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AM71308At the beginning of 2012, we saw three major trends emerging in the education space, but we had no idea that they would all be converging: Flipped Learning, BYOD, and Shared Collaborative Platforms.

This time last year, I was sitting at an old, high-top biology lab table with my son’s AP Biology teacher, asking him to explain this whole “Flipped Classroom” thing and why his classes’ AP bio scores were so high.  Lo and behold, Flipped Learning became the mantra of the year.

Sal Khan and the Khan Academy became the best-known content-feeder into this phenomenon, and I started voraciously consuming his videos on pre-calculus, statistics, and world history.   So did teachers and students as they turned to Khan as a source of pre-packaged lectures, new flipped learning models, and emerging information on different assessment measurements.  Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann even wrote a book about it, The Short History of Flipped Learning, and they joined us as guest speakers at the 2012 ISTE show.

Continue reading “Cisco’s 2012 Education Retrospective”



Authors

Renee Patton

Former Global Director of Education and Healthcare

Global Industry Solutions Group

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At Cisco, we rely on more than 600 suppliers worldwide to manufacture, test, ship, and recycle the products we design. And, we expect these suppliers to meet the same high standards on ethics, labor rights, health and safety, and the environment that we apply to our people and operations.

So how do we manage that task over such a large network of suppliers?

One of our most powerful tools is our supplier scorecard. In the last fiscal year, we added sustainability criteria to the scorecard for the first time, and we are encouraging our suppliers to report their performance publicly in a Corporate Social Responsibility Report report and to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions through the Carbon Disclosure Project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW_oWGejPXo

Continue reading “Scoring Suppliers on Sustainability”



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Manager

Cisco Corporate Affairs

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I have just come back from the Gartner Data Center conferences in London and Las Vegas where I got to witness the increasing relevance of Cisco in the data center. The critical role of the network to enable the world of many clouds has becomes evident, and Cisco continues to establish itself as an innovator in the server market.  Our vision and solutions really grabbed the attention of the analysts and customers at a level that I certainly didn’t see last year.
Data center consolidation, server virtualization, and converged infrastructure continue to be chief concerns among decision makers.  Emerging topics such as fabric –based infrastructure, hybrid cloud, and network programmability were definitely the focus of numerous presentations and endless conversations.

Cisco continues to innovate on all these fronts, and we had a lot of progress to present to the audiences in London and Vegas.

Three Insightful Conversations 

I’d like to share with you three conversations I had at the Gartner DC Conference in Las Vegas. Two are with the sales and engineering leaders for Cisco Data Center, Frank Palumbo (@fpalumbo) and David Yen, and the third is with one of our partners, Siki Giunta from CSC, who participated on a panel on Cloud that I moderated.

Frank Palumbo on convergence, virtualization, network programmability, and SDN

In the first conversation, Frank Palumbo, VP Global Sales, reports some of the major concerns of the IT organization.  Our conversation covers:

  • The new role of the “cylinders of excellence” — servers, network, storage and security teams — when the goal is to implement a convergence infrastructure;
  • The benefits of deploying unified computing in environments where virtualization coexists with “bare-metal” workloads; and
  • Network programmability and SDN.

David Yen on the evolving data center

My second conversation was with David Yen, Cisco SVP & GM, Data Center Group, who gave a great presentation to more than 600 attendees called “The Evolving Data Center:  Past, Present, and Future.”

David — who brings in-depth knowledge of IT technologies from his years working with Sun Microsystems, Juniper, and Cisco – provides new perspective on the evolution of the data center.
In his presentation David explains how the convergence infrastructure, on the one hand, and network programmability, on the other hand, reshapes the data center landscape to make the world of many clouds possible.


Authors

Giuliano Di Vitantonio

Vice President

Data Center and Cloud Marketing

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With global IP traffic projected to increase threefold over the next five years – after having increased eightfold over the past five years – policy control and services creation at large scale has never been more vital for mobile and fixed communications service providers.

Cisco plans to add a critical piece of service creation technology to its portfolio today by announcing its intent to acquire Denver, Colorado-based BroadHop, a provider of nextgeneration policy control and service management technology for carrier networks worldwide. BroadHop’s widely deployed policy control solutions for mobile and fixed networks will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Mobility Group to provide service providers the flexibility to control, monetize and personalize the types of service they choose, on any network.

How does this benefit customers and end-users directly? A service provider can integrate BroadHop technology to enable end-users to purchase customized premium service packages. For example, if a consumer desires premium on-demand streaming, BroadHop technology allows the service provider to add value to and monetize this particular service. In return, the user is granted a high level of service and premium bandwidth to ensure the best possible experience.

Cisco’s acquisition of BroadHop is also an evolutionary step in supporting Cisco’s Open Network Environment (ONE) for extensible network programmability. This policy infrastructure represents the baseline to monetization of the network and will enable Cisco to develop software services that empower network operators to deliver revenue-generating services, while enhancing the end-user experience.

