Year: 2013

May 21, 2013 Leave a Comment
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DukeNet Communications Makes the Leap to 100G

Just on the heels of our Packet Optical Networking Conference last week in San Jose we’re thrilled to announce another network operator has selected Cisco to make the transition to 100G. Last time was in the upper mountain state of Wyoming. This time it’s DukeNet Communications, a leading regional fiber network provider offering data and high-capacity bandwidth services to enterprise, data center, government and carrier customers. Primarily serving the southeastern United States, DukeNet controls an 8,000 route mile fiber-optic network now capable of delivering 100 Gbps services using Cisco’s nLight™ coherent Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. The Cisco ONS 15454-powered solution provides  Continue reading “DukeNet Communications Makes the Leap to 100G”



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Stephen Liu

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Where do you do your best work?

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Most of us have the ability to work in different places these days. I am personally very mobile. I love all my little tools – I carry my Air, iPad and iPhone plus a few other bits whereever I go. Now, just because I can work anywhere does not mean that I always like to. Depends on what I need to get done. My home office space is my ideal working environment. This is the one spot I have invested the most time in making comfortable for me and as such, this is where I do my best work. For you, it may be your office at work.

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Why?

I had never given much thought to why I like this space the most..it seems obvious…but one item that makes this spot ideal: my desk phone.

My desk phone is large, reliable and comfortable. It has an easy interface, great speakerphone and a good headset always attached. This communication device, sitting right next to my iMac, makes communication rich and easy. When I sit here – I can get anything done. Anything.

So as silly as it seemed when I first heard it, the idea that Cisco was investing in the deskphone, now makes sense. Mobile phones, tablets..these are all obvious, well worn markets with lots of people fighting for a toe-hold. The desk phone? How delightfully contrarian. Cisco is really good in the business space..selling to consumers…not so much. But the enteprise…at all levels…have very unique needs.

Cisco’s move with the DX650 is brave, and based on what I have seen…really smart.

Continue reading “Where do you do your best work?”



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Robb Boyd

Producer, Writer, Host

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Trends in the Oracle User Community

In April the largest conference for Oracle users, outside of Oracle OpenWorld, occurred in Denver.  With 6000 attendees “Collaborate”, the annual Oracle user conference sponsored by IOUG (Independent Oracle User Group), OAUG (Oracle Application User Group) and Quest International, is one of the best events For Oracle users, whether it is Oracle Database or any of the other Oracle software products, to learn, network, share and teach. Oh, and have some fun too.

But for companies like Cisco who exhibit and sponsor Collaborate, it is also a great chance to informally “take the pulse” of the Oracle user community. The questions they ask and the sessions they attend provide a clear indicator of where Oracle users are headed, what the trends are and and where they are putting their efforts in the future. Here is what I discovered at this year’s Collaborate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvhLXFgHcJ8

 

Oracle Trends from Collaborate 13

So unlike past conferences, the Oracle community is actively looking at

a) Virtualization for their Oracle infrastructure, including Databases  and

b) Preconfigured/prevalidated hardware solutions (sometimes called converged infrastructure solutions) instead of just the old DIY custom system approach for hardware.

To me these are both major changes in the mindset of those using Oracle Database and applications. And the implications are significant.  As virtualization permeates the large Oracle install-base (largest business software vendor),  the hypervisor vendors will see significant growth and many operational aspects of Oracle infrastructures will change and improve. That virtualization push includes Oracle who is making inroads with their dramatically updated Oracle VM (virtual machine) product.

The move towards pretested hardware solutions is also a major directional shift which should drive an increased focus on reducing software and database upgrade/version cycle times and downplay the need to do extensive hardware testing.  In today’s environment of “do more with less”, pretested hardware solutions may be a great way to help the Oracle IT team address that conundrum.

