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This week, the third and final chapter of the most recent Cisco Connected World Technology Report was released. This global survey asked 1,800 IT professionals in 18 countries across a broad range of industries to share their views on the potential challenges of Big Data and beyond. In a previous post , I discussed the evolution of Big Data and the importance of extracting value out of Data in Motion to create new  applications that matter here and now, in real-time. ( Beyond Big Data : Mastering Data in Motion for Positive Business Impact)

Just as the Internet of Everything is bringing together people, process, data, and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable, the same is true of Big Data — the ability to turn information into actions will create key advantages for businesses, individuals, and countries. This latest CCWTR report provides crucial insight into how IT professionals view this sea change.

Two in three of the survey respondents indicated that Big Data will continue to be a strategic priority for their company in 2013 and for the next five years. Globally, IT professionals believe that Big Data will not only help improve decision making in their own companies but that it will also increase the global competitiveness of their countries.  Countries such as China, Mexico, and India saw the strongest correlation between Big Data and national competitive advantages (over 80% of respondents agreed).

Data Security and RisksBigData&Beyond

Some of the most interesting findings are about the challenges that IT professionals associate with Big Data. More than one in four respondents globally said that data security and risk management are a major concern. Protecting Big Data is a big challenge. Data resides everywhere; it is in the cloud, in mobile devices, and in social networks. Data comes from disparate sources in different shapes and forms. Multi-perimeter protection is key but securing data and protecting users’ privacy goes beyond the traditional IT view. Big Data brokers buy data sets from stores where you shop and can sell it to anybody.  Sensitive data is protected, but much of your information can be bought and sold without any input or permission from you. While making the data anonymous can protect an individual’s privacy,
re-identification examples show the risks of open data and crowdsourcing.

Better IT Policies

Another particularly interesting finding in the survey is the importance of better policies and improved security to help companies manage the increased traffic related to Big Data but also mobility and video. Only 41% surveyed reported that they were ready for the surge in network traffic. Over 27% say they will need better policies and security measures, and 20% said they will need more bandwidth. These results confirm that bigger pipes alone are not sufficient to handle the data deluge coming from a variety of sources at a high velocity. An intelligent information infrastructure provides a better way to collect, manage, and extract value from data. It is not about transporting the data as quickly as possible from the point of creation to a point of analysis but rather deciding “on the spot” , what to do with the data.

The Key “Takeaway”

Organizations need to expand their view of data beyond traditional storage and analysis in order to develop new systems of engagement that leverage “data in motion,” enabling them to gain real-time insights and create better experiences for their users.

Read more about the report and take a look at the results as they apply to your own country. As usual we welcome your comments!

Data in Motion – A Definition

Data in Motion represents the continuous interactions between connected elements such as people, process, and things. Data from new devices, sensors, and cameras is at maximum value while still in motion. During these interactions, the intelligent network provides secure unique insights in real-time. Value can be extracted and acted upon as events occur to create advantage here and now or even to predict the future. Organizations can make better decisions, provide enhanced experiences, and achieve competitive advantage. A recent Cisco IBSG white paper details the actual value of these connections in some key industries covering a number of use cases. 

 



Authors

Giuliano Di Vitantonio

Vice President

Data Center and Cloud Marketing

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The field for this year’s DoGooder Video Awards is down to a handful of superb finalists. Now you can help choose the winners.

With great difficulty, the DoGooder team has narrowed an incredible array of funny, moving, and compelling videos that communicate important messages down to several finalists.

Voting is easy; just select your favorite video or videos in each category. Visitors can vote once per day through April 5, 2013. This is a great opportunity to get involved with cause video and have an impact on organizations doing crucial work.

Continue reading “Vote for the Winners of the DoGooder Video Awards”



Authors

Alexis Raymond

Senior Manager

Chief Sustainability Office

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This week, NTT announced that it has installed Cisco Connected Stadium Wi-Fi at the Seibu Dome, home of the Saitama Seibu Lions in the Japanese Pacific (Baseball) League. The venue is ready to deliver a new fan experience at opening day on Friday, March 29 – one that is more connected than ever before.

800px-Seibu_Dome_Panorama
Seibu Dome Panorama

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of StadiumVision Mobile last month by the Cisco Sports & Entertainment Solutions Group. Coming out of a recent showcase of this technology at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, the New York Times, ESPN.com, and more media outlets wrote pieces about how Cisco solutions are reshaping the fan experience today.

This latest technology will soon be in soccer, football, and venues such as Santiago Bernabeu (Real Madrid) and Sporting Park (Sporting Kansas City), and the exciting potential of delivering new experiences is why hundreds of key sports executives from more than 15 countries gathered last week for a webcast to hear about how Cisco solutions are transforming the sports realm.

These leaders recognize the new fan experience must be a connected one, capable of delivering new experiences and enabling fans to use their personal mobile devices to interact at all times – whether that is watching live video, ordering food, purchasing merchandise, or interacting with the thousands of fans in the venue or around the world through social media.

