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If you’re reading this, chances are high that you’re on your way or already in Washington, D.C., where you’ll spend the next few days attending this week’s Cable Show. We’re there too, not surprisingly, with a lot to share with our cable friends and colleagues. And I do mean a lot. Let’s see if I can be brief about it.

By now (I hope!) you’ve heard about our Videoscape Unity platform. That’s the one that’s focused on a sophisticated but easy-to-use, consistent interface that blends video, social networking and other information, using the best screen for experiences that are personalized, synchronized, and more social…All at the “speed of now.”

At the Show, we’re highlighting the Videoscape Open API framework, an Continue reading “Cisco @ #Cable13 – The Cable Show: See you in Our Nation’s Capital!”



Authors

David Yates

as Director of Service Provider Video Marketing at Cisco

SP360

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This blog post promises to avoid telling you about all the fantabulous (I know that’s not a woUCSrd) growth expected in the number of hosted virtual desktops to be deployed by 2016.  What I do want to share, is how Cisco is ramping up our investments in accelerating your path to virtual desktop success, and how we’re tapping into the fundamentals of our Unified Computing System (UCS) to deliver new VDI efficiencies; the same efficiencies that have made Cisco the 2nd most preferred x86  blade server vendor* worldwide, in just 4 years!  So why are so many organizations moving away from their legacy compute solution, and choosing UCS for VDI workloads and more?

Differentiated capabilities that address VDI pain points: TCO and Manageability

It’s no secret to anyone that VDI is not simple to deploy.  You essentially have to bring together multiple seemingly disparate solution elements (server, storage, virtualization, broker, network, security, etc.) and make them work in a cohesive manner, and then be certain that your implementation will scale from a small pilot of 50 users to hundreds, thousands, or more!  Clearly with such complexity, the last thing you need is a complex compute infrastructure underneath it all.  There are 3 key things at the heart of this, that speak to why UCS is better for VDI:on-board

1.)    Server-resident flash.  Our “On-Board” Architecture for VDI intercepts the rapidly proliferating use of flash based storage solutions that offer expansive IOPS capacity and huge performance.  UCS takes it a step further by offering an integrated solution leveraging our partner Fusion-io.  We’ve additionally delivered reference architectures that extend the use cases and attractiveness of flash-based solutions with appliance approaches (that direct-connect the storage array to our fabric interconnect) as well as more traditional multi-tiered architectures.  More on that in a moment…

service profile2.)    We’ve made it easier to provision and manage the hosts for your virtual desktop deployments.  UCS Service Profile Templates enable rapid deployment from bare metal, creating a zero-touch, mistake-proof, stateless operations model.  Now, when you add the On-Board, server-resident flash to the configuration, you extend the reach of this management model to include high-performance, economical storage, completely provisioned and managed as part of the blade configuration/profile!  No SAN or associated expertise required!  Perfect for floating, non-persistent desktops.VIC

3.)    Granular visibility across the virtualized infrastructure.  With user desktops now running amidst other mission-critical workloads in the data center, there’s more reason than ever to ensure that you can impart QoS, security and manageability across the multitude of virtual machine traffic flows traversing the data center.  Cisco Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) and Cisco Nexus 1000v provide the visibility and controls that make this possible, extending physical world policy and administration to virtual.

Continue reading “Don’t Take Your Eyes off VDI – We’re Certainly Not!”



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A long time ago, it used to be comforting, to hear the words “One Size Fits All”.  As though our interests were surely represented within that catch-all, assuring us that we weren’t going to get left out in the rain.  You could safely make that impulse-driven purchase, bring it home (or have it delivered), and know with certainty, that you wouldn’t be disappointed.  It’s almost laughable to think that we subscribed to this way of thinking for about 50 years.  But thankfully, we live, work and play in a world where it’s not about one-size-fits-all, and the only things we’ll accept as such, are wristwatches, and bicycle helmets! (unless you have a gargantuan sized cranium)

And so it is with your IT environment – “One-Size-Fits-All” feels too much like hand-cuffs (which coincidentally are also one-size-fits-all).  We’ve done away with the notion that a solution that’s optimized for a Fortune 500, is going to be at all suitable for a medium-sized business with almost 1,000 employees.  While both organizations might have a strategic imperative around workspace mobility, and have set out to virtualize the desktops of say, 5% of their workforce, they’ll approach this problem in two completely different ways.

  • One of these organizations will have an extensive , multi-tiered networking and security infrastructure, optimized for virtual machine traffic, the other may not.
  • One of these organizations will have a mature SAN infrastructure in place, with embedded resources and expertise, and lots of existing mission-critical data already housed there.  The other may not.
  • One of these organizations will have a high percentage of virtualized workloads and a highly automated/orchestrated environment for rapidly spinning up new infrastructure.  The other may not.

