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I’ve been a bit remiss about posting recently; it’s conference-paper-writing season, folks — sorry.

But I thought I’d mention that I’ll be speaking at the Midwest Open Source Software Convention (MOSSCon) this weekend.

I’ll be talking about my work in Open MPI, Hardware Locality (hwloc), and other open source projects, as well as Cisco’s role in open source communities.  To be honest, when I joined Cisco (7 years ago… where has the time gone?), the fact that I could keep working in the open source community was one of the major factors in my decision to come here.

Continue reading “Speaking about Open MPI / FOSS at Midwest Open Source Convention this weekend”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software

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When natural disasters strike, our first instincts are to phone or text loved ones; check news and social media sites; and go online to lend support. These connections become our lifelines. In the process, mobile devices become paramount in connecting people to people and people to data.

That’s why the Internet of Everything (IoE) is so critical. In the moments immediately following a disaster popular social media networks, like Facebook and Twitter, serve as quick ways to locate loved ones. At the same time, social media allows those affected to inform multiple people at once that they are okay, with a simple tweet or post. Continue reading “Making Connections When Mother Nature Hits”



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Welcome to the Season Finale of Season 2 of Engineers Unplugged! It’s the perfect conversation to end with, as Joel McKelvey (NetApp, @joelmckelvey) and Gina Minks (Dell, @gminks) talk about the data center of the future, and the transformations that are necessary within the business. This is well past speeds and feeds, let’s take a look:

And of course, unicorns.

Joel McKelvey and Gina Minks bring the unicorn to the future of data centers everywhere.
Joel McKelvey and Gina Minks bring the unicorn to the future of data centers everywhere.

Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:

  1. Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
  2. Subscribe to the podcast here: engineersunplugged.com
  3. Follow the #engineersunplugged conversation on Twitter
  4. Submit ideas for episodes or volunteer to appear by Tweeting to @CommsNinja
  5. Practice drawing unicorns

We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with all new episodes for Season 3. Make sure to catch up on the episodes you might have missed, there are some exciting developments coming for Cisco Live, and we want your vote. Thanks for watching!

Stay up to date on the latest by liking us at Facebook.com/EngineersUnplugged.

 

 



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By Greg Scullard, Technical Leader, Cloud Systems Management Technology Group Greg Scullard

In recent years, catalogs have had a major role in allowing product offer and service creation sourced from complex value chains.

At the Management World conference expo held between 13th and 16th May 2013 and organized by TM Forum, which is a global, non-profit industry association focused on enabling service providers by providing agility and innovation, we are presenting and demonstrating, as Cisco Systems, the “Catalog Management in Digital Services Mash-Ups” as part of a “Catalyst” project in collaboration with a partner.

The goal is to use multiple product and service catalogs to communicate, expose and mash-up existing building blocks into new and innovative services in an efficient and easily understood manner among the players; the multiple catalogs are a key enabler for delivering and operating digital services in this environment. This Catalyst offers Continue reading “Catalog Management in Digital Services Mash-Ups”



Authors

Jamie Lerner

Senior Vice President and General Manager

Cloud and Systems Management Technology Group

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Interop 2013 took place last week in Las Vegas from May 6-10 and despite wireless connectivity at the Mandalay Bay being dreadful,  #Interop 2013 was very well received by customers, partners, and analysts. Our booth location was ideal, and we were situated in between Huawei and HP. This made for interesting conversations as attendees went from booth to booth looking for giveaways.

I wanted to share some of the highlights and buzz from the show. For a complete photo album, please visit our facebook channel

See Jacob Rapp and Robb Boyd discuss Unified Fabric trends in the Data Center

Continue reading “Data Center and Cloud @ Interop 2013”



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Join us at Black Hat 2013 in Las Vegas this July, for our two-day hands-on Network Threat Defense, Countermeasures, and Controls course. Courses will be offered on July 27-28 and July 29-30, and attendees will learn and perform two network security roles. First, as a Security Practitioner, you’ll learn to secure and harden network infrastructure devices, and second, as a Security Incident Response Investigator, you must correctly detect, classify, and mitigate threats attacking a network by configuring and deploying advanced network threat defenses and countermeasures. Learning these roles will help you prepare for and respond to real world threats such as the recent Financial ServicesSpamHaus, and OpUSA Denial of Service Attacks. Continue reading “Network Threat Defense at Black Hat 2013”



Authors

Randy Ivener

Incident Manager, Applied Intelligence Team

Security Intelligence Operations

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In my last post, I discussed the importance of a strong network foundation.  Let’s get a little deeper into this now. The strategies depicted in the diagram below have been developed over nearly two decades of Cisco Services experience in the field.  These outline what MUST be addressed in order to successfully and fully optimize your investment.  Omission of any one will induce risk into the project.  I will highlight this as we pass through the strategies.