It is all about “Connecting the Unconnected” fans and in the future the Internet of Everything (IoE) – the convergence of people, processes, data, and things, which create a powerful opportunity for disruption and change.

The IoE will not just happen. It will require significant network and IT expertise, as well as sustained commitment. There will be some early players who will experiment, but given the critical role of networks in this transition, Cisco is positioned to be a leader in this effort to create unimaginable new experiences in sports, entertainment and beyond.

In the end it is the experience enabled by the “Internet of Everything” that fans want and will pay for right now. It is why more than 140 venues in 30 different countries have turned to us to connect fans at the largest sporting events around the world.




Authors

Rob Lloyd

President, Development and Sales

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We were excited to read the Infonetics Data Center Security Strategies and Vendor Leadership: North American Enterprise Survey, which was released yesterday. It revealed Cisco’s continued leadership in a market that spans a multitude of vendors – application/database, client, data center integration and network. The report indicates that leaders need to offer the right mix of products across the data center security and cloud arenas as well as demonstrate security efficacy and integration into adjacent markets. Cisco has continued to execute on a unified security portfolio spanning firewallsIntrusion Prevention System (IPS), gateways, and integrated threat intelligence further complemented by strategic partnerships. Seamless integration and shared security intelligence with routing and switching (Nexus and Catalyst) and converged infrastructure (Cisco UCS) enables our customers to benefit from optimized traffic links, the highest levels of security resilience, increased availability and scalability as well as lower costs of ownership. Per the report, “to say you’re the leader in the data center/cloud security is to say you are an innovator who can tackle the biggest problems in IT security for the biggest and most demanding customers.”

We’d like to highlight two areas that Cisco has continued to demonstrate an outright lead over other vendors. In the area of perception as the top data center security supplier, Cisco leads with 47 percent of votes compared to IBM with 38 percent and McAfee with 28 percent, who ranked second and third. Cisco scored between 40 to 60 percent of respondents’ votes (covering 10 criteria) for being the leading data center security supplier with McAfee scoring 15 points below Cisco, HP received around 20 percent of votes, and Juniper and Trend with 15 percent.  Continue reading “Cisco Still Number One for Data Center Security”



Authors

Evelyn de Souza

Cloud Data Governance Leader

Chief Technology and Architecture Office

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Since launching our internal executive social media mentoring program, it’s been really eye-opening to get a close up view of their perceptions around using this channel, their goals, and overall interests. We read and hear about different statistics all the time, telling us that executive participation is still in an early adoption stage and this is definitely true. However, the more executives I meet with, the more I see that this statistic is already changing and will continue to evolve!

Make it easier for executives to learn about social media and get involved in the social stream.
Make it easier for executives to learn about social media and get involved in the social stream.

Some of the main themes from these conversations are the usual: building a personal online reputation, supporting the brand, learning how to communicate with different audiences, leveraging social media for business… and of course, participating in social media without impacting bandwidth.

However, where I’m surprised and really encouraged, is by the overall attitudes towards social media and the avid interest in jumping into the social stream. They want to participate and see the value in social media, but often do not know where to begin.

Let’s make it easier for executives to be a part of the social stream and experience everything it has to offer. In my last executives using social media post, I provided recommendations focusing on “getting buy-in tips”.

Here are a few additional suggestions when mentoring executives on the topic of social media:

  • Outline specific goals executives can achieve by learning more about social media and then applying those strategies within the social stream
  • Make it personal for them, focusing on their key business and personal interests
  • Help executives find their social voices so that they can further build their online reputations
  • Provide easy-to-understand best practices, examples, and actual hands-on opportunities to absorb the tips
  • Pace the mentoring sessions so that it’s not overwhelming and provide easy-to-implement next steps (e.g., download a social media app that helps them listen into the social stream when they stand in the airport security line, or provide a user-friendly social media aggregator they can use when then have 5 minutes to read and then share information with followers, etc.)

And it helps to gather other viewpoints and share them with executives. Join us on April 3rd, from 9-9:45am PT, for an unique live opportunity to hear first-hand from Cisco executives about their social media experiences and to engage in an open discussion directly with them. This special “Let’s Chat! #ciscosmt Social Media Training Program Series” executive social media panel broadcast on USTREAM, will include Cisco executives with varying levels of social experiences. They will share the reasons they decided to start using social media, what they’ve experienced, and advice for peers and teams.

Panel includes:

  • Jeanette Gibson, Director, Digital and Social Media Marketing (moderator) (@JeanetteG)
  • Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President, Legal Services and General Counsel (@ChandlerCisco)
  • Sheila Jordan, Senior Vice President, IT Communications and Collaboration (@CiscoSheila)
  • Lance Perry, Vice President, IT (@lanceperrycisco)

Lastly, bring your questions for the executive panelists and share them on the #ciscosmt stream. What are you interested in learning from these executives’ experiences that can help with your own executives? Are there other areas regarding executives and their social media participation you are interested in learning more about?