Carchpicertainly these two environments are not going to take the same solution approach to deploying virtual desktops?  They will however, share many of the same key objectives/demands: future proof scalability, resiliency, streamlined provisioning and operations, consistent user experience for the 1st user as well as the 1000th.  And they’ll want all of this with the lowest possible TCO.

 

Last month, Cisco introduced our expanwebcastded suite of solution architectures for desktop virtualization.  This portfolio was struck with the objective of ensuring our customers would never have to settle for a One-Size-Fits-All approach to deploying VDI, recognizing that they’re deploying this solution from a multitude of possible starting points in their IT maturity.  With four new solution architectures, each built on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), and each backed by design guides and reference configurations co-developed with industry-leading partners in storage and storage-optimization technologies, we’ve taken the risk and guesswork out of choosing the deployment methodology that’s right-sized for your organization.  Check out my friend Ashok’s more detailed post on the new reference architecture portfolio.

Continue reading “Wristwatches, Bicycle Helmets, and VDI…”



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There are a number of trends that are impacting data centers today, many of which will have a profound impact on how businesses consume data center resources.  These can provide a variety of challenges.  Perhaps most obvious, is the fact that people and businesses are more connected than ever with the proliferation of mobile devices and tablets.  These new devices are driving more applications, more users, and an insatiable appetite for network bandwidth.  This blog will discuss a few of these trends and how Cisco is shaping its data center strategy to enable customers to meet these rapidly changing demands.

IDC Virtualization Trends

 

 

Another major data center trend that is driving change in the data center is the continued adoption of virtualization technologies.  What’s interesting is that although server spending has remained relatively flat for over a decade, there is still a great deal of “head room” for companies to further adopt virtualization.

 

 

IDC Virtualization Adoption

 

 

In fact, IDC studies show that many applications are yet to be virtualized as the chart to the right indicates.  However, virtualization is driving complexity elsewhere including the network, software and storage.  So what has created a more agile server, has not necessarily created a more agile system.

 

The next major trend is that of Cloud Computing, with more business leveraging private, public or potentially even hybrid cloud models.  Some actually forecast that there could eventually be a small number of mega data centers and companies will all leverage capacity exclusively from these since they can offer extreme efficiencies.  The truth is, there are two ends of the spectrum, some customers will prefer to host their own infrastructure and others may choose to use Cloud providers exclusively.  We are finding today that many customers are somewhere in the middle and choose their model based on the application needs.

Continue reading “What’s Driving Cisco Innovations in the Data Center?”



Authors

Scott Ciccone

Sr. Marketing Manager

Global Marketing

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Hi All!  This is the first of what I’m hoping will be a weekly recap for the new Enterprise Networks.  In this video I give a very short summary of what happened this last week, then I get to do two quick interviews with our TechWiseTV heroes Jimmy Ray Purser and Robb Boyd!  Finally, we have an announcement on what we’ll be covering next week.  After the jump, I’ve got all the links to things mentioned during the recap.  Let me know what you think of this first video!

Continue reading “Enterprise Networks Week In Review”



Authors

Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks

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Three years ago, when I blogged about the Cable Converged Access Platform (CCAP), current events involved whether it would be called “CMAP,” “CESAR,” or something else entirely. (So much clearer in hindsight!)

Last year, when I blogged about CCAP at The Cable Show, current events centered on phasing, and how to prepare plant and infrastructure for the unified QAMs of CCAP — while the gear itself was being architected and built.

For what was Phase 1, Continue reading “A Cisco CCAP Update for Cable Show 2013: Helping Cable Operators Double Down… and Quadruple Up!”



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A few weeks ago Cisco released the Global IT Impact Survey.  For this survey we interviewed over 1300 IT professionals across 13 countries, at all ages of their careers – those in their 20s all the way through those over 60. We had people from many different industries – education, construction, government, transportation, consulting, utilities – and more.

When we released the survey, the analysis we did was really just a small part of what could be looked at.  There was a lot more data there to sift through and analyze than we explicitly discussed.  For example, we found 48% of those surveyed saw business opportunity with the Internet of Things.  However, I was curious how IT knowledge and perceptions of IoT correlated with some of the other data we gathered.  And because I somehow thought it would be faster to put my analysis down in images (hint, it probably wasn’t) I made a data visualization.  Continue reading “Data Visualized: IT Perceptions of the Internet of Things”



Authors

Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks

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We have had a royal visit here at Cisco today. His Royal Highness Prince Philippe of Belgium, next in line to the Belgian throne, regularly leads economic missions throughout the world. This month, he is presiding over a Belgian delegation in Silicon Valley. The objective of this economic mission is to put Belgian executives in contact with leading companies in the Valley so that they can exchange ideas, build business relationships and find new opportunities for economic development. Together with Edzard Overbeek, senior vice president, Cisco Services, and Guido Jouret, VP/GM and CTO of Cisco’s Emerging Technologies Group, we provided an update on Cisco’s vision and strategy, and the key economic and technology trends we see, both worldwide and in Belgium.