Optimized Strategy Design 2

Continue reading “Steps to Optimizing Your Network – Design & Hardware Strategy”



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The early days of the Internet were a heady time of reimagining, rethinking, and, in effect, “e-enabling” a staggering range of business processes. Today, we stand on the cusp of an equally momentous paradigm shift driven by an explosion in connectivity—not just among devices, but also encompassing people, Rachael McBrearty Blog 2 Graphic_Finalv3process, data, and “things.” This next-generation digital revolution will upend entrenched mind-sets and disrupt existing business strategies on a nearly unprecedented scale, transforming, yet again, the customer experience.

As I shared in Part 1 of my blog, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group projects that the Internet of Everything (IoE) economy will generate $14.4 trillion in Value at Stake for private-sector companies globally over the next decade. Nearly 26 percent of this total — $3.7 trillion — will be tied to IoE-driven customer experience advances.

But how do companies begin to tap the vast potential of the next-wave Internet? Since the Internet of Everything remains a work in progress, its uncharted waters and multidimensional scope will demand wholly new ways of thinking as organizations connect to a larger — much larger — universe. In order to meet IoE’s challenges effectively, your business will need a multidimensional toolkit — one that bridges marketing, design, engineering, economics, finance, or any other discipline required inside or outside your company.

The methodology that can enable these capabilities is design thinking. Drawing on methods used by design professionals, it combines empathy for the human context of the problem; creativity in the generation of insights and solutions; and rationality and feedback to analyze the solution within the customer context.

Design thinking is ideal for problem solving within highly complex situations. Which brings us to IoE. Its high level of complexity will demand that you rethink what you do for your customers, while redefining how issues can be addressed.

Knowing the customer is an age-old path to success. And at the heart of design thinking is a deeper understanding of the customer, citizen, or patient, pinpointing the human needs that fall between business objectives and the technology solutions. Employing user-centered qualitative research methods of observation, ideation, and prototyping, design thinking cuts to the essence of the human pain point and is centered on understanding the role you play in the lives of those whom you are serving. Defining and shaping the problem — in effect, determining the right question to ask — is key. Problem framing comes before problem solving and will be the foundation the creative insight in IoE innovation.

Unlike analytical thinking, which is based on a breakdown of ideas, design thinking concentrates on building up ideas with a broad focus, especially in the early stages of the problem-solving process. Once those early ideas are encouraged to develop, without judgment, they can spur creative thinking.

Here is an example of design thinking at work:

A retail client asked, “How do we increase sales conversions?” The client had the best merchandise selections, financing options, and competitive prices. Customers sang their praises in focus groups. Yet,  they were converting only about 25 percent of shoppers. With a design-thinking approach, we were able to reframe the problem. Customers were attracted by the assortment, we realized, but they were overwhelmed by the choices. They were looking for guidance on the right solution. By reframing the problem (“How do we help customers make a personalized choice?”), we came up with great ideas that led to new services offerings. In the end, conversion increased significantly.

Design thinking is not a new tool—Procter & Gamble and GE are but two companies employing its concepts, and Stanford and Harvard both teach it. It isn’t a magical cure, either. But it could provide critical solutions within the complex scope of the IoE economy.

As in previous Internet eras, organizations that adapt and redesign the customer experience — essentially by knowing their consumers through empathy and innovative solutions — will thrive. IoE will reach its true potential only if it is seamlessly integrated into customers’ lives. And design thinking — with its emphasis on simplicity and empathy—could cut through the complexity of the coming IoE economy, while driving the creation of products and services that resonate with the way your customers live, work, and play.

After all, isn’t that the reason for creating those products and services in the first place?

 



Authors

Rachael McBrearty

Chief Creative and Group Leader

Cisco Consulting Services

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Location Services has been a holy grail in many industries for almost 5 years now and none more so that in the retail industry. In recent discussions with Chief Executive Officers in leading retailers especially those from a marketing or operations persecutive some interesting comments and trends are emerging.

 

Firstly about a year ago retailers were looking at LBS and saying we must have this, were unsure how to use it to effectively drive their business.

Today in April & May 2013 these executives are equally as excited about the possibilities location services brings to their business, however they are also putting an even greater focus on the ROI. When vying for capex resources a compelling business case is one that has a clear return on the investments needed. When considering a guest WiFi deployment and associated location based services the business cases emerging are varied especially  when speaking with some global retailers. Continue reading “Retail & Location Services – hype or happening – what is the value”



Authors

Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences