The Biggest Opportunity In 20 Years

"The internet as we know it today and the network that you operate will not work for the Internet of Things," said Cisco's IoT leader Rowan Trollope to thousands of channel partners at the recent Cisco Partner Summit 2016 in San Francisco.

But here's the good news for Cisco channel partners, as Trollope sees it: "We can solve that problem because we own the network. So we don't have the challenge Microsoft has or that GE has or that all these other companies that don't own a network [have]," said Trollope, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's IoT and Applications business.

The San Jose, Calif.-based networking giant is planning to leverage its networking footprint to dominate the IoT market by forming deep technology partnerships with every type of IoT device manufacturer while tackling the operational technology space as the channel leads the way with crucial IoT services.

"This is the biggest thing, in my opinion, to happen to Cisco's business probably in 20 years," said Trollope.