Edzard Overbeek and Prince Philippe
Edzard Overbeek and Prince Philippe

Focus on innovation

Cisco has always been very much committed to our country. Not only because it is the European Union’s beating heart, but Belgium also houses our technical assistance centre for the region and is now home to one of our many R&D centers, the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group (SPVTG) R&D center, through the acquisition of Scientific Atlanta near Kortrijk. We have 700 sales and services staff on those two sites.

European countries can’t be innovative, is often claimed. We don’t believe that. Northern Europe has always been a region with a strong commitment to advancing the technology agenda, for example. The networked readiness index is dominated by the Scandinavian countries, plus the Netherlands. Some emerging countries like Estonia are closing the gap at an incredible pace. Belgium has never been far behind, and houses one of the best educational systems. It has excellent engineers, just as we see in our Cisco SPVTG R&D center. Cisco does believe in Belgium as one of the better European performers.

TelePresence with Prince Philippe
TelePresence with Prince Philippe

However, with 2.4% of the GDP invested in R&D, Belgium is an average performer on the European innovation index. At the recent Cisco Connect event in Brussels, the president of the Federation of Belgian Enterprises (FEB/VBO) discussed weak government investments in innovation and difficult access to venture capital. According to him, Belgian companies are still not sufficiently effective in selling their products abroad. Peculiarly enough, according to research by the European Commission, 60% of the Belgian companies invested in innovation last year, be it in products, processes, marketing or operations. Only Germany performed better. It proves there’s potential for growth in Belgium.

Prince Philippe of Belgium
Prince Philippe of Belgium

 

The Boston Consulting Group advises to invest in internet infrastructure as one of the measures to stimulate innovation and the creation of jobs. For every job that is lost, the internet economy gives you 2.6 in return. With an expanding internet ahead of us, there’s a large opportunity to seize. In healthcare, education, energy management and certainly traffic management. Belgium is a small country, but has Europe’s highest traffic density, with an estimated two percent of its GDP lost due to serious traffic congestion.

We therefore talked to our guests of the Belgian economic mission about the smart cities we are building. We pointed tothe South-Korean city of Songdo, where Cisco and real estate developer Gale International are collaborating with the city to wire every square inch with synapses: from escalators to light bulbs with a proper IP address so that you can measure and improve energy management. Every house has its videoconferencing unit; all vehicles and roads can be connected as well. The cost of public transportation and pay-as-you-drive varies according to road congestion. And if you opt to take your car, intelligent parking systems guide you to the nearest free spot. We are making things intelligent so that we can convert data into wisdom. Songdo will run on information.

Entering Cisco
Prince Philippe arrives at Cisco

 

Smart government

Another solution that could help Brussels and other cities offer their citizens the services they need, in a convenient and cost-effective way, is a new smart government initiative called ‘Virtual Citizen Services Centres’. Barcelona City Hall has announced a pioneering center in Europe, using Cisco TelePresence and remote expert collaboration technologies to allow citizens to remotely carry out various administrative processes without needing to appear at local offices. The services centre is a booth that can be installed anywhere: post offices, shopping centers, libraries and so on. It is freely accessible during business hours, from which citizens may interact face-to-face with public servants to share, sign and print documents and take care of multiple administrative processes as if they were at the office itself. It will facilitate the process of obtaining construction licenses, for instance. Such Smart+Connected Communities solutions improve every government’s service. The only thing you need is an internet connection.

Pol Vanbiervliet, Cisco Belgium GM
Pol Vanbiervliet, Cisco Belgium GM

That’s why Cisco is investing 12% of its turnover in research and development year over year. “If you don’t change, you get left behind”, John Chambers recently said in a Belgian financial newspaper. We are entering the next generation of the Internet where the networked  connection of people, data, process and things will create unprecedented opportunities for organizations, individuals and countries.  We are beginning to experience an Internet of Everything (IoE) that Cisco predicts could generate as much as $14.4 Trillion (USD) in value globally for businesses who innovate and leverage  IoE to its full potential.  With smart investments, Belgium will have its share of the pie and the economic conversion it is looking for.

 



Authors

Marc Musgrove

Former Director, Internet of Things and Digital Industries PR

No Longer with Cisco

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I’m happy to announce a new resource for companies with 100-1,000 employees:  the Cisco Midsize Business Solutions website. Built for midsize IT and business leaders, it discusses current market influences and top challenges with insights on how to address them. With solutions, case studies, videos, and tools, it provides these leaders with the information they need to grow their business.

One of the top focus areas on the website is the infrastructure. A strong IT infrastructure is important to the success of any business. The infrastructure is how we get the applications we need to do our jobs. It’s how we collaborate with our co-workers, partners, and customers. It’s how we access the data we need when and where we need it. When it comes to midsized businesses, it’s the key to growth.  Continue reading “Driving Success for Midsize Businesses with New Website”