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NaturalSelection
Recent results clearly reinforce the growing understanding that Cisco has unleashed a more highly evolved and effective solution into the computing ecosystem.   While the principles outlined by Charles Darwin in Origin of the Species can stir controversy, I find them to be an accurate model for technology evolution and quite useful for describing how we’ve arrived at this latest watershed in the x86 server market.

Our first observation would be the extremely rapid rate of customer adoption  for Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS).  Darwin would tell us that there must be significant advantage in “fitness to purpose” inherent to UCS that have driven this velocity.  This is certainly true.  Looking back at where we’ve been and how we’re positioned to go forward, here are key factors I see at play that create these advantages for UCS adopters:

  1. Primitive incumbents in the server industry attempted converged infrastructure by choosing to combine compute and storage first. Cisco chose to converge compute and fabric first.  This is a critical threshold event because it turns out that most optimizations for virtualization and cloud are fabric-oriented.   With our Virtual Interface Cards  we made server NICs and HBAs part of the fabric, not part of the server, a significant mutation in computing design.   Further, Cisco abstracted every single identity and configuration element for servers, network access and storage into a programmable software model – inventing fabric computing with stateless servers.  Simple. Flexible. Resilient. Advantage: UCS
    Continue reading “Natural Selection On Full Display in the Server World”


Authors

Paul Perez

Senior Vice President, General Manager

Chief Technology Officer, Data Center Group

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Yesterday the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) launched their new certification program for 802.11ac Wi-Fi  to ensure that the devices have been tested to interoperate with other 802.11ac products and older Wi-Fi products. As a part of the launch, the WFA also announced a list of the first published 11ac certified products, which included the Cisco Aironet 3600 Series Access Point and the Cisco Aironet Access Point Module for 802.11ac.

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wificertThis makes us not only the first shipping Enterprise-class 802.11ac solution, but also the  first commercial 11ac access point with a published certification!

Why is this important? For those of you unfamiliar with the WFA, certification is important for ensuring interoperability with future 802.11ac enabled products. With the expected rapid adoption of 802.11ac clients in the form of laptops, tablets and smartphones, interoperability of all these devices can be ensured through WFA certification. Continue reading “Cisco First Publicly Announced Commercial Enterprise-class AP to Attain Wi-Fi Alliance 802.11ac Certification”



Authors

Mark Denny

Senior PLM

Mobility

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Service providers (SPs) have been wracked by wave after wave of disruption, creating new winners and losers on every front. Traditional carriers continue to look for ways to make up for lost voice revenues; over-the-top (OTT) players have redefined the ways video is delivered and consumed; exponential growth in mobile data traffic devours network capacity without creating comparable revenue; and new cloud services are transforming IT consumption and challenging old operating models. The industry is changing with whiplash speed—leaving service providers scrambling to get ahead of the next wave.

For years, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group has engaged with global and regional service providers to help them navigate and seize the opportunities afforded by industry disruptions. Now, as part of Cisco Consulting Services (CCS), we have identified key industry areas where SPs have transformative opportunities for new services, operations, and business models.

Five Areas of Opportunity for SP Growth and Transformation

Based on Cisco’s own market sensing of trends, tracking of customer behaviors and industry inflection points, and strategy engagements with leading SPs around the world, Cisco Consulting Services has developed unique expertise to help SPs address their challenges and capitalize on opportunities. We are specifically focused on transformative engagements with SPs in five key areas—helping them identify and address the strategic questions they need to answer to be successful: Continue reading “How Are You Weathering Industry Storms? Five Ways To Help SPs Turn Disruption into Transformation”



Authors

Chris Osika

Senior Director, Global Lead

Service Provider Practice Internet Business Solutions Group

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This blog was initially published on the Huffington Post

This week, my boss, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers, is being recognized at the U.S. STEM Solutions Summit as one of the 100 CEO Leaders in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math).

This is a great recognition for Cisco’s efforts in developing talent for the technology field. On the other hand, the list of Fortune 100 CEO’s is disappointing because of what’s missing – women. Only 18 of the 100 leaders listed are women.

In the United States and around the world, there are far more technology-oriented jobs than candidates to fill them. According to the National Math + Science Initiative (NMSI), jobs in U.S are projected to grow 45 percent between 2008 -2018 in computer systems design and related services, a math intensive field.

Further, a new study from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program says 20 percent of all jobs in the United States require a “high level of knowledge” in at least one STEM field. Half of these jobs don’t even require bachelor’s degree, yet they pay $53,000 on average—10 percent higher than jobs with similar educational requirements.

Clearly, the computer technology represents a good career choice with strong possibilities for employment and professional growth. Yet it appears that this message isn’t reaching a broader audience of women.

Continue reading “Women Have the Skills to Stand Out in STEM Fields”



Authors

Padmasree Warrior

Chief Technology & Strategy Officer

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Big data and cloud are drastically changing today’s IT landscape. The proliferation of traditional and new data sources plus the movement of data to the cloud complicate a company’s ability to access all of its data assets. This creates an important need to complement traditional data warehousing by providing a real-time, consolidated logical view of data, better known as data virtualization.

Today, Cisco is announcing its intent to acquire Composite Software, a market leader in data virtualization software and services. Composite’s technology connects and optimizes many types of data from across the network and makes it appear as if it’s in one place, allowing companies to make better business decisions. Together, Cisco and Composite will help to accelerate the shift from physical data integration to data virtualization.

For example, the NYSE Euronext produces billions of data per day through quotes, trades, orders, receipts. This data is housed in multiple locations. Composite provided a solution with its data virtualization platform, which functions as a virtual data warehouse to provide access to trades, orders, quotes and other data for analysis, compliance and reporting across 14 exchanges. With data virtualization’s flexible data delivery infrastructure, the organization increased business responsiveness, improved the breadth of analytic insight and lowered its costs.

Consistent with our model for Next Generation IT, Composite will expand Cisco’s portfolio of Smart Services and extend our next-generation services platform with software and hardware solutions. By connecting network knowledge (APIs) and programmability with Cisco’s industry leading Unified Computing System, and adding Composite’s software and query optimization expertise, Cisco will be well positioned to provide highly differentiated capabilities to our customers.

In addition, this acquisition reinforces our commitment to support partner consumption models and assist our partners in broadening their services portfolios.

This acquisition builds on Cisco’s framework for a unified platform and our software services strategy with the recent acquisition of SolveDirect. Composite’s data virtualization solution, combined with SolveDirect’s process integration platform, will provide cross-domain data and workflow integration capabilities to enable real-time business insights and operations.

 



Authors

Hilton Romanski

No Longer with Cisco

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CiscoCitrixWith Cisco Live! in Orlando on the horizon, we are kicking off the news cycles and technology innovation a little early.  Today we’re teaming with our friends at Citrix to announce the expansion of our virtual networking portfolio and provide clarity around our strategy for application delivery controller solutions.

There are two key elements of this strategy:

First, Cisco will begin reselling and supporting a customized version of the popular Citrix NetScaler virtual application delivery controller (ADC) as part of our Cloud Network Services portfolio. Branded Citrix NetScaler 1000V, the Cisco version of the product will be fully supported by the Cisco Technical Assistance Center.  We will begin selling the NetScaler 1000V when available in Q3 CY 2013.

Secondly, Cisco and Citrix have worked on joint development to tightly couple the NetScaler ADC into Cisco’s virtual networking framework.  This joint development includes integration of NetScaler 1000V with the Cisco Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform, and the Nexus 1000V services integration technology, vPath.

Cisco’s Cloud Network Services strategy bridges IT to application architects, and with this Citrix NetScaler 1000V announcement, we integrate virtual applications to Cisco Unified Fabric, delivering scalable, reliable application services to users.

Why is NetScaler 1000V the right solution now?

Advances in cloud computing, data center consolidation, mobility and big data are imposing new demands on the network, along with a drive for greater network simplification and automation.

As virtual networking and programmable overlay networks evolve to meet these challenges, an equal evolution needs to take place in Layer 4-7 application networking services and security to support widespread virtualization, application mobility, cloud architectures and network orchestration.

Cisco’s solution to this challenge is Cloud Network Services, a portfolio of integrated, application-aware network services and security offerings designed for virtual and cloud environments. The Cloud Network Services framework eliminates the obstacles of physical service appliances to accommodate the requirements of virtual applications and cloud deployments, such as:

  • Limited scalability of physical services in fixed locations
  • Inconsistent application performance based on workload location relative to services
  • Difficulty in inserting security and network services into virtual networks
  • Lack of control over services and policies for applications deployed at cloud service providers

NetScaler1000V

The NetScaler 1000V virtual ADC

NetScaler 1000V fills an important void in Cisco’s virtual product architecture for an application delivery controller solution to give applications critical performance enhancements, offload application servers, and to help guarantee quality of service and improve end user experience. These requirements are growing exponentially with the increases in bring-your-own-device (BYOD), client mobility, and cloud migration.

Virtual services can be more flexibly deployed to cloud service providers without modification, while relying on the same infrastructure and policies that they might have with corresponding physical appliances in their on-premises data centers. With NetScaler 1000V, customers can have consistency across their physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures, along with the Citrix NetScaler physical appliances.

