Though we often take it for granted, the global data network is one of the wonders of our world.  Without that network, users around the world would not be able to surf the web, post video and text, and communicate with each other using voice, chat, and e-mail.

The success of the global data network rests on interoperability standards that were created by standards development organizations like the IETF, IEEE, ITU-T, and W3C.  In those organizations, expert technologists meet to create the standards that define how different products made by different vendors will work together.  Without standards, the Internet as we know it would not exist.

Cisco is proud that our employees have played leading roles in the creation of interoperability standards, just as they have invented many of the foundational technologies used in the global data network.  As a result of their efforts, Cisco has a portfolio of telecom and networking patents, including patents required to implement widely used interoperability standards, that is second to none.

While we have been at the forefront of networking technology, we recognize that our customers want technically excellent products and products that work well together.  For example, our unified communications customers often use Cisco products for voice and video, but products from our competitors for e-mail or instant messaging.  They are sometimes frustrated when products they purchase from different vendors don’t work well together, or when using products from one vendor forces them to implement proprietary voice or video protocols that do not enjoy broad industry support.   In unified communications, as in other areas, collaboratively developed standards are a common language that products made by different vendors can use to make their products work together, creating a better experience for customers.

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Tags: innovation, interoperability, Patents, standards

Pop quiz, hotshot: how many types of sends are there in MPI?

Most people will immediately think of MPI_SEND.  A few of you will remember the non-blocking variant, MPI_ISEND (where I = “immediate”).

But what about the rest — can you name them?

Here’s a hint: if I run “ls -1 *send*c | wc -l” in Open MPI’s MPI API source code directory, the result is 14.  MPI_SEND and MPI_ISEND are two of those 14.  Can you name the other 12?

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Tags: HPC, mpi

We are one year on from the announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron and Cisco CEO John Chambers of the Cisco-led British Innovation Gateway (BIG) programme.

Since then we’ve been busy setting the foundations for our five year commitment to supporting innovation and economic growth in the UK.  We now have this new website and BIG is beginning to come to fruition.

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Tags: British Innovation Gateway, economic development, National Virtual Incubator, UK

This week in No Jitter, Cisco Collaboration Senior Vice President and General Manager Barry O’Sullivan looked into his crystal ball and elaborated on his predictions for 2012.

In an excerpt, Barry predicts:

“1. Post PC-era will explode

2. Video will break through

3. Contact Centers will evolve as customers choose to interact with companies in radically new ways

4. Companies will use the cloud and desktop virtualization to provide collaboration capabilities across the enterprise

5. Social business processes will become mainstream for many.”

Read Barry’s predictions in more detail and the follow-up answers Barry gave to Eric Krapf’s questions. I trust you’ll enjoy reading the article.  Send in your predictions for 2012 for collaboration, video, social software, and contact center.

Tags: Android, Cisco Cius, Cius, cloud, Cloud Computing, collaboration, contact center, desktop virtualization, desktop virtualization infrastructure, hosted contact center, IBM, IBM Connections, iPad, iphone, jabber, lync, mac, Microsoft Lync, PC, Post-PC Era, quad, RIM, smartphone, Smartphones, social, Social Business, tablet, unified communications, video

If I had to summarize Cisco Live London in one word, I choose “educational”. In the four days I was at Cisco Live London, I had the opportunity to meet our local medianet experts, Patrick Charretour and Peter Matthews, learn about our broad core network portfolio, and listen to the challenges our customers face as they use video solutions in their organization.  Whether customers are deploying video surveillance, signage, or telepresence, each seemed to want help on where to start with their deployment and wondering if medianet would be the solution.

Conversations at the medianet station were engaging and all seem to start with the same question, “What is medianet?”.  Medianet is Cisco’s end-to-end video architecture, optimize for the pervasive deployment of video. So at Cisco Live, we demonstrated how Cisco’s medianet architecture makes it easier for you to plan, deploy and manage video in your organization.  Using Cisco TelePresence EX 90 systems, we demonstrated the performance monitoring and mediatrace capabilities in a Cisco medianet, allowing application and network managers to easily identify and troubleshoot issues that may occur during a telepresence call.  We also showed a new capability, but since we haven’t officially launched it, I can’t say much.  You’ll just have to go to Interop Las Vegas or Cisco Live San Diego to find out.

Peter showing a mediatrace of the TelePresence session

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Tags: capture, enterprise video, keynote, medianet, pulse, Share, transform, video