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I can hardly wait.  In two days the suspense will be over and the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) will have selected its 2013 Intelligent Community of the Year.  With so many extraordinary and innovative communities in the running, I’m glad it’s not up to me to choose one.  But I do have the thrill and privilege of seeing it all happen, live in New York City at the ICF Summit this week.

I and the other attendees will no doubt listen in awe to the inspiring leaders from all around the world as they talk about the way their organizations are changing the way people in their communities or regions work, live, play, and learn.  Who will be this year’s winner?  One strong candidate is Toronto Canada, one of this year’s Top7 communities.  Learn more about their initiatives in the video below:

Screen Shot 2013-06-04 at 12.36.27 PM

Later today, we’ll hear from Toronto’s Councillor, Michael Thompson, and have the opportunity to pick his brain during a group Q&A session to learn more about how Toronto is improving their economic and social environment by providing community network services to its constituents, with its energy-reducing smart and connected buildings to link residents and businesses, with portals and kiosks to provide real-time services to citizens, and with smart sensors and surveillance for public safety.  I’d say they’re a pretty tough contender!

Continue reading “Intelligent Communities Global Blog Series Kickoff, The World’s Smartest Cities”



Authors

Stacey Arthur

Public Funding Advisor

U.S. Public Funding Office

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What do you get when you take Cisco’s best-selling campus access switch line, double almost everything (including port density in-stack, stacking bandwidth, buffers and CPU), then make it more secure and simpler to use, all with power-saving capabilities that possibly make it the “greenest” access switch in the industry?

You get a GameChanger

This is exactly what Cisco announced yesterday (June 4th) at our annual Partner Summit event. Cisco is introducing the next generation of its wildly successful Catalyst 2K switches with the new Catalyst 2960-X series of stackable Gigabit Ethernet access switches. Continue reading “Announcing the New Cisco Catalyst 2960-X Series Switches”



Authors

Ben Stricker

Senior Public Relations Manager

Cisco UCS

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Cisco.com has been featured by industry research firm ByteLevel Research as “Best Global Enterprise Technology Website” in their latest ‘Global By Design” installment focusing on globalization web practices in tech B2B.

ByteLevel Research is the author of the annual Globalization Digital Scorecard, where Cisco.com was ranked #4 worldwide in 2013 among such peers as Adobe, GE, HP, Microsoft, Intel, EMC, etc. Cisco has consistently ranked in the top 5 since 2007. The scorecard also takes an in-depth look at best practices and trends in digital globalization within specific industries: Web services and eCommerce; Enterprise Technology; Consumer Technology; Travel Services; Automotive, etc. Cisco is featured as leader of the Enterprise Technology category where it gets top marks from the analyst among the following companies:

  • Autodesk
  • Cisco Systems
  • Dolby
  • EMC
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • NetApp
  • Oracle
  • Renesas
  • SAP
  • Texas Instruments
  • Xerox

The analyst praises in particular the number of languages supported (40, not including English) ahead of many other sites; and the high-level of consistency of presentation across these local implementations, while being “flexible enough to support local content and promotions.” The analyst also notes that “Cisco leads the sector in its support for locally relevant social networks”, showing as an example social media aggregation pages on cisco.com in the US and Korea.

Cisco Social in Korean

Kudos to the fantastic work done by our fabulous virtual team across organizational lines and geographies, who pretty much never sleep and yet somehow manage to look bright eyed and bushy tailed night or day when I see them.

You can read the full ByteLevel Research article online.



Authors

Martin Hardee

Director, Cisco.com

Cisco.com

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This six-part series focuses on transformation of the traditional higher education system in the United States.  Read parts 1 through 4 on the Cisco Education blog.systematic-transformation 

At Cisco we are seeing outstanding examples of change, some of which have been highlighted throughout this blog series. Others, unfortunately, are one-time interventions, and tend to be unsustainable. We’ve seen a number of video implementations, for example, that have gone nowhere because they were not part of a larger strategy or plan, and training and culture were never addressed.  Across the country, outdated, disconnected video equipment lays scattered in classrooms, lecture halls, and IT departments. How can we ensure that these improvements can intrinsically change our higher education system in the United States, and across the globe?  We strongly believe that technology can help in this area as well. 

