANZ CTO, Carl Solder appeared first on Orro.

In a highly competitive talent market Orro are taking deliberate steps to attract and retain neurodiverse talent who represent a significant and untapped resource.

Continuing our partnership with Xceptional, Orro hopes to incorporate a robust stream of neurodiverse talent into our pool, utilising the knowledge gained in our training so far. While there is always work to be done, we look forward to strengthening our work for the neurodiverse community and hope that the greater technology sector also sees the value in hiring neurodiverse talent.

Get In Touch With Orro Today

The post World Autism Awareness Day 2022 appeared first on Orro.

They need options for wrestling back control over their technology to better manage their costs and risk – all without slowing their business down. But their infrastructure needs to support a mix of both current and next-gen applications, all of which have different infrastructure needs and competing service priorities.

This is why we’re seeing more organisations making the switch to hybrid cloud. It provides them with the optimum mix of performance and control.

Top 5 hybrid cloud benefits

1. Controlling costs and eliminating sticker shock
   

   Although public cloud was once touted as a fast way to cut storage and infrastructure costs, many businesses have realised the grass isn’t always greener. As they’ve moved more of their workloads over to the public cloud, they’ve suffered from sticker shock when the real costs of public cloud are revealed.

   According to Gartner, spending on public cloud services in Australia is expected to increase by 18.4 percent over 2020 to reach $10.6 billion.

   Rather than overspending on cloud resources that end up being drastically underutilised, hybrid cloud enables organisations to send certain workloads and applications to public cloud – while keeping business-critical applications and data on-premise where it makes sense for controlling costs.

2. Powering innovation and speed to market
   Every business needs to be constantly developing innovative new digital products and services to remain relevant, with IDC predicting that 65% of APAC GDP will be digitalised, reaching US$ 1.2 trillion in spending by 2022.

   Speed is the name of the game when it comes to the go-to-market timeframes today’s app developers have to work with. At the same time, most organisations are still dealing with a mix of both cloud-native and cloud-enabled applications in their development pipeline.

   For this reason, developers need access to the secure and always-on compute power of on-premise infrastructure, combined with the scalable resources offered by the public cloud.

3. Securing workloads and managing compliance 
   No matter the industry, every organisation is trying to cope with the ever-growing burden of regulatory compliance.

   Given the significant risks of data breaches and outages, regulators have placed strict conditions on the infrastructure environments required to manage certain datasets and workloads. Organisations need a manageable way to move workloads, applications and data between public/private clouds and on-premise infrastructure to meet their compliance obligations.

   This is where hybrid cloud offers the secure control they need for efficiently managing compliance.

4. Switching to a consumption-based model 
   To achieve the secure control required to manage costs, risks and compliance, the average enterprise would need massive capital outlays for on-premise infrastructure that they may or may not use. Because of this, control has been balanced against costs.

   Thankfully, consumption-based models for hybrid cloud infrastructure now allow organisations to get the best of both worlds. They can easily manage and pay for only the storage and compute resources they need, without having to pay for unnecessary and underutilised resources.

5. Reducing infrastructure management complexity 
   

   Between public/private clouds and on-premise infrastructure, IT teams have a tall task in trying to manage these dynamic new tech environments.

   Few businesses have the in-house skillsets and expertise to manage multiple infrastructure environments, which leads to an over reliance on on-premise infrastructure.

When it comes to securing the ultimate Cloud solution for your business, Orro has you covered.

Orro has the ideal solution for organisations who want to make the switch to hybrid cloud today. Our full SDDC stack from VMware with composable infrastructure from HPE Synergy enables organisations to achieve their infrastructure goals of improved performance, constant control, and efficient agility.

Offered through an easy-to-manage consumption-based model organisations can easily control their infrastructure needs.

With Orro’s industry-leading servicing and support, we can help you begin leveraging new opportunities for automation and workload optimisation where it makes sense for your business.

Contact us today to find out how our hybrid cloud platform can power your business into the future.

The post 5 Reasons to Shift to Hybrid Cloud Today appeared first on Orro.

The experts at Orro have years of experience in helping businesses improve the ROI on their technology investment.  Our team can help to save your business money when it comes time to upgrade or purchase of new Microsoft 365 licenses.

Microsoft licensing can be confusing

Entire books have been devoted to Microsoft licensing, and the industry analyst firm Directions on Microsoft even holds a “boot camp” to help customers better understand Microsoft’s licensing schemes.

New features are constantly being added, and are offered in various other bundles, under different names and levels.

The plans are named based on Microsoft’s intended market such as Consumer, Business and Enterprise.  Microsoft know that not everyone is the same within a given market, so they have different levels within each market, with varying features.

Plans range from a Microsoft 365 Business Basic for $6.90 per user per month through to a Microsoft 365 (Enterprise) E5 plan at $78.30 per user per month.

Microsoft 365 Licensing should match user requirements

If you are licensing all of your users in the same way, it’s probably time for a change. The first step is to consider how the employees in your organisation vary in their technology requirements.

It can be very tempting to go for the ‘all you can eat’ plan and just buy these licences for your entire staff. The assumption is that whatever feature you need will be included at the highest bundle level.

But, here’s the challenge…

Imagine in scenario 1, you have a team of 20 staff members. If you had them all on Microsoft 365 E5 ($78.30/month/user), you’d be paying over $1500 each month. Amongst other things, they’d be able to use Power Apps and advanced analytics capability.

In scenario 2, you realise your staff don’t need anything more than what is already included in the Microsoft 365 Business Premium plan at $27.50/user/month. These licences allow your staff to work collaboratively, efficiently and securely, and that is enough. You’d then be paying $550 every month, which represents a saving of over $11,000 per year, an excess of money that you could reinvest in other parts of your business.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, our team makes it a priority to stay on top of the technology evolution and understand the minutiae of Microsoft licensing so that we can make the best recommendation for our clients.

If you are considering a Cloud migration, a Microsoft product upgrade or simply want to save money on your subscriptions and want to learn more about your options, talk to us today.

Orro’s team of certified professionals are here to help, get in touch today.

The post Are You Overpaying for Your Microsoft Licensing? appeared first on Orro.

“Where is the data being stored if not on my computer or an external hard drive?”

“Can I trust whoever it is that owns this ‘cloud’ with my files and personal information?”

Now, thankfully of course, those conversations have dissipated thanks to the cloud’s overall integration into society. But based on some of the conversations that we’ve been having with customers recently, it’s come to our attention that from a commercial standpoint there’s still a great deal of confusion surrounding the cloud principle, both in terms of what it is, and what it offers.

Hybrid cloud, multicloud, and polycloud…can you decipher clear differentiations between the three?

It’s completely okay if you can’t because that’s what we’re here for.

Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud

In layman’s terms, let’s decode the cloud. First…

For what’s to follow it’s important to identify the distinction between public and private cloud.

• A public cloud is a cloud service leveraged by a range of different customers. They don’t know or have anything to do with one another, but they use the one public cloud, just like many customers leverage the same insurance provider.
• A private cloud is a cloud service leveraged by just one customer that can be built and managed by themselves or outsourced to an external vendor that hosts and manages it for them – an on-premises datacentre.
  Now, with that critical information covered let’s dig into the nitty gritty.

Hybrid Cloud

What is it? A hybrid cloud environment incorporates one public cloud with a private cloud or on-premises infrastructure. The on-premises infrastructure can be any kind of infrastructure that is running within a corporate network, including an internal datacentre.

What does it offer? For many organisations, moving everything to the cloud simply isn’t feasible, whether it’s a cost factor, for security purposes, or they may have legacy systems that need to be housed in an on-premises environment. Additionally, some organisations leverage a hybrid environment in order to keep certain processes and data in a more secure and controlled environment, often for regulatory purposes.

By taking a hybrid approach, organisations can leverage the uptime and speed of the public cloud while still meeting their regulatory obligations, security concerns, or supporting business-critical legacy systems. It’s important to note that in a hybrid cloud environment, users only leverage one public cloud.

Multicloud/Polycloud

What is it? Multi or Poly cloud environments involve leveraging more than one cloud, eliminating the dependence on any one cloud provider or piece of cloud technology. Through leveraging multiple clouds (both public and private), organisations can select the ideal cloud service or provider for their respective assets, applications, and software.

What does it offer? For many organisations, putting all their eggs in one basket is not the best plan of attack to reach their objectives. So, selecting different cloud services from different providers allows them to select the best cloud for a particular requirement.

It offers organisations their choice of the most ideal environment, eliminates dependency on one particular cloud, enables strong customisation to suit their growing needs, and offers a plethora of features not necessarily available in a hybrid cloud environment.

Following? It’s okay if the waters still seem a little murky. The below should help, it’s a comparison of the key differentiators between the two options.

Hybrid Cloud vs. Multicloud/Polycloud

• Pairing of one private cloud with one public cloud.
• Hybrid cloud environments do not include multiple public clouds.
• Requires a private datacentre/on-premises infrastructure.

• Pairing of multiple clouds (public or private) from different providers.
• Multi/Poly cloud environments can include a hybrid cloud approach.
• Organisations will select particular cloud providers to house particular elements of their environment (Software, Systems, Applications).

Finding the right cloud environment for your business

Now, having scratched the surface of the cloud principle to some degree, do you think you have a clear understanding of which environment would be best suited to your requirements?

If you think you do that’s fantastic. But the thing is there’s no definitive distinction across cloud computing that dictates a certain type of business or industry is better suited to hybrid or multicloud based solely on the fabric of the business.

Every organisation is unique, and just because a particular hybrid cloud approach works for one accountancy firm, it doesn’t mean that it will be suitable for another accountancy firm. It’s entirely dependent on what you’re trying to achieve from a business standpoint.

Which is why Orro is here, to provide the guidance and expertise to help you identify the best possible cloud computing environment for you.

Orro in partnership with HPE, take the responsibility of understanding your business to help you find the best fit to manage your cloud transformation, end-to-end. We can help you find the solution that is right for you, and tailor it to meet your needs while also managing the day to day so you don’t have the hassle.

To learn more about the options available to you, get in touch with one of our cloud experts today.

The post A Beginner’s Guide to Understanding the Cloud appeared first on Orro.