This blog was co-authored by Dave Evans and Joseph Bradley, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).
To receive the most value from the Internet of Everything (IoE), business leaders should begin transforming their organizations based on key learnings from use cases that show how IoE works in the real world. Cisco IBSG’s Economics practice recently developed 50 private-sector use cases to determine the Value at Stake in the new IoE Economy. It determined that $14.4 trillion of value (net profit) will be created or will migrate among companies and industries based on their ability to harness IoE.
This blog will provide both near-term and more futuristic examples of IoE in healthcare and marketing/advertising to help you better understand the possibilities of IoE in different time frames. We provide both a futuristic view (Dave) and a near-term perspective (Joseph). Read More »
Recently, there’s been a significant amount of media attention on different company policies around teleworking and flexible working practices. This has sparked a lively debate across the internet; opinions have been cast for and against this transformation in culture. So, will this action have any repercussions on employee motivation and productivity?
The availability of remote and flexible working options can potentially improve employee morale, and worker productivity. A recent poll conducted by Staples Advantage (March 2013) found that 93% of US employees believed that working away from the office was beneficial for staff and managers. The research also showed the 75% of business decision makers noticed that employees were happier when they were allowed to work remotely and 53% said they were more productive. Read More »
Almost everyone has heard of the “cloud,” as a result of advertising by computer companies and frequent mentions in the news media. “Cloud” refers to technology resources used by an organization that are not at their own location, but available over the global data communications network (otherwise called the Internet). Moreover, the cloud is not just a question of getting access to some big data center in the sky; ultimately, it means gaining authorized access to any data or computing resource that is part of the Internet, and even combining data and software components from physically distant computers.
Public officials may have heard about how the cloud is being used in the public sector. For example, the United States Conference of Mayors had a session on this at its 2011 meeting where various mayors spoke about how their cities were using such services as shared email “in the cloud.” At the National Association of Counties, there have been sessions describing a cloud that is restricted to trusted government agencies at the state and local levels — what some call the “private cloud” because its services are not available to every organization, thus helping preserve the privacy and integrity of government data.
But the reasons state and local government officials might want to use the cloud are not often explained. This post will describe the various ways that the cloud can provide strategic value to state and local governments.
Cost Savings
Most people have first heard of the cloud as a means of saving money, which is especially attractive at a time of tighter budgets. So instead of buying hardware and software, a government agency rents what it needs, when it needs it. This approach means you can shift from using bonds and debt service to an approach that matches your IT budget with the real demand each year.
And, often, the software services available in the cloud, such as email, can cost less per employee than licensing equivalent software in-house.
Last year, it was my first time attending Enterprise Connect. It was exciting to share with customers for the first time how the network played a significant role in ensuring a successful video deployment. This year, we had the opportunity to demonstrate how troubleshooting could be greatly simplified with Cisco Medianet Media Monitoring capabilities embedded into endpoints and the network using Cisco Prime Collaboration. We also demonstrated how Cisco Medianet capabilities allow customers to effectively do more with the current network. For example, Cisco Jabber running on a laptop conveys information to a set of network nodes. The network, in turn, routes the traffic based on the information provided by Cisco Jabber and in this case the policy is to route desktop traffic over the backup link which is normally idle. This way, customers can maximize all existing network resources and delay expensive bandwidth upgrades while protecting business critical traffic from desktop video. Customers responded positively to the demos.
There are a number of ways to deal with IPv4 exhaust and IPv6 transition, including Carrier Grade NAT and stateful Dual Stack Lite. Cisco has added another method called Mapping of Address and Port (MAP) based on two IETF drafts currently in the process of standardization in draft-ietf-softwire-map (MAP-E) and draft-ietf-softwire-map-t (MAP-T). The real advantage with MAP is that it’s stateless and doesn’t require additional hardware as traffic grows. In fact, the MAP implementation on the Cisco ASR 1000 or ASR 9000 is just a software feature that can be enabled as needed. Read More »
This blog was co-authored by Dave Evans and Joseph Bradley, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG).
