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Today on the Huffington Post, Tae Yoo, Cisco Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, writes about how technology is being used to help people who don’t have enough food to eat.

She writes: “In a world that currently produces enough food for the entire population, I continue to be astonished that every year 870 million people go hungry and 5 million children die from malnutrition. In today’s world of abundance, hunger is still the number 1 health risk, killing more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Although most of the world’s hungry are in developing countries, even here in the United States, one of the largest food producing countries, approximately 1 out of 6 people are “food insecure”; including 16.7 million children. Progress to reduce hunger is being made by tackling both the cause and the consequences of extreme poverty and famine.”

Read the full post on the Huffington Post.



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Manager

Cisco Corporate Affairs

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Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 which provides agencies greater flexibility in managing their workforce.  It provides a framework for agencies to better leverage technology and to maximize the use of flexible work arrangements which can aid in recruiting new Federal workers, retain valuable talent and allow the Federal agency workers to be more responsive to citizen needs and be more productive out in the field.  This can include situations such as national security, emergency response, cross agency collaboration, or simply, providing citizen services such as language translation.

 

Last year, more than 71,000 people pledged, saving $5,651,890 on commuting costs, gaining back 251,774 hours into their day, and removing 3 tons of pollutents from the air while refraining from driving 6, 413,006 miles.

Today, Cisco and Telework Exchange kicks off the third annual Telework Week 2013 – an annual global effort to encourage agencies, organizations and individuals to pledge to work anytime, anywhere from March 4-8, 2013.  According to Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), author of the Telework Enhancement Act, “Telework Week is an excellent opportunity for thousands of people to try teleworking and realize the great benefits it can provide. A robust Telework program can help organizations improve the quality of life of their employees, while taking strides to protect the environment, reduce traffic congestion on the roads, and increase workplace efficiency.” 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL6grRu22cs

 

Read more Continue reading “Join the Movement! Telework Week 2013”



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Recent Cisco news highlights two prominent service providers – Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica – who have chosen Cisco IP Next-Generation Network solutions.

Deutsche Telekom subsidiary Hrvatski Telekom – Croatia’s largest telecommunications company – is using Cisco solutions in its new TeraStream cloud-enabled IP architecture.

Key elements include all-IPv6 streamlined routing architecture; fully converged IP and optical layers with 100G coherent technology; integrated cloud service centers, enabling virtualized network services and applications for rapid service innovation; programmatic interfaces aligned with the software-defined networking architecture for real-time automation and OSS; and customer self-service management capabilities.

Cisco has delivered the following technologies in this landmark deployment:

Continue reading “Deutsche Telkom, Telefonica Move on IP NGNs From Cisco”



Authors

Carter Cromwell

Global Analyst Relations Manager

Corporate Communications

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Learn how Proserv gained a competitive advantage from outsourcing IT Services and watch how amazing things happen by connecting people, process, data and things.

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Proserv Property Services, a customer of Clark Integrated Technologies based in Aberdeen, Scotland, who recently implemented a Cisco Unified Communications solution designed for small business. From the moment that I arrived in town, I had a feeling that the trip was going to be an eye-opening experience. First of all, the weather condition was just a drastic change especially coming from California. Quickly, I had to adjust to the freezing temperature in Aberdeen and some light rain during the entire trip.

I  pre-arranged a meeting to visit ProServ early the next morning so I could learn more about their business and the reasons why they’ve become so  successful. I also wanted to know more about their day-to-day operations, their challenges and how they are using technology to serve their customer better. Walking into ProServ was like a breath of fresh air. I quickly understood where their true success lies… which I’ll come back to it as I wrap up this blog.

As planned, I was greeted by Morgan Cooper of Proserv and members of her team who were all eager to discuss their experience using Cisco technology. They shared how it helps them to be more productive such as- rerouting their calls directly to the technicians on the road– a process that used to take multiple steps to complete. Now, the calls are automatically sent to the technicians on the road informing them of their next customer visit. All of this was great for me to observe because being at the customer site offered me some perspective that is usually hard to grasp otherwise.

Next, I met with Austen Clark, Sales Director at Clark Integrated Technologies – a very successful IT solution provider who is a Cisco Select Partner. Austen and I started working together earlier in the year so it was nice to finally meet him in person. He quickly reinforced the benefits Proserv is gaining as a result of the new IT network. Additionally he explained how Cisco OnPlus allows him to monitor the devices on the network proactively and alerts the client of any issues before they affect the business. Again, a plus for me to aborb this in the real customer environment! Obviously, Austen is a great business partner of Cisco.

As if this wasn’t enough, Morgan arranged for me to visit one of their clients, David Lloyd Gym & Tennis Club. What an amazing club! Top notch facilities, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, studio, gym, state of the art cafeteria and best of all, Ross, the Managing Director, extended us such a warm welcome. He shared that when businesses like ProServ and Lloyd, that are focused on serving their customers, implement IT solutions that helps them provide an efficient and reliable service, it becomes a win-win situation for everyone.  

Now, I’ll come back with my conclusion on what I think makes Proserv stand out from their competition. Of course, choosing the right IT solution provider who can give them  the best advice on the technology they need to meet the business challenges- is always a plus.  But in my opinion, their true success lies in the quality of the service they provide, their  management, having a proactive mindset and most importantly the people who work at Proserv–they truly are all super stars!

Check it out for yourself. Watch and enjoy the video! And don’t forget to share it with others too!

