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I was in the grocery store when I realized that something new was going on: our entrance into the era of computing that I call convergence — the convergence of man and machine – is already changing the face of collaboration.DiM_Carlos_Blog_3_c#4AD694012

In the recent past, collaboration did a great job of connecting people to people through video, voice and the virtual workspace, which improved productivity and the intimacy of connection.  A video chat, whether for business or pleasure, communicates more than a simple phone call.  Add a collective workspace and you’re off like a rocket. In this collaboration between people, the technology served as a conduit.

But now I’m sensing the beginning of something different: collaborating with the machine itself. Here’s an example: I’m pretty focused on maintaining my health and my weight so when I go to the grocery store, I have a health app that’s connected to my online health profile and running with augmented reality.  When I show my phone my choice of broccoli, it votes thumbs up; when I grab my favorite cookies, it displays the calories and cholesterol they will add to my daily intake, notes that it’s contrary to medication I’m on, and advises me against it.  (Of course when I get to the beer aisle, I over-ride its displeasure: this is collaborative, after all, not dictatorial!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvl6HalipMs Continue reading “Collaboration in the New Age of Convergence”



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Please visit Cisco’s TechEd web site to learn more about what we have going on at the show and visit www.cisco.com/go/microsoft to learn more about Cisco’s Microsoft capabilities.


 

I first attended Microsoft TechEd in 1996 in Los Angeles. What a learning experience it was.

This year, I’ll be there staffing the Cisco booth (#1701) speaking about the Cisco Unified Computing System.

  • Do you run SQL, Exchange, SharePoint or other Microsoft applications?
  • Want to learn about the x86 server technologies and solutions that have propelled Cisco to the #2 blade server vendor in the Americas and #3 worldwide1 in only 3 years?
  • Would you like to see how you can have common set of management tools for your rack and blade servers that provide the missing hardware insight layer, with visibility from the chassis and rack all the way through to the virtual machine layer?
  • Are you interested in a turn-key solution for your private cloud (FlexPod & VSPEX)?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, stop by and speak with the UCS server team.

Cisco will also be demonstrating:

Both the Nexus 1000V and FlexPod are finalist for the Best of TechEd 2013. We are very hopeful this will be our third year in a row to win a Best of TechEd award.

Best of TechEd North America 2013 Finalist

Continue reading “Cisco Datacenter Solutions at Microsoft TechEd North America 2013”



Authors

Bill Shields

Senior Marketing Manager

Product and Solutions Marketing Team

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A few weeks ago, I was at  Cisco Open Source Conference 2013 – a conference hosted by Cisco where we had speakers from IBM, Canonical, Red Hat and Rackspace, among others.  I learned a lot, specifically about the evolution of Hadoop and the OpenStack project.  As a follow on, I collated different activities around Cisco UCS and OpenStack, which I will share in this blog.

Dr. Dan Frye, Vice President, Open Systems Development, IBM, head of the IBM Linux Technology Center (LTC) gave the keynote address at the conference. It was nostalgic considering the fact that I sat in the same aisle as some of the LTC team members in the IBM facility in Austin, a few years ago. His talk included some fascinating historical anecdotes and three lessons IBM learned about open source software development-

  1. “Develop in the open” (Don’t try to contribute finished software products, heed to feedback)
  2. “Don’t reinvent the penguin” (“Scratch your own itch” – interesting phrase to explain the behavior of communities which want to solve the problems at hand and not those perceived to be problems by external entities)
  3. “Work with the process” (The community process is usually an agile methodology with no assumptions on roadmaps and delivery dates)

These lessons are invaluable in light of the open source projects such as OpenDaylight (no pun intended) and OpenStack that Cisco is now an integral part of.  According to Dr. Frye, these newer open source consortiums have the following characteristics:

  1. Larger number of initial members
  2. Quick starts
  3. Relatively large initial budgets
  4. Often require the commitment of a specified level of FTEs

Chris Wright from Red Hat expanded upon the principles and ethos of open source projects including release early, release often, iterative development and the culture of giving back. He contrasted the Linux kernel development project with the OpenStack project showing the relative speed of projects with the number of developers and commits by release. He gave a fantastic overview of the various Openstack component projects. He also identified two newly graduated projects namely, Ceilometer and Heat in the Grizzly release. I gave a talk on the requirements for the Ceilometer project, and you can find the slide deck on slideshare.

After attending the conference, I looked for projects within Cisco, which used OpenStack or contributed to it.  Cisco is a major contributor to the soon to Continue reading “Cisco UCS in the world of open source computing”



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On Tuesday May 28, 2013 at 17:30 UTC a massive pharmaceutical-based spam campaign began, using the Subject: header “Only 24 Hours Left to Shop!”. Cisco witnessed volume rates peaking as high as 8 out of every 10 spam messages being sent. The indiscriminate nature of the attack’s recipients suggests that most anti-spam vendors, including Cisco, will have blocked this attack very quickly.

