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I have been participating in meetings with the Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) since 2006 when Cisco joined as a member organization.  ARTS, a division of the National Retail Federation, is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards.  Its mission is to develop best practices, technology standards and educational programs through collaboration and partnerships that will enable retailers, their vendors and suppliers to conduct business globally.  ARTS standards, products and programs are dedicated to fostering innovation, improving shopper experience, and increasing retailer efficiency.

Continue reading “Got Standards?”



Authors

Bart McGlothin

Solution Architect

Compliance Solutions Group

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Can you remember life without Wi-Fi? Mobility is an integrated part of our daily lives – from how we operate as a mobile user or consumer to how we conduct business. And as Cisco continues to focus on architectures and solutions that transform our customers’ businesses, our Wi-Fi business soars: in last week’s Q3 earnings, we reported a 27 percent increase in year-over-year revenue and a 200% increase in sales of Service Provider Wi-Fi. We’ve now seen 6 out of 7 quarters of Wi-Fi growth, and we continue to be the clear industry leader.

We’ve made exciting new announcements in wireless – the industry’s first edition of the 802.11ac module; extending our portfolio for a cloud-managed offering with the acquisition of Meraki; and unveiling several marquees customer deployments.

One of the truly differentiated ways Cisco is delivering business-relevant solutions is extending the Unified Access architecture through the Connected Mobile Experiences solution. This solution embodies Cisco’s commitment to deliver relevance to line of businesses by shifting the network to a revenue enabler that creates meaningful Wi-Fi user experiences and increases business efficiency.

The Connected Mobile Experiences solution uses Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure– access points, controllers, Mobility Services Engine (MSE), and management – to detect, connect, and engage end users and to provide unique insight to venue owners through location analytics.

cmx1 Continue reading “Keeping the Momentum with Business-Relevant Wi-Fi Solutions”



Authors

Sujai Hajela

Senior Vice President,

Enterprise Networking Group

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I am excited to share the news of Cisco’s new partnership with Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, D.C., near my home. Miriam’s Kitchen is committed to ending homelessness in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area by providing homeless persons with access to meals, counseling, clean clothes, medical care, permanent housing, and by ensuring they have the necessary support to remain in housing. Miriam’s Kitchen served 71,948 meals in 2012 and expects to serve 73,500 meals in 2013.

This is a wonderful organization doing good work for my local community. To help them feed and clothe even more homeless persons, Cisco has provided Miriam’s Kitchen with a $25,000 grant. The grant will help provide support for Miriam’s Kitchen’s meals and case management programs, which provide food and a range of services to thousands of people every day. Continue reading “Lending a Helping Hand to Miriam’s Kitchen”



Authors

Patrick Finn

No Longer at Cisco

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The mobile market will be vastly different 10 years from today. We will see two and a half billion more people connected to the internet, but also 50 billion more devices. Those devices are going to have a totally different consumption profile compared with the smartphone or dongle user that we have today. We will have a mobile market with mobile internet which has got to have flexibility in terms of how it supports the massive number of devices, signaling events, and bandwidth that will occur in the future.

To manage this exponential growth in mobile data, effective small cell networks need to take advantage of both licensed and unlicensed spectrum. Small cells help operators increase coverage, capacity, and services, effectively and have already proven to be vital element in mobile networks.  To better integrate licensed and unlicensed small cells, we have identified 5 fundamentals that are important to remember: Continue reading “Bringing Licensed and Unlicensed Small Cells Together”



Authors

Mark Grayson

Distinguished Consulting Engineer

Cisco’s Emerging Technologies & Innovation Group

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The HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule, released January 2013, greatly expands the number of organizations that must comply with HIPAA beyond the known ‘Covered Entities.’

The Final Rule expands the definition of a Business Associate to include an organization that ‘creates, receives, transmits or maintains’ PHI. Adding the term ‘maintains’ into the definition makes a big difference and will include a lot more businesses than before. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that 250,000 – 500,000 additional entities will be considered a Business Associate and therefore must comply with HIPAA. Continue reading “If You Didn’t Care About HIPAA Before, You May Need to Now”



Authors

Terri Quinn

Security Solutions Manager

Security Technology Group

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The wealth management industry is under transformation. In an effort to win back trust, attract new customers and retain existing ones, firms are investing in new collaborative technologies that support their business model transformation from transactions to interactions focused on client centricity. IBSG Figure 4 GraphVarious McKinsey research and studies have shown that those who adopt more client-centric tools and processes can increase revenues up to 20 percent and profitability up to 2.5 times. Cisco’s own research has shown that wealth management firms that adopt client centric tools such as video can reduce client attrition, especially for the critical under-55 segment. Part of this transformation involves investing in video capabilities that enable firms and their experts to touch more customers, more often and in a more intimate manner than voice and email do today.

Getting the right expert to the right customer, at the right time is crucial in being able to offer superior customer service and improve cross-sell and up-sell rates. Another critical, competitive differentiator is embedding video capabilities into the mobile channels and applications customers already use. Continue reading “Next Generation Wealth Management: Mobile Technology Enhances the Customer Experience”



Authors

Steve Ridder

Practice Advisor - Wealth

Management, Americas Business Transformation

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I’ve blogged (a lot) about planning for the integration of IPv6 into your network, and I even threw in some thoughts about how to go about doing the integration.  Some of the procedures discussed in earlier posts included:

Equally important is the task of setting up a lab and (in our next post) developing a test plan. Continue reading “Setting up an IPv6 Lab”



Authors

Jim Bailey

AS Technical Leader

Borderless Networks

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Innovate the education environment by deploying Cisco BYOD Solutions for K-12 to facilitate teaching innovation and emergency  safety . 

Small, medium, and large school districts across the country are utilizing Cisco technology to provide pervasive wireless coverage for their schools.  Wireless coverage can not only provide an enhanced teaching and learning resource, but it can also be utilized as a tool for public safety.

The K-12 Education (PT III): Using Wireless Technologies in Public Safety webcast will take place on May 22nd, 2013 from 10:00 – 11:00 am (PST).  To register for the webcast please click here.

Here’s a sneak preview:

There is nothing more alarming then the event of a lockdown occurring during school for the protection of the students, public safety is a huge concern for parents and teachers alike.  Leveraging Cisco BYOD Solutions for K-12 Education  real-time location tracking in schools becomes a reality in order to determine the whereabouts of mobile device users throughout the campus.  Continue reading “Register for the K-12 Education: Using Wireless Technologies in Public Safety Webcast”



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I am looking forward to next week’s Citrix Synergy conference in Anaheim, Los Angeles with sense of great anticipation. If you are fortunate enough to be attending, I am sure you are looking forward to next week too – and surely not because of the proximity to Disneyland. Whether it’s Mark Templeton’s keynote or the CTO innovations session or the Citrix party – there is always lots to learn and great people to meet.  Just as important for me, we at Cisco have another great opportunity to share and demonstrate the latest innovations in our Cisco Desktop Virtualization Solutions portfolio for Citrix XenDesktop environments. There is something in store for every IT professional, from self-guided demos to a live expo of what’s going on behind the scenes at the conference.  I want to spend the next few minutes taking you through a virtual tour of the Cisco presence at the event.

Since I visited Citrix Synergy Barcelona in 2012 October, Cisco has made significant progress by expanding on the Desktop Virtualization front to help you choose a desktop virtualization solution ideally optimized to your own delivery model, scale, use case and cost requirements Ashok Rajagopalan does a great job describing these solutions in his video blog

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Continue reading “Looking for Action? Citrix Synergy or Disneyland – or Both”



Authors

Ravi Balakrishnan

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Datacenter Solutions