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In a previous post, we looked at examples of new business opportunities enabled by the Internet of Everything and the importance of evaluating Data in Motion in new ways.

Naturally, the Internet of Everything brings its share of IT challenges. Data collection starts at the network edge, including a multitude of endpoint devices and sensors in everyday objects that automatically collect, analyze and transmit data—including video—on a massive scale.

For the most part, it is data that has previously gone untapped—a giant superset of the persistent data that is the subject of Big Data today. The velocity and volume of this data make it difficult to bring it together into one place and extract value from it in a timely fashion. A key IT challenge is deciding what data to store (which can be costly) and what data to ignore (which can be a lost opportunity). 

For example, high-definition video surveillance cameras combined with data analysis offer retailers insight into everything from facial recognition to age, gender and socioeconomic indicators. Retailers can also use video intelligence to create augmented reality mirrors or spot customers in need and send associates to assist them. However, not all the data from these devices needs to be stored or even analyzed, but rather used in the moment to create interactive engagements with the customers.

To address these challenges, intelligence and automated data processing must be embedded in the network. This intelligence takes the guesswork out of selecting the correct data from the torrent, because the network can filter based on relevance. At the same time, it can prioritize what data to retain and what data to discard based on value policies. This requires a flexible infrastructure where compute, storage, network and security resources can be assigned on the fly where and when needed. In most cases with Data in Motion, the application moves to where the data is, not the other way round.

Another key challenge is security, which remains paramount all the way from the edge to the cloud and back. The rapid deployment of Internet of Things and M2M technologies is leading to a proliferation of devices whose variety, data, complexity and vulnerability go beyond the traditional IT landscape. Along with the tremendous value that can be extracted from Data in Motion come new risks that require network-centric security approaches.

The Internet of Everything brings together people, process, data and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before, thus providing unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals and countries. We are still in the early stages of evolution for Data in Motion and the impact it will have on all of us. But it is clear that the more knowledge we have, based on meaningful information pulled from a variety of data sources, the more wisdom we can gain and apply. It will profoundly change the world.



Authors

Jim Grubb

Chief Technology Evangelist

Cisco Customer Experience Center

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Colleges and universities continually innovate to address the changing demands on them – increased demand by millenials for virtual offerings, pressure to keep costs down, and the changing needs of the community for a skilled workforce. These demands combined with ongoing resource constraints – limited budgets, classroom space and faculty resources – consistently drive the need for new delivery methods. We have seen many universities expand offerings and reach with distance learning, online learning and most recently MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). The most successful programs have proven to be hybrid offerings, where students receive face-to-face instruction or guidance in addition to their independent study.

How One University is Changing the Rules Continue reading “Breaking Down Barriers to Learning with Video – Featured Sessions at ISTE 2013”



Authors

Kerry Best

Marketing Manager

Public Sector Marketing

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Hot on the heels of a hopping Citrix Synergy two weeks ago, Citrix just broadcast on June 11, a fascinating discussion between senior Citrix, NetApp and Cisco executives on the incremental benefits IT departments are recognizing by hosting their XenDesktop deployments on FlexPod.

The panelists on this webcast are Bob Schulz, Citrix VP/GM of Desktop Virtualization, Jim McHugh, VP of Marketing for Cisco Unified Computing and NetApp’s VP for Solutions, Patrick Rogers. They reflected on why FlexPod is such a popular platform for Citrix desktop and application virtualization deployments and on the ongoing collaboration between the three companies aimed at delivering the most scalable, simplified and cost effective virtual desktop environments for our mutual customers.

View the webcast here:

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Continue reading “Title: Citrix XenDesktop 7 and FlexPod – a Perfect Pairing”



Authors

Ravi Balakrishnan

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Datacenter Solutions

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The Intelligent Community Forum just completed its annual summit, which celebrates the Top 7 most intelligent communities in the world.   These are the global leaders who have already made investments in broadband and in community building — and who are now looking to see how they can build on those advantages.

This year’s theme was innovation and employment, so I was asked to give the keynote presentation on the question of whether innovation destroys jobs and how sub-national governments should respond.

This is a summary.  The video of the presentation will be available in a couple of weeks.  [Note: there was a foreshadowing of this presentation in my earlier blog post “Are Jobs Disappearing?“]

InnovatorsJob

Continue reading “Intelligent Communities Global Blog Series, Does Innovation Destroy Jobs?”



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On June 6, 2013, malwaretracker.com released an analysis of Microsoft Office-based malware that was exploiting a previously unknown vulnerability that was patched by MS12-060. The samples provided were alleged to be targeting Tibetan and Chinese Pro-Democracy Activists. On June 7, 2013, Rapid7 released an analysis of malware dubbed ‘KeyBoy,’ also exploiting unknown vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office, similarly patched by MS12-060, but allegedly targeting interests in Vietnam and India. The indicators of compromise (IoCs) listed by Rapid7 match some of the indicators of compromise listed previously by malwaretracker.com.

Continue reading “Scope of ‘KeyBoy’ Targeted Malware Attacks”



Authors

Jaeson Schultz

Technical Leader

Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research

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Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions Video
Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions Video

I know I know.. You are already familiar with the fundamentals of Desktop Virtualization. So we are not going to talk about that.  However, if you do not know much about Cisco’s capabilities in the space and you have three minutes and twenty seconds of your busy day to spare, you can watch this short video and get the ‘Bonsai’ rendition.  While tempting, I will not dwell on the strengths of our UCS platform which is at the core of our Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions portfolio.

I will focus instead on a question that our services team often gets from our enterprise class customers; “How do I best manage my desktop virtualization environment on a day-to-day basis?”

Let’s face it. Designing and configuring production-ready Desktop Virtualization Infrastructures takes planning and expertise. Frequently, that expertise comes in the form of a Professional Services contract. But the challenges that many of our customers experience is expanding their platform after the implementation team has moved to other projects …

Continue reading “And now, finally, you can afford to let your VDI administrator go on vacation ….”



Authors

Enrico Fuiano

Senior Solutions Marketing Manager

Cisco Cloud Marketing Team

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End of April, Cisco introduced  the next generation Storage Network innovations with the new MDS 9710 Multilayer Director and new MDS 9250i Multiservice Switch (see Berna Devrim’s  blog ) . These solutions have been presented to the Storage Tech Field Day  (see blogs and videos below) , as well on the Cisco booth at different events  (ie EMC World) generating a lot of  comments  from bloggers and users. So I came back to the team of Cisco engineers  to know more  about these solutions – Today I interviewed Bhavin  Yadav one of these fine engineers about the MDS 9710 .BhavinYadav

“Hi Bhavin . I heard a lot of comments  about troubleshooting , and the claim that it’s easy . Really? How can I achieve that? 

Haha . Welcome to the world of Cisco MDS 9700 Series Multilayer Directors, the easy to troubleshoot Multilayer Director Class platform in the storage area networking world! Isn’t it wonderful ? Who does not want that ? But let me first  remind you some fundamental facts before we come to any conclusion.

What are some of the reasons we have to troubleshoot?

1. Unknown human part – like wrong part replacement, playing around for fun (Are you serious? Yes, you can just pull the lever and get pull the module out like a piece of cake),
2. Technology changes –sudden traffic pattern change like unexpected data spikes, infrastructure changes like adding bunch of new virtual machines – new servers, using SSD based storage, exponential increase in data backups every night , deployment of new data centers, need of speedier networks, etc.
3. Unexpected infrastructure acts: sudden power loss, lost air cooling, burned out cables, failing hard drives – switches – cables, etc.

So, the question comes out is – Okay, this is not something new, we deal with it everyday. Well, let me ask you this – while you work on above problems, does it impact your customers / clients? Does it impact (reduce) your available resources? Does it wake you up your staff at 2 am? But how about reducing these kinds of calls / engagements and also enhancing the customer experience? Yes, that’s what we are going to talk about.

Introducing Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director  Class SAN switch, along with Raising the bar for performance and new benchmarks on performance, reliability and flexibility, now also for troubleshooting.  Let’s see how it does this.

With MDS 9710, comes a newly refreshed hardware with new troubleshooting and monitoring tool: GOLD – Generic Online Diagnostics. In this post, I want to talk about both, new hardware and GOLD.

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Continue reading “Ease of Troubleshooting : Meet Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director”



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Life is generally a lot easier when you have all the facts.  Especially if those facts are actually accurate.  Nowhere does this ring more true than in the life of an IT professional.

Often times a day in an IT shop is a lot like that grade school game of telephone where information gets passed down the line but gets distorted (or is just plain wrong) because no single player has the complete context.  This scenario gets played out everyday in the IT infrastructure where siloed operations, monitoring and policy platforms only work from the information they possess.  But that information is generally just a snapshot viewed through the bias of that system’s siloed purview.  As a result, mistakes get made, security is substandard or perhaps even dysfunctional, and everything from configuration to event management and investigation takes far longer than it should.  Net-net – time is wasted, costs increase, and many things still don’t work that well.  Continue reading “Identity and Device Aware IT Platforms Make Life Easier”



Authors

Scott Pope

Director, Product Management & Business Development

Security Technical Alliances Ecosystem

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Today’s applications are either virtualized in our own data center or being hosted by any number of providers. But is our security built around our current security reality or is it living in the past? During one of my Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit presentations, I shared best practices in a rapidly changing environment, where cloud vendor hype isn’t matching our security reality. Now that everything is in the cloud, we need a strategic approach to cloud security.

 

Here’s how to make it happen:

Ensure safe data handling when working with cloud provider. Considering cloud providers are an extension of your business, it is vital to ensure how your provider handles security for storing and transmitting your data. What provisions are in place to make sure data is secure once it has been transmitted? Determine if your provider has firewalls, data encryption, and user authentication to keep your data safe.

Combat growing threats. As cloud-based technologies grow more sophisticated over time, so do the possibilities of threats. A proactive approach to security means that we enable technology like cloud-based threat intelligence to detect a threat as they happen – or in some cases before they happen. Other anti-threat measures such as deep packet inspection and proactive monitoring can also help combat viruses, spam and other intrusions. Learn more. You don’t have to be a security expert to take security seriously. Leverage industry bodies, like the Cloud Security Alliance, for guidance on benchmarking service provider security capabilities. Learn what certifications and security practices your cloud provider has, including daily risk audits. And look for ways to increase security processes when you work with cloud providers. See how Cisco can help you protect your business assets and meet compliance requirements.

Learn more. You don’t have to be a security expert to take security seriously. Leverage industry bodies, like the Cloud Security Alliance, for guidance on benchmarking service provider security capabilities. Learn what certifications and security practices your cloud provider has, including daily risk audits. And look for ways to increase security processes when you work with cloud providers. See how Cisco can help you protect your business assets and meet compliance requirements.

To know more follow me on Twitter  @e_desouza  and check my blog and Gartner presentation  on Three Data Center Security Innovations to Accelerate Your Business



Authors

Evelyn de Souza

Cloud Data Governance Leader

Chief Technology and Architecture Office