The Cisco Cloud Services Platform

With the evolution to Cloud Network Services as the Layer 4-7 framework for virtual and cloud networks, organizations are increasingly looking for a flexible platform to deploy these virtual service nodes rather than use existing application servers. Cisco has created the Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform to address this need.

The Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform is a series of UCS-based appliances dedicated to running Cloud Network Service nodes. In addition to the virtual services listed above, the Nexus 1100 runs the management platforms for the virtual network, the Virtual Security Module (VSM), and the Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) application. The Cloud Services Platform can be dynamically configured to allocate its virtual CPUs to each service as needed based on current application and performance requirements. Current models of the Nexus 1100 series include the Nexus 1110-S and 1110-X.

vPath: The Secret Sauce to Enabling Services in Virtual and Cloud Networks

vPath is a component of the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch which directs traffic to appropriate virtual service nodes, such as firewalls or ADCs, in the right order for each application, independent of the topology of the network or the location of the network services. This allows for greater application mobility and more reliable service delivery. NetScaler 1000V will be integrated into the Cloud Network Services framework via vPath and will be a key differentiator against other ADC products.

As part of the Cisco-Citrix collaboration in next generation data center and cloud architectures, the Citrix NetScaler MPX line of high performing application delivery controllers will also attach to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switches.  This capability will provide customers the benefits of higher resiliency, plug and play installation, improved agility, and increased leverage of both their switching and ADC investments.

All of the Cisco Cloud Network Services, including the Citrix NetScaler 1000V, will be on display next week at Cisco Live! Along with other announcements we have planned for data center and cloud networking, it promises to be a great event and we hope to see you there.

For more information, check also the press release here 



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June is summer weather in the San Francisco Bay Area, but quite different from the June I was used to in Boston. A common misconception around Mark Twain and his relationship with San Francisco summer is that he never said “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” But he did say: “Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d all have frozen to death.”

June is always exciting here and in Europe. NBA playoffs are on and the Giro d’Italia just ended with the Italian Vincenzo Nibali winning it emphatically. The San Antonio Spurs have been so good but King James brought the Heat back from a certain death in Game 6. Game 7 decides it all!

Equally exciting is the buzz in networking circles, especially in the Bay Area, around Software Defined Networking (SDN) and how it is potentially commoditizing networking infrastructure. However, just as we cleared up that misconception about Mark Twain, I’d like to clear up some points around WAN challenges with cloud migration and how SDN might be applied to overcome these challenges.

In this blog post I will discuss the challenges in the Enterprise WAN and relevancy of SDN in overcoming these challenges.  In part 2, I’ll cover how the Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture addresses these WAN challenges. Continue reading “Let’s Clear Up Some Misconceptions – Is SDN Relevant to the Enterprise WAN?”



Authors

Satish Katpally

Senior Marketing Manager

Application Centric Infrastructure, SDN, ONE Software Suites

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I’m here at the 2013 SITA Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels with hundreds of the industry’s decision makers gathered to hear CEO’s and CIO’s address the community. In partnership with SITA, Cisco displayed the next generation of passenger monitoring and flow management solutions using Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Solution and SITA’s industry specific customizations at the summit.

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The main themes emerging in the sessions from the experts sharing their insights for the future of the industry are the ‘mobile explosion’, the demands of next generation passengers and, of course, the challenges of business intelligence & Big Data.

After talking with many people about their visions and concerns for the future of the industry, it’s clear to me how CMX can help airport organizations stay aligned with these trends and overcome the industry challenges in order to be more efficient, profitable and competitive.
Continue reading “LIVE from the 2013 SITA Air Transport IT Summit – Industry Insights & Connected Mobile Experiences”



Authors

Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences

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I hope everyone is getting excited to take the Journey to the Sunshine State and have packed a few sets of mouse ears. A quick blog post this week as I have already run out of puns. I’d like to encourage you all to check out our Application Visibility and Control (AVC) partners at Cisco Live Orlando! There are three that I’d love to highlight.

InfoVista will be showing off their Application Visibility Solution in the Cisco Partner Pavilion and theater, ActionPacked! Networks has a very special announcement about LiveAction and can be found in booth 201, and Plixer’s Netflow Knights will highlight their full range of netflow support in booth 747 and our Partner Pavilion – and even has a rap video, or so I’ve been told. I can’t wait to see in person what our customers think about our partners’ technologies. Also, come take a look at what Cisco has hidden beneath our huge plastic ears Continue reading “AVC You in Orlando: There’s nothing Mickey Mouse about AVC!”