BroadHop has been a key service provider Wi-Fi partner for Cisco, and this acquisition is a natural extension of our collaboration as we continue to engage tier-one global service providers with our combined technologies. This acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to service providers by enabling policy control and service management across mobile, fixed and wireless broadband networks and adds value by driving the mobility network architecture to the next level.

Acquisitions and investments are a key part of Cisco’s build, buy and partner innovation framework and supports one of Cisco’s five foundational priorities to lead the market in networking across all customer segments. The BroadHop acquisition is well-aligned to Cisco’s goals of developing and delivering innovative network and software technologies, while also cultivating top talent. The BroadHop team will be integrated into Cisco’s Service Provider Networking Group, reporting to Shailesh Shukla, vice president and general manager of the company’s Software and Applications Group.

The BroadHop acquisition reinforces Cisco’s commitment to developing services that enable our service provider partners to succeed across mobile, fixed and converged networks, while allowing us to continue to lead and define important transitions in networking.

 



Authors

Hilton Romanski

No Longer with Cisco

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Only a short time ago, consumers had limited choices for accessing professional video content.

Today, a smorgasbord of options continues to multiply—from premium cable and DVDs, to online choices such as Apple, Netflix, and Hulu. Hardware options are equally dizzying, as traditional TV gives way to PCs, smartphones, and tablets. As portable devices meet the cloud, more consumers expect to view their favorite content anywhere, anytime.

The London Olympics this year were a case in point. NBC statistics reveal that more than 57 million U.S. viewers streamed Olympic events online. And over 7 million unique visitors per day accessed the BBC’s online Olympic sites, with nearly half of them watching on mobile devices.

Clearly, media consumption has evolved. Given the complexity of choices, it is essential for all players in the video value chain to understand what consumers need and want. To gain greater insight, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) studied the trends and behaviors of 1,152 video consumers in the United States in 2012.

Chief among our findings? Streaming is going mainstream—and if the quality, variety, and delivery of streaming video are held to a high standard, consumers will be willing to pay
for it.

Streaming Is Going Mainstream

Seventy percent of U.S. broadband users are watching professionally produced Internet video every week, with an average viewing time of more than 100 minutes per week. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, viewership rises to 94 percent. Overall, streaming video is ahead of downloading and about even with DVDs and Blu-ray Discs (see Figure 1). Continue reading “Streaming Is Going Mainstream: The Upward Arc of Online Video, Driven By Consumers”



Authors

Chris Osika

Senior Director, Global Lead

Service Provider Practice Internet Business Solutions Group

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OK, we all see a lot of college-ranking lists – everything from top technical schools to top party schools – but most recently with the explosion of technology in higher education a new list has debuted, named the Most Connected Colleges. The listing, launched by U.S News & World Reports, is the first-ever ranking to honor schools that have successfully applied technology to improve the connections between students and educators.

We were excited to see  Maine’s Bowdoin College rated right at the top of the list! Among many tech initiatives,  Bowdoin College engaged Cisco to help extend a reliable and secure wireless network throughout its campus with indoor and outdoor access.

For more on how Bowdoin was able to achieve this status, check out our very own Vivian Chan’s post on our mobility blog “Bowdoin College Takes Crown for Connected College Champion“.

Now that we’re fast approaching 2013 – will Bowdoin maintain that top position? What is your prediction for #1?



Authors

Kerry Best

Marketing Manager

Public Sector Marketing

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Having recently wrapped up the 5th Annual Cisco SecCon Conference, I’d like to take this opportunity to share with you what Cisco SecCon is and the benefits to our products and you, our customers. With that, let’s start with a brief overview!

What is Cisco SecCon?

SecCon is a security conference for Cisco engineers that focuses on two critical elements for a healthy corporate Security intelligence: 1) expansion of knowledge for all and 2) building a sense of community. We allocate two days for intensive hands-on security training, and then we provide two general session days to discuss a variety of security topics including:

  • Cisco Secure Development Lifecycle
  • Best practices for security test suites
  • Cutting-edge cryptography
  • Implementation challenges
  • Current threat landscape
  • Vulnerability trends

Continue reading “Cisco Wraps Up 5th Annual SecCon Conference”



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AM86551Telework has become more prevalent within government agencies, and the latest intelligence from the Office of Personnel Management says employees are pleased! From the environment to the budget, the benefits are far-reaching. But perhaps the most important advantage is to the employees themselves.

Teleworkers say they are more engaged and satisfied than their onsite counterparts, according to the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. Other reported benefits included a reduced number of sick days, increased employee motivation and greater workforce flexibility. As a teleworker myself, I can attest to these benefits.

All things considered, it’s no surprise  adopting collaborative tools in support of a mobile workforce is becoming a top priority for government agencies. These survey results demonstrate just how fast telework opportunities are growing:

  • In 2012, one out of three government employees were eligible for teleworking, up from one in four in 2012
  • Almost a quarter of the government workforce engaged in a form of teleworking over the past year
  • The General Services Administration and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation have the highest rate of teleworkers with more than 80 percent of their employees working remotely

Continue reading “Mission Accomplished: Federal Teleworkers Report Higher Satisfaction”



Authors

Kerry Best

Marketing Manager

Public Sector Marketing