Scale can take place within a university and across university systems, especially when video technologies such as Cisco TelePresence are employed. This videoconferencing solution is easier to use, higher quality, and provides an immersive experience that rivals the one found in the classroom.

Paradise Valley Unified School District in Phoenix, Arizona is partnering with National Lambda Rail, a National Research and Education Network, to connect with universities and other higher education institutions to deliver joint classes.  With just one teacher and Cisco TelePresence, PVUSD is now providing instruction to students at multiple schools simultaneously.

Duke University is using Cisco TelePresence to create a virtual lecture hall, and expand the reach of its MBA program beyond the shores of the U.S., thereby increasing access and generating new revenue streams.  Now, their business school students can access professors, guest lecturers and business leaders from around the world. In this way, Duke is extending the in-person classroom environment across multiple campuses and into the business world.

Finally, Cisco recently announced WebEx Social, a new, enterprise collaboration platform that combines the power of social networking, content creation, and real-time communications and collaboration. We believe that WebEx Social has the power to drive the sustainable change required by higher education systems across the globe. 

Along with Cisco TelePresence, Duke University uses WebEx Social to provide faculty, staff, and students with a single, unified platform to access learning management systems, student information systems, and other applications for academics, extracurricular activities, and career information.  WebEx Social is also coupled with tools for voice and video collaboration within the same platform.  As a result, the traditional experience is evolving into dynamic, group-based learning that is often taking place outside of the traditional classroom setting.

Our vision is that WebEx Social will be used by higher education systems worldwide to connect and collaborate, and share best practices, course content, resources and more, helping drive the scale required to transform the entire system.  We believe that this tool is an agent for change, and will revolutionize the way in which higher education institutions deliver the business of education.



Authors

Renee Patton

Former Global Director of Education and Healthcare

Global Industry Solutions Group

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Folks,

We are in the midst of exciting times. As the small cell industry gathers here in London for the annual Small Cells World Summit, I’m delighted to welcome the world-class team from Ubiquisys into Cisco.  At the same time, we’re announcing the formation of a new Small Cell Wireless Backhaul Ecosystem with the top vendors in the industry.

Let me start with an introduction, since this is my first SP 360 blog.  I’m the VP/GM of the new Cisco Small Cell Technology Group.  Cisco has been investing in both internal engineering development and external acquisitions in small cell technology for several years now, and this moment marks a milestone in our long-term strategic plan.

We have the industry leading carrier-grade SP Wi-Fi solution, and one of the largest residential femto deployments with over 1 million devices deployed by AT&T.  We’ve learned a great deal over the years about how to rapidly deploy licensed and unlicensed small cells with zero touch provisioning, keeping costs low and customer satisfaction high.

We’ve been partnering with Ubiquisys for quite some time because we see them as industry leaders and in fact one of the founders of the small cell industry.  Now that we have their expertise in-house, we’re able to rapidly roll out an expanding portfolio of licensed small cells to meet the widening array of deployment needs.  This also means that we are adding decentralized SON capability to our centralized SON proficiency gained through the recent Intucell acquisition.

In February we announced the ASR 901S, a small cell backhaul router that brings hardened network intelligence into some of the more challenging environments where small cells are being deployed.  Today we are announcing Continue reading “Closing the Small Cell Loop”



Authors

Partho Mishra

Vice President and General Manager

Small Cell Technology Group

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adrian_simays_emcGuest post by Adrian Simays, Director of Technical Enablement for Microsoft at EMC Corporation.

It’s a great week in New Orleans….great food, awesome Jazz, funky hats…and a powerful partnership with Cisco.  And the week is getting even better.…at Microsoft TechEd, EMC announced the latest VSPEX solutions for Microsoft.

