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Busan is at the forefront of something big.

As South Korea’s second-largest metropolitan city, Busan boasts a population of about 3.6 million, and is home to a slew of major companies, government agencies, universities, annual festivals, and conferences. Busan is the country’s largest container-handling port, and the fifth- largest in the world. Like other metropolitan areas, the city struggles with managing terrible traffic congestion and the attendant high logistical costs; maintaining job-creation momentum for the 60,000 high-quality and high-skill job seekers who graduate from area universities each year; and meeting the demand for an innovative city operations system that helps ensure global competitiveness.

Cisco IBSG has been working with Busan’s Metropolitan Government to develop plans for a “u-City.” U, in this case, stands for “ubiquitous,” which also describes the city’s broadband penetration. Busan’s “smart and connected” urban communities use the network as a platform—on top of which it can deploy innovative urban-planning solutions and city management services. The city uses the network to connect, process, and share information efficiently, and in real time. Continue reading “Inside One Asian City’s Strategy”



Authors

Gordon Feller

Director, Urban Innovations, Public Sector Practice Internet Business Solutions Group

Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)

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It was a dark, cold, and scary night when I returned from dinner with friends and noticed that my mobile phone was missing. It had corporate sensitive data such as emails, calendar events, and documents, as well as personal data (including pictures, videos and other documents). Well, let me be honest with you, I didn’t really lose my phone. However, many cell phones, tablets, and other gadgets are lost or stolen on a daily basis. The problem of stolen mobile devices is huge. According to a report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this year, about 40 percent of robberies in Washington, D.C., New York, and other major cities now involve mobile devices. The FCC has teamed up with the nation’s top wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, to develop a database of stolen mobile devices.

Allowing employees to access corporate email, critical business applications and data makes workers more productive and effective. Finding just the right balance when allowing easy access to the applications that users need to be more productive, while maintaining the integrity and security of enterprise resources, will give your organization a competitive advantage.

Stolen and lost devices are among the many challenges of mobile device security.

Continue reading “The Day I Lost My Mobile with Sensitive Corporate Data”



Authors

Omar Santos

Distinguished Engineer

Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) Security Research and Operations

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Time flies!  I’m off to the Gartner Data Center conference in London again.  And as per last year, I’ll drive my this ancient and very historical Bothwell Castle on my way to the airport.

Bothwell Castle

 

Last year I was very busy at the Cisco stand in the Solution Showcase.  This time, I’m spending all of my visit  in the actual conference sessions, learning about top concerns and trends in the data center world, and I plan to tweet out some of the most interesting and controversial learnings, as well as following up in subsequent blogs here.  So follow me on Twitter @StephenSatCisco to learn what is surprising me (and I’ll use hashtags #CiscoDC #GartnerDC.  And  if you are at the conference, I should be near the Cisco stand at the breaks so drop by and say hello!



Authors

Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

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 Getting online — not just in line — to find the best deals.

This holiday shopping season, brick-and-mortar stores are out to match e-commerce sites with the latest and deepest discounts, and even encourage in-store shoppers to buy online. About 85% of online retailers will offer special promotions on Monday when people return to work. And now there’s an entire web site to check out all the deals called cybermonday.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the first time in fact, more of us will go online than will go to stores to do get our gifts — 52% of shoppers are expected to use the Web, tablets or smartphones to buy presents. A mobile device may be more important to bring Christmas shopping than your wallet.

Mobile shopping

Sales made on a mobile device will be 21% of all online holiday sales this year, according to the Adobe Digital Index 2012 Online Shopping ForecastTwo-thirds of those sales will be made on tablets, and the other third on smartphones. Phones more than tablets are used to research prices and find store locations and sales, and tablets to make a purchase.

And as retailers encourage shoppers to use multiple channels, more mobile sales are being made at the actual store. Walk into Best Buy with a smartphone, scan a QR code, and it takes you to the Best Buy web site. If you see it cheaper online, they’ll match that price in store. Or …buy something online and pick it up at a store near you — that same day. This saves you shipping costs and gets you that holiday rush of being with the crowds.
Continue reading “Headed to work to do some holiday shopping? Welcome to Cyber Monday.”



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Professional services, Consultancy Services, Advanced Services – call them what you will.   I can hear you say:   “On No!  Complexity”.  “Now I need to work a Statement of Work”.  “I need help to get my project on time, can’t this get easier?”  “I need to get my legal contracts team involved.”  “Why can’t you just tell me a price?”