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Authors

Gaby Pinto

Integrated Campaigns & Strategy

Marcom COE

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Randy Pond is Cisco Executive Vice President of Operations, Processes, and Systems

Today is the United Nations’ Human Rights Day and it was not so long ago that we witnessed the role of the social media revolution in the Arab Spring. This example of Internet-enabled communication in driving change illustrates the evolving impact of technology on human rights, and casts light on both the opportunities and the challenges the industry will face — the world celebrated the flow of information that facilitated change, while at the same time showing concern over efforts of governments to use the very same infrastructure to try to shut down and control communications. Over the past 20 years, we have transformed from a world communicating through paper and face-to-face interaction into communities that can share information within seconds — and innovation continues at a dramatic rate.

At Cisco, we embrace innovation, and the opportunity to expand use of the Internet as a positive force for human development. We do this primarily by working to build each of our products on open, global standards — standards that we believe are critical to overcoming censorship and keeping the world connected — and by developing architectures for using our products aimed at particular needs, such as healthcare, education, and energy efficiency.

We are also committed to not customizing our products in any way that aids repression or censorship. To provide a consolidated view of our approach to these issues, we have included a new human rights policy and roadmap in this year’s eighth annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report. With the help of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and in conformance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council, the roadmap was developed to concentrate on our human rights policy, and also establish a governance model, provide training, and create an effective mechanism to review our actions on an ongoing basis.

In addition to the new policy and roadmap, Cisco’s commitment to human rights includes several additional initiatives and partnerships, such as a successful engagement with the Business and Human Rights Resource Center; our continued work with the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (which we helped to found) to promote a common code of conduct among electronic manufacturers, software firms, IT firms, and manufacturing services providers; and engagement with NGOs concerned with human rights.

As we approach 2013, it will be important to continue addressing the impact of technology on human rights. Challenges to global freedom of expression through the Internet will continue, and will become more complex as innovation advances. Our long-term view and ongoing implementation of Cisco’s human rights roadmap will guide Cisco’s human rights efforts going forward and will help drive a safe Internet well into the future.



Authors

Randy Pond

Executive Vice President, Operations, Processes, and Systems

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We’re featured on the latest episode of No Strings Attached Show!

Don’t miss our own product managers Jagdish Girimaj and Mark Denny take a deep dive with NSA Show hosts Blake Krone and Samuel Clements into the technology behind enhancing wireless with the Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE) and Wireless Security & Spectrum Intelligence (WSSI) AP3600 module.

Listen into the podcast here!



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Since we started shipping the Nexus 3548 with AlgoBoost to our customers in the beginning of November, there has been more and more interest in testing and verifying the switch’s latency in different traffic scenarios. What we have found so far is while network engineers might be well experienced in testing the throughput capabilities of a switch, verifying the latency can be challenging, especially when latency is measured in the tens and low hundreds of nanoseconds!
I discussed this topic briefly when doing a hands-on demo for TechWise TV a short time ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN6cohlZqvE&feature=youtu.be

The goal of this post is to give an overview of the most common latency tests, how the Nexus 3548 performs in those tests, and to detail some subtleties of low latency testing for multicast traffic. This post will also address some confusion we’ve heard some vendors try to emphasize with the two source multicast tests.

Unicast Traffic

The most common test case is to verify throughput and latency when sending unicast traffic. RFC 2544 provides a standard for this test case. The most stressful version of the RFC 2544 test uses 64-byte packets in a full mesh, at 100 percent line rate. Full mesh means that all ports send traffic at the configured rate to all other ports in a full mesh pattern.

Figure 1 – Full Mesh traffic pattern

The following graph shows the Nexus 3548 latency results for Layer 3 RFC 2544 full mesh unicast test, with the Nexus 3548 operating in warp mode.

Figure 2 – Layer 3 RFC 2544 full mesh unicast test

We can see that the Nexus 3548 consistently forwards packets of all sizes under 200 nanoseconds at 50% load, and less than 240 nanoseconds at 100% load.

Continue reading “Benchmarking at Ultra-Low Latency”



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Turn on the TV. Open a newspaper. Jump on the Internet. Today Cisco is launching its new brand—and it’s happening around the world. Look for us in print ads, commercials, and online banners.

But don’t just look. Get involved.

This is the biggest brand update Cisco has experienced in a very long time. And it’s all designed to help elevate the conversation with our customers to the “Internet of Everything.” This is a huge transition occurring in the market now, where we bring together people, process, data, and things to make connectivity more relevant and valuable than ever before.

How can you get involved?  Starting now, leverage the power of the new campaign as you talk with customers.

You can begin by sharing that today more than 99 percent of things in the physical world are unconnected. But that’s about to change. Amazing things will happen and amazing experiences will be created because of the Internet of Everything.

But what’s our role? What’s your role? That’s easy. Only Cisco, along with its partners, can connect the unconnected with an open standard, integrated architecture from the cloud to end devices. In fact, the network plays a critical role in the Internet of Everything. It must provide an intelligent, manageable, secure infrastructure that can scale to support billions—that’s right, billions—of context-aware devices.

Our overall Cisco Brand message is: Continue reading “Extra! Extra! New Cisco Brand Launches Today—Get the Details Here”



Authors

Julie Hart

Senior Writer and Strategist

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Today’s guest blog entry comes from Daniel Holmes, an Applications Developers at the EPCC

I met Jeff at EuroMPI in September, and he has invited me to write a few words on my experience of developing an MPI library.

My PhD involved building a message passing library using C#; not accessing an existing MPI library from C# code but creating a brand new MPI library written entirely in pure C#. The result is McMPI (Managed-code MPI), which is compliant with MPI-1 – as far as it can be given that there are no language bindings for C# in the MPI Standard. It also has reasonably good performance in micro-benchmarks for latency and bandwidth both in shared-memory and distributed-memory.

Continue reading “McMPI”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software