So what is the big news?  We announced the expansion of the VSPEX portfolio to include support for Exchange 2013 and SharePoint 2013.  This announcement extends the VSPEX support for SQL Server we announced at Microsoft Management Summit in April.  VSPEX provides infrastructure for customers looking to gain the benefits of converged infrastructures, leveraging EMC storage systems and next-generation backup products, while at the same time gaining more choice in individual stack components, including virtualization, server, and network technologies.  These VSPEX configurations enable customers to leverage the power of EMC with Cisco’s UCS servers and industry leading networking to radically simplify private cloud deployments. Cisco UCS combines high-performance computing, networking, virtualization, and storage-access resources into a single unified system. This solution helps organizations quickly move toward a more cost-effective private cloud environment.

Continue reading “EMC and Cisco……a Powerful Partnership for Microsoft Private Cloud”



Authors

Gary Serda

Senior Strategic Partner Marketing Manager

Global Partner Marketing

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Admit it: you hear Cisco and automatically think enterprise networking leader. Well, it’s time to expand that thinking. This week at Cisco Partner Summit we are officially turning the spotlight on the midmarket and the opportunity it offers Cisco channel partners for growth and profit.  With 1.4 million midsize businesses – which we define as companies with 100-1000 employees – spending an estimated $25 billion on technology and $30 billion on services by 2016, we know this is the right market to focus on with our channel partners.

Faced with market trends such as mobility and cloud, today’s midsize businesses have rapidly increasing IT demands with limited resources. They have many of the same needs as a big business, but smaller IT staffs and budgets to meet them. To remain competitive, mid-sized businesses need to be able to evolve quickly to address today’s business challenges and prepare for the future. This is where Cisco and you, our channel partners, can help.  Continue reading “How Cisco Partners Win in the Midmarket”



Authors

Andrew Sage

Vice President

Global Distribution & Small Business Sales

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Maybe you’re like me, looking for any excuse to hop on a plane to Boston!  In this case, I happen to have a good one, Red Hat Summit, which kicks off on June 11th.

Red Hat Summit

 

Cisco is proud to be a Platinum Sponsor for the event and we’re showing up in full force with a larger booth, more demos, a Cisco keynote, breakout, and a number of new solution areas that we plan to showcase.  We’ll have a number of product and solution experts available to share our view on how Cisco Solutions, hosted on UCS infrastructure, are building a better data center.

 

Ram AppalarajuOne presentation you should be sure not to miss is the Cisco Keynote on Wednesday, June 12th at 9:30 AM with Ram Appalaraju, Vice President of Technology, Products and Solutions Engineering at Cisco.  It’s safe to say, Ram has an important role at Cisco.  He is essentially responsible for delivering Cisco’s Unified Data Center strategy in the form of products and solutions.  This will certainly prove to be a presentation not to be missed!

 

Han YangIn addition, Han Yang, Product Manager for Cisco Nexus 1000V, will discuss the Nexus 1000V on KVM with OpenStack Integration.  Since Han was one of the original Engineers developing the Nexus 1000V, this makes him uniquely qualified to present this breakout.  This session will be held in room 312 on Thursday, June 13th at 1:20 pm.

 

Please see below for the four key solutions that Cisco is showcasing at the Partner Pavillion:

Continue reading “Building a Better Data Center with Cisco UCS Solutions, Join us at Red Hat Summit to Hear How”



Authors

Scott Ciccone

Sr. Marketing Manager

Global Marketing

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By Brenda Germundson and Stacey Cannon

In wrapping up the series, we wanted to show you a specific example of how a cloud solution can be used in local government. The example in the video below will walk you through a local government scenario and demonstrate how cloud capabilities can enable agencies to improve agility and performance, increase operational efficiencies to reduce costs, and enhance on-demand citizen services, among other things.

Continue reading “Cloud for Local Government Global Blog Series Final Blog, The Cloud Intelligent Network in Local Government and the Seri …”



Authors

Brenda Germundson

Global Public Sector Marketing Lead

Global Industries Marketing