Common reactions from some of you who will engage any (and I mean any, not just Cisco!) professional services organization (for example,  Cisco Services or one of our many partners) to help bring additional experience, expertise and resources to your projects.  The good news is, where appropriate to your requirements, this complexity has been substantially reduced, with Fixed Price services from Cisco, available now for many of our most popular products and solutions.

I will confess: this is not new  – in fact we (quietly) first released such Fixed Price services back in 2009, to support the Cisco Unified Computing System deployments! – and if we’re honest, we’ve not talked much about them and how successful they’ve become, with many, many customers taking advantage of these quick-to-engage expert services.

These services have really made it easier for customers and partners to do business with Cisco, delivering a number of significant advantages to our customers and partners, as illustrated below.

 

Cisco Fixed Price Services - Characteristics

Continue reading “Making it Easier for You to do Business with Us – Fixed Price Professional Services from Cisco”



Authors

Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

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Following the ITU hosted CTO meeting held in Dubai on November 18 2012, where I represented our CTO Padmasree Warrior, I had the pleasure to present at the ITU-T Global Standards Symposium [GSS] in Dubai on November 19 2012.

This panel was of particular interest to us because Cisco observed a number of industries brought together on the same stage.  Energy, healthcare, and transportation are important to how we live and work, and Cisco engages in each of these sectors.

While this panel demonstrated the huge technological strides each sector is taking, I noted that these advances did not occur overnight.  Each of these sectors has evolved its approach with a lot of effort, over a long period of time. Continue reading “Cisco Endorses OpenStand at ITU-T in Dubai”



Authors

Monique Morrow

CTO-Evangelist

New Frontiers Development and Engineering

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It’s official. The holiday season has begun. For many businesses—small and not so small, this is the season that counts. And that’s why we’re supporting Small Business Saturday. It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving, launched by American Express, to remind holiday shoppers not to forget about small businesses in the midst of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So what can small businesses do to help take advantage of the big day and the season at hand? Paul Jankowski offers some great tips in his Forbes blog, including taking advantage of social media. For those who get the value of technology, seizing opportunities comes easier.

Yet, according to Hiten Samtani’s recent piece on entrepreneur.com, many SMBs have little or no presence on social media, and 98 percent of business websites haven’t been optimized for shoppers using mobile devices (check out the great infographic in his blog).

That’s unfortunate, given that technology is what helps small businesses compete on the same playing field as the big ones. The key is to have the right technology in place to connect people with information, securely. Not just to handle transactions, but to also help optimize productivity; so that employees and business partners can work together effectively from wherever, and customers can shop and buy from wherever.

As you head into Thanksgiving (and beyond), think about how technology could better connect your employees and your customers. Then think about what that would mean in terms of business performance.

Best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving.



Authors

Linda Beaton

Marketing Manager

GMP Data Center Marketing Team

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If you’re in the United States, you’ll know Thanksgiving means two things: turkey and therapy (as in retail therapy).

As one of our more shameless displays of mass consumerism, Black Friday brings to light the not-so-new fact that shopping and consumers are undeniably married to the megatrend of consumerization.

Deloitte declared in its Annual Holiday Survey that it’s smartphone shoppers who are driving sales this season. “Online and mobile shopping gets consumers in the spirit; [and] in-store service may seal the deal.” Retailers like Target are announcing left and right that there will be free Wi-Fi and smartphone navigation for the holidays to keep their mobile consumers happy.

Sure, businesses can provide seasonal perks to their holiday shoppers, but how does a retail business establish themselves in this new age of consumerization?

Continue reading “[Poll] What’s YOUR Black Friday Shopping Companion of Choice?”



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Black Friday. This shopping day has become as synonymous with Thanksgiving as turkey, pumpkin pie, and football. In 2011, U.S. consumers spent $52 billion while shopping during Thanksgiving weekend.

But not everyone in the United States can enjoy the trappings of Thanksgiving, much less Black Friday.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2011 48.5 million Americans were living below the poverty level — about 16 percent of the population. Many of these people rely on charitable organizations to feed their families — not just at Thanksgiving, but year-round.

Continue reading “A Charitable Alternative to Black Friday”



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Manager

Cisco Corporate Affairs