The company’s 26th Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program, 12th in EMEAR

MADRID, Spain, March 05, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cisco today announced its commitment to help advance Spain’s secure digital transformation under the company’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program. The CDA program combines collaboration and shared investment between Cisco, communities, governments, and businesses to utilize digital as the foundation for their future.

Chuck Robbins, Chairman and CEO, Cisco: “Through Country Digital Acceleration, Cisco has the opportunity to positively impact communities, governments, and businesses around the world. We are excited to support the long-term economic goals of Spain and benefit their citizens in the digital economy.”

Called ‘Digitaliza’ in Spanish, CDA will align with the country’s goals for digitization. It will drive projects that advance citizens’ quality of life, create jobs and workforce education, and enhance global economic competitiveness. It foresees a collaboration with the public sector, the industry -- including ICT, energy, finance, industrial companies, service providers, small medium businesses (SMBs), startups from any vertical, and partners -- plus academia, and will address the following areas:

• Industry 4.0: Encourage the digitization of industrial companies, service providers, and utilities. Help close the digital gap for small medium businesses through innovation, with the ultimate goal to increase efficiency and competitiveness.
  
  
• Smart Territories: Advance smart, inclusive, sustainable and attractive digital territories. Furthermore, help enable digital education and connected schools, and develop efficient smart mobility and transportation for people and goods.
  
  
• Critical Infrastructures: Foster the deployment of intelligent and highly secure national networks and protect critical infrastructures with advanced cybersecurity.
  
  
• Digital Jobs and Innovation: Develop digital skills (ICT/STEM) to help employability, with a focus on areas such as Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity, leveraging nearly 20-years of the Cisco Networking Academy program in Spain.

Ongoing initiatives
CDA builds on Cisco’s 25-year commitment to helping Spain realize its full digital potential in collaboration with public and private sector organizations. By bringing the CDA Program to Spain, Cisco continues to create positive impact for society and the economy. Some examples of initiatives already being implemented are:

• Barcelona Co-Innovation Center. Inaugurated on January 28, 2019, the latest addition to Cisco’s global network of Co-Innovation Centers serves as a hub for open, creative collaboration. It focuses on urban innovation, healthcare and financial services evolution, helping to develop a vibrant co-innovation ecosystem.

• Cisco Networking Academy program, designed to reduce the ICT professional’s growing skills gap and promote employability. This non-profit initiative has already trained almost 175,000 Spanish students since 2000 in state-of-the-art digital technologies, through more than 390 educational centers and 780 teachers. The ‘Digitaliza’ goal is to increase the total number of new students to 100,000 in the next three years.
  
• Collaboration with regional and vertical innovation centers, such as Sevilla Futura and Zaragoza's Innovation in Retail Center (T-ZIR), providing Cisco mentoring and equipment to help local startups innovate.
  
• Cisco DevNet Spain. Innovative companies can also connect with Cisco DevNet in Spain and globally. DevNet is a community of more than 500,000 developers building applications over Cisco’s open digital platform.

Santiago Solanas, Vice President, Southern Europe at Cisco: “Our aim is to place Spain as a reference in digital transformation, contribute to economic growth and advance towards a more inclusive society. The pillars of the Digitaliza program have been designed to help our country, cities, companies and the entire innovation ecosystem in capturing the maximum value from digitization.”

About CDA
Cisco developed the concept of Country Digital Acceleration to stimulate global digitization. Cisco is collaborating with governments in selected countries to strengthen digital research and education, stimulate digital entrepreneurship, accelerate innovation, develop new economic clusters and improve national infrastructure. Each CDA programme has been developed to meet the needs of the respective country. So far, more than 300 projects have been launched on smarter transport, smart cities, eHealth, cybersecurity and connected education. More information at https://newsroom.cisco.com/cda.

About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that has been making the Internet work since 1984. Our people, products, and partners help society securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital opportunity today. Discover more at newsroom.cisco.com and follow us on Twitter at @Cisco.

Ariadna Hernández
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