We look forward to your participation and will look for your #ciscosmt tweets as we get ready for the session this week and during the live broadcast on April 3rd.

If you have any questions or are interested in other types of social media training, check out our new complimentary Cisco Social Media Training Program for customers and partners and follow the #ciscosmt hashtag.  To request customized one-on-one team training sessions, email ciscosmtraining@external.cisco.com.



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There’s an increasing drumbeat of news about the “Internet of Everything” (IoE)— the confluence of people, process, data, and things that makes networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before.

IoE comprises the ubiquitous ways that billions of people and numerous devices on the Internet communicate and report on their status and location. This covers everything from the location of your smartphone, to where a package might be, to the rate of your pulse or your arrival on a street corner, to the condition of a highway.

The Internet of Everything isn’t way off in the future. Today, the number of physical devices connected to the Internet is already six times the number of people on the Internet, even though there are 2 billion of those people. By 2020, there will be 50 billion connected devices.

These devices will come to dominate the “cloud.” Of course, the complexity of a global system that connects all these devices and people is mind-boggling. This global system has the potential for unpredictable and perhaps disastrous behavior. That alone should get the attention of public leaders.

Continue reading “Cloud for Local Government Global Blog Series: State/Local Government & the Internet of Everything”



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Now that HIMSS13 is behind us, we want to say thank you to everyone who attended the Sixth Annual Connected Health Summit and to all of our customers and partners who visited our booth in the exhibit hall. 

Cisco Community for Connected Health Summit
Watch the video replays as experts from North Shore LIJ Health System, Lake Nona, Cisco and Intel discuss their views on how innovation is transforming the world and healthcare. 

Cisco Healthcare Solution Demos
The Cisco booth at HIMSS13 featured healthcare solutions designed to enhance mobility, facilitate collaboration, and enable telehealth. 

Cisco Booth at HIMSS13
Cisco Booth at HIMSS13

We invite you to learn more about these solutions:

  • Bring your own device (BYOD) products
  • Telehealth and care-at-a-distance solutions, including VX Clinical Assistant, Tactical VX, and HealthPresence
  • Cisco UCS with Intel® Xeon® Processors
  • Cisco WebEx
  • Wayfinding kiosk
  • Patient video surveillance products

Special Offers
Register for upcoming workshops, watch webcast replays, view helpful materials, and learn more about special offers to help your organization transform how care is delivered.

  • Complimentary Visual Collaboration Workshop for qualifying US customers
  • Promotional pricing on Wireless LAN Assessment for qualifying US customers
  • Significant discounts through April 22, 2013 on Cisco services for healthcare
  • Upcoming Webcasts
    • Funding for Healthcare Preparedness Initiative
    • Funding Public Health and Prevention Efforts
  • Webcast Replays
    • Telemedicine Innovations at Providence Health
    • HCA Delivers Training and Outreach Programs with Cisco WebEx

See you at HIMSS14!



Authors

Mike Haymaker

Healthcare Industry Marketing

No Longer with Cisco

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As part of Cisco’s Compliance team, I’ve monitored organizational breaches and attacks. If you’re like me and follow media reports and industry news, then you know that data breaches have increased in severity and frequency. Unfortunately, many organizations do not have the tools, personnel, and funding to prevent, quickly detect, and contain data breaches. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council offers robust and comprehensive standards to enhance payment card data security. According to Ponemon Institute, organizations that are PCI compliant have fewer data breaches than non-compliant firms do. However, we know that PCI compliance is not enough. Even if you’ve met the stringent requirements of PCI DSS 2.0, your cardholder data may not be totally secure.

So, how can organizations maintain compliance and end-to-end security? The Compliance Solution team has gathered thought leaders in the payment card industry to offer research, guidance and best practices to help organizations overcome these challenges.

Join our webcast on April 16, 2013, with PCI experts from the Ponemon Institute, Verizon Business, and the PCI Security Standards Council to learn how Cisco can help bridge the gap between PCI compliance and security to minimize the impact of an attack. Continue reading “Join the PCI Experts to Help You Bridge the Gap Between Compliance and Security”



Authors

Carol Ferrara-Zarb

Compliance Solutions Manager

Security Technology Business Unit

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word-cloudToday, we are pleased to launch the VNI Service Awards. This rewards program runs from March 26 to May 10, 2013. The five top finalists will share USD $10,000 in cash prizes. The VNI Service Awards is complementary to our VNI Service Adoption research. This work forecasts global trends in how users are adopting 27 residential, business, and mobile services. It’s now time to tell your story. How are you using these networking services and devices in your daily life? If you’ve created a service, what impact has it had on your clients?

Get Involved and Share Your Story 

medical mobile appWe are looking for stories about how you have used network services such as mobile video and gaming, video conferencing, SMS, and social networking. Whether you own a business, manage a non-profit, or involved in community services, we want to hear from you. Continue reading “Rewarding Innovation: VNI Service Awards Wants Your Story”



Authors

Thomas Barnett, Jr.

Director, SP Thought Leadership

Worldwide Service Provider Marketing Group