Pharma Spam Volume Graph

Continue reading “Massive Canadian Pharmacy Spam Campaign”



Authors

Jaeson Schultz

Technical Leader

Cisco Talos Security Intelligence & Research

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Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is one of the sponsors of the Social Innovation Summit (SIS) at the United Nations in New York City this week. The summit connects global leaders in the corporate, investment, government, and nonprofit sectors and helps them collaborate to multiply the positive impact they can make in the world. The agenda includes presentations and discussions on key strategies and best practices for creating social transformation.

Cisco’s approach to creating positive social change has long involved collaboration with our partners and peers. By combining the power of human and technology networks, Cisco multiplies impact and helps accomplish extraordinary things, even under the most difficult circumstances.

 

Continue reading “Business Innovation Meets Social Transformation at the United Nations”



Authors

Jennifer Barr

Social Media Manager, Online Brand

Cisco Talent Acquisition

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In my previous blog, I talked about building out a lab to help with IPv6 integration testing.  It cannot be understated how important it is to test any new feature that is going to be deployed on the network.  This statement is true independent of the feature involved.  In this case, we are talking about IPv6, but we could just as easily be talking about virtualization or BYOD.

So now that we have the lab build up in progress, what’s next?  Continue reading “Setting Up an IPv6 Testing Plan”



Authors

Jim Bailey

AS Technical Leader

Borderless Networks

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I recently kicked off a series about security and the Internet of Everything, a pivotal topic that starts with the roots of IoE, IoT and M2M, which I explore in more depth in the first post.

Machine-to-Machine connections make up a huge portion of the Internet of Things, both general concepts for the network infrastructures that link physical and virtual objects. These abstractions come together on IoE, making it possible for devices to orchestrate and manage the world we live in, as they become connected entities themselves.

But to fully discuss security on the Internet of Everything, we must first go back to the roots of IoE itself. The technology innovations that employ M2M and IoT were actually spun off from military and industrial supply chain applications. As IP became a more common communication protocol, IoT gained more traction, helped even more by the creation of IPv6 and other advancements in wireless technology. As ever-increasing data is captured and distributed on these networks, more intelligence is generated.

Read my full “Securing the Internet of Everything: An Introduction” blog post to learn more about this embedded intelligence that is a core architectural component of IoT, and how it informs the security for the Internet of Everything itself. And stay tuned! I have more for you to come in this series, including a look into IoE security framework.



Authors

Monique Morrow

CTO-Evangelist

New Frontiers Development and Engineering

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Tomorrow’s Cloud Starts Here is an important starting point for your Cisco Live experience on Monday, June 24. This track of business-focused cloud sessions addresses the needs of both consumers and providers of cloud services. These thought leadership sessions will explore how organizations can best use cloud services to power their business and shows how cloud providers can leverage the latest in technology, commercial models, and delivery resources to bring quality-assured services to market.

The day will begin with an update on Cisco’s cloud strategy, perspectives on the enormous opportunity presented by the Internet of Everything and the impact cloud is having on both provider and company business models. Ellen Daley, Managing Director, Business Technology Client Group, at Forrester will be partnering  with Scott Puopolo, VP, Internet Business Solutions Group, to have a candid conversation of what’s going on in the market and how this affects certain verticals. We then will hear from Rebecca Jacoby, CIO and SVP for Cisco’s Cloud and Systems Management Technology Group discussing  Continue reading ““Tomorrow’s Cloud Starts Here” Program at Cisco Live Orlando in June”



Authors

Jeff Spagnola

Vice President of Sales, Cloud and Managed Services

Cisco Service Provider market segment

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Universities, or actually any campus environment, can gain a lot of value from the emerging location-based services (LBS). There are a few characteristics that render campuses as prime hotspots that enable richer WiFi-based LBS experiences. Firstly, there is a captive audience: students and staff spend a lot of time for almost 9 months of the year within the campus, with a proportion even living on campus during this period. Secondly, the growing trend is pervasive WiFi – indoor and outdoor always available. Lastly, due to widely available free WiFi, the proportion of people walking around with their mobile devices with WiFi switched “on” is very high relative to other industries, not surprising since students are happy to use campus WiFi rather than pay for their mobile data service.

campus

With Cisco’s Connected Mobile Experiences solution, universities can now bridge that gap between the WiFi they provide and the ever-growing number of mobile devices being carried by students and staff. Connected Mobile Experiences is powered by the Cisco Mobile Services Engine, which, when integrated with a Cisco wireless network, detects presence, locates and tracks all Wi-Fi signals—anonymously to ensure privacy—and then aggregates and enhances the data for location analytics and reporting. Based on this data, the engine delivers detailed analysis of mobile user onsite behaviors to optimize planning and operations. Cisco is working with leading universities that have some very interesting and innovative ideas where location analytics can provide a win-win solution for both the administration and all its patrons (students, faculty, staff, visitors).

Here are five applications of LBS in higher education:

  1. Enhanced User Experience
  2. Improved Campus Operational and Management
  3. Enhanced Learning Experience
  4. Enabling Specific Event Experiences
  5. Promotional and Marketing Opportunities

Let’s look at each of these in a little more detail. Continue reading “Location-based Services in Education – Enhanced Experiences on Campus”



Authors

Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences