Today, I am pleased to share the news that Cisco WAAS 5.0 has been certified by SAP for integration with the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform 7.0. Cisco WAAS 5.0 on the Cisco WAVE-594 appliance has been tested for performance preservation, secure encrypted communication, reliability, and functional correctness with SAP NetWeaver 7.0. The WAN bandwidth utilization is typically reduced by 20 percent or more.
In addition to the performance benefits verified during SAP certification testing, Cisco introduced WAAS 5.0 earlier this year, which includes the following features: Read More »
Having had a great time at EDUCAUSE 2012 in Denver this year, I wanted to follow-up on an interesting story from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Universities around the country are using technology to drive greater levels of knowledge sharing and improve the effectiveness of education, and our friends at CU Boulder are no excpetion.
A strong example of how Cisco technology is making a difference in the world of education is the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder. In a session at EDUCAUSE, Max Lopez, senior wireless engineer at CU Boulder, explained the challenges the campus was facing, why they chose Cisco wireless networking technologies to address those challenges, and the results they’ve seen.
The mobility trend holds great promise for improved productivity and new engagement models. These are most powerful in a learning effort—imagine learning anywhere and anytime. I just wish I had the Internet and the mobility that students have today when I went to school. Yet, mobility is an IT tsunami that will not recede. One of the most damaging aspects of this storm is the possibility of numerous personal devices that are entering organizations, accessing the network and eventually critical assets, and stealing sensitive data or mistakenly bringing malware. Many people know this policy as BYOD or bring your own device. This is not a new phrase but it is still quite prevalent. Inventory and provisioning of personal mobile devices is just the tip of this wave. Organizations want to control mobile devices to ensure acceptable usage and minimize security incidents.
We’ve talked about how the Internet is forecast to carry a million minutes of video every second in the next few years, and how Cisco’s Elastic Core solution will help the core infrastructure carry that load. But a scalable and flexible core is only one piece of the puzzle that network operators need. Who else is helping to make a video-centric future a reality?
One place to look is a solution that’s been developed by Miami, FL based NxtGn and Virginia-based Telarix. We wrote about NxtGn’s affiliate Next Communications last year, they’ve been successful in wholesale voice communications, in part due to in-house technology paired with an off-the-shelf Cisco ASR 1000 router performing Session Border Control functionality. Packing a softswitch and an SBC that can handle 16K voice or HD video calls in half a rack has enabled them to minimize their costs in a relatively low-margin market. Telarix isn’t as well known outside of the carrier market – they specialize in what is known as “interconnect business optimization” – basically the back-office components to handle billing, auditing, and traffic routing between carriers. While the concept of billing and auditing might make your eyes glaze over, if carriers can’t figure out how to bill for services rendered you can imagine they view that as a really bad thing.
Cisco’s Smart Grid Team is excited to support the Wireless Smart Utility Network Alliance (Wi-SUN). Lionel Chocron, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Connected Energy Networks Business, will be representing Cisco on the Wi-Sun board of directors. Cisco will be joining at the promoter level and the entire team is looking forward to helping drive the development of interoperable Field Area Networks (FAN) for utility applications.
Field Area Networks today are often closed, proprietary systems and generally just supporting a single service. As a result, they do not support interoperability across multiple vendors or take advantage of the decades of networking expertise available within the Internet Protocol suite (IP).
By supporting Wi-SUN, Cisco will help drive the technical definition for standards based, multi service, secure, and scalable Field Area Networks. The Field Area Networks will support important utility use cases including Automatic Metering Infrastructure, Outage Management, and Distribution Automation.
The Wi-SUN defined Field Area Network will be based upon the IP protocol suite, with the initial release based on IEEE 802.15.4g PHY and 802.15.4e MAC wireless mesh technologies. Usage of the IP protocol suite will provide many benefits, including the ability to support additional PHY/MAC technologies in the future.
Our team will further assist in the development of certification testing and “plug-fests” for regions around the world. This will ensure international interoperability between multiple vendors implementing the Wi-SUN defined Field Area Network.
“We are very pleased to be joining the Wi-SUN alliance, and look forward to collaborating with our industry partners to bring interoperable, standards based utility Field Area Networks to reality,” said Lionel Chocron, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Connected Energy Networks Business Unit.
Other companies who are promoters of the Wi-Sun alliance include:
Further details about the Wi-SUN Alliance can be found here
Cisco Connected Grid products and solution information is available here
Today, I am pleased to share the news that Cisco WAAS 5.0 has been certified by SAP for integration with the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform 7.0. Cisco WAAS 5.0 on the Cisco WAVE-594 appliance has been tested for performance preservation, secure encrypted communication, reliability, and functional correctness with SAP NetWeaver 7.0. The WAN bandwidth utilization is typically reduced by 20 percent or more.
One place to look is a solution that’s been developed by Miami, FL based NxtGn and Virginia-based Telarix. We wrote about NxtGn’s affiliate Next Communications 