Can Cisco help with these trends towards more Oracle virtualization and pretested hardware configurations? The answer is a resounding YES!  With our storage partners EMC and NetApp, and our software partners Oracle and VMware, we have developed an extensive array of pretested/prevalidated solutions with hypervisors (Oracle VM and vSphere), storage (EMC and NetApp) and software (Oracle Database and applications) all running on Cisco UCS servers and Cisco networking.  For more information on Cisco’s Oracle solutions and to see the available Cisco Validated Designs (CVD) for Oracle, go to  Cisco.com/go/oracle

Coming up in my next blog, more on the move to virtualize Oracle database and applications.



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Chip Lawson

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Have You Registered for K-12 & Public Safety May 22nd?

Improving School Safety with Your WLAN

See how your campus Wi-Fi can improve emergency response

Register Now    |        May 22, 2013    10AM-11AM PDT

kidstech

Tony De La Rosa shared with us a teaser last week about the riveting webinar we have coming up this week on how Wi-Fi technology can be used in K-12 schools. If you missed it, here’s the original blog–it’s not too late to register for the webinar!

Join us on this Wednesday, May 22 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time/1 p.m. Eastern Time as our experts walk through several real-world scenarios of how Wi-Fi can be used in campus emergencies. They’ll also discuss the latest Cisco solutions and take your questions in a live Q&A. Continue reading “Have You Registered for K-12 & Public Safety May 22nd?”



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Vivian Chan

May 20, 2013 1 Comment
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Cisco Cyclists Raise AUD$4,450 (and counting) for The Benevolent Society in Australia

Cisco is proud to announce that five of its employees, with a penchant for cycling, took part in a gruelling 200 km timed relay race this weekend to raise money forThe Benevolent Society.

The Benevolent Society (TBS) aims to help people, families and communities achieve positive change. This year the charity turns 200, and to celebrate its birthday the charity arranged for 200 cyclists to race 200 kms in its first ever cycling challenge –Race for Change.

The group of brave cyclists from Cisco’s Sydney office trained hard over a 6-week period. The team, or Cisco Tumblers, as they’ve named themselves, put in around 400 kms of cycling between them each week – that’s a total of over 2,000 kms of cycling over the 6 weeks! The Cisco Tumblers didn’t just bond as a team on the streets and parks of Sydney but virtually as well, by using Webex meetings to keep everyone up-to-date on training plans, the event and individuals’ progress; all to make sure they were race-ready for the big event.

Continue reading “Cisco Cyclists Raise AUD$4,450 (and counting) for The Benevolent Society in Australia”



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Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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Continuing Conversation: Rick Smolan and the human face of big data

As more devices, people and things become connected to the Internet, an unprecedented amount of data will be generated: data which can become a powerful tool for solving some of the greatest challenges facing our planet.

Carlos Dominguez and photojournalist Rick Smolan
Carlos Dominguez and photojournalist Rick Smolan

I spoke with well-known photojournalist Rick Smolan about how we can turn data into wisdom, and the importance of capturing data in real time. Rick has worked at Time, Life and National Geographic and is the creator of the popular Day in the Life book series. In his most ambitious project to date, he tackled the subject of big data in the Human Face of Big Data project.

I talked with Rick about what his project is discovering, and the first part of our conversation was published in the blog Is there a human face behind big data?

Cisco co-sponsored the project because we believe we’re entering an era of the “Internet of Everything” which will bring data as well as people, processes and things together to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before.

In today’s blog, we continue the conversation by focusing on how big data can improve our communities and the world.

Q:  Rick, your project’s premise is that real-time visualization of data streaming in from satellites, billions of sensors, RFID tags, GPS-enabled cameras and smart phones, is beginning to enable us to sense, measure and understand aspects of our existence in ways never possible.  Your recently published book The Human Face of Big Data has some wonderful examples on harnessing data to improve the world – do you have a favorite?    Continue reading “Continuing Conversation: Rick Smolan and the human face of big data”



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Carlos Dominguez

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Cisco BIG Awards: Calling All UK Entrepreneurs

It’s incredible to think that we are only a month away from closing entries for this year’s BIG Awards. This is the second BIG Awards competition we have run in the UK since the British Innovation Gateway programme was announced in January 2011 by Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers and Prime Minister David Cameron.

The annual open innovation competition identifies and offers financial and mentor support for the next generation of the UK’s digital entrepreneurs and startup companies.

It seems like yesterday that we were at the top of the Gherkin, launching this year’s competition and hearing about the great progress that last year’s winners – Snap Fashion, Digital Shadows, and Six 3 – have made over the past 6 months. Now the sun has come out (briefly), the football season is over, and we start to think about summer and the announcement of our 20 short-listed semi-finalists.

Continue reading “Cisco BIG Awards: Calling All UK Entrepreneurs”



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Tom Kneen

Business Development Manager, CTO Office, UKI

GEO - Sales UKI Mgmt

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Comcast and Cisco Ride the Cloud

OpenStack Summit Demonstration Provides Sneak Peek into Future of Networking and TV

Content will always be king.  But soon, with powerful cloud technology, Pay TV customers will be sitting on the throne, whether they are on their couch, in the café, or on the bus.    

Late last month at the OpenStack Summit in Portland, Comcast drew back the curtain on the future of television, demonstrating how cloud infrastructures can power exciting new TV experiences.

Mark Muehl, senior vice president of NE&TO product engineering and technology at Comcast, demonstrated the company’s flagship X1 cloud-based user interface, powered by an OpenStack cloud, during his keynote presentation.  Comcast and Cisco are working closely together to implement next-generation video services, like the X1 guide, on an OpenStack foundation, which enables both agility and scale.  

At Cisco we are “all-in” on OpenStack. We are investing heavily to make it the reliable, scalable, agile & feature-rich platform service providers need to deploy exciting new cloud-based video services.  Last month’s demonstration provided a sneak peek into the ongoing strategic collaboration between Comcast and Cisco in programmable networking. But it also illustrated a larger theme: cloud technologies, networking and applications are coming together in new and exciting ways. 

Video: Comcast’s Mark Muehl describes how Comcast is using OpenStack and shows the audience a live demo of its Xfinity service running on OpenStack.

Through Cisco’s Open Network Environment (ONE) initiative, we have the widest range of solutions in the industry that deliver an open and programmable network. Cisco ONE, which embraces OpenStack, software defined networking (SDN), and network function virtualization (NFV), has dozens of active customers, including major service providers, massively scalable data centers, government organizations, and multiple Fortune-100 companies. 

Through our work with global service providers who see the potential of open, programmable networks, we are continuing to build the foundation for the next-generation Internet.  The new Internet will become a platform to enable new cloud-centered applications, such as cloud-based DVR, through which video subscribers can store their favorite content in the cloud and access it from any device, anywhere.

Cisco is very proud to be working with leading entertainment and technology leaders like Comcast, and we look forward to helping the Pay TV industry make the successful transition to standards-based cloud technology.



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David Yates

as Director of Service Provider Video Marketing at Cisco

SP360

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Anytime, Anywhere Efficiency

Cisco_Work-Anytime

As today’s workforce continues to become more mobile and adopt the “on-the-go” mentality both at home and at work, their needs are also evolving. Companies need to respond. Empowering employees to work anytime, anywhere will improve efficiencies and increase productivity. When the staff takes their work outside of office walls, an environment of knowledge, sharing and creativity across local, regional and global teams is created naturally. The Internet of Everything (IoE) is a clear driver in this new collaborative environment as companies continue to connect more people, devices, processes and data.  This collaborative environment, in turn, also empowers a company as a whole through the insights and data exchanged.

In one of my previous posts, How Not Where Is What Matters Most in a Collaborative Work Environment, I noted that mobile and remote workers have higher performance ratings than traditional workers. Are these connections increasing the comfort level with utilizing remote resources on a consistent basis, such as remote mentoring or collaboration with global teams? Is it the extended connection to global colleagues and customers to obtain better insight and decisions? Or, is it the combination? Continue reading “Anytime, Anywhere Efficiency”



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Sheila Jordan