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…here are the type of votes contestants would love to receive.   We recently saw two items that speak well on the progress of UCS against the most important yardsticks:  how IT professionals and our partners rate Cisco as a computing systems vendor.

First up is CRN’s Annual Report Card.   This is where IT solution providers rate vendors in categories of product innovation, support and partnership.   For Midrange Servers, Cisco took top marks:

CRN Annual Report Card

Note the margin.  A blowout worthy of Dickie V superlatives.  We have CRN’s commentary on the Midrange category posted here and you can doubleclick into a detailed scores breakout on their Report Cards page.

Next up:  TheInfoPro Servers and Virtualization Study.  This is a recurring report from 451 Research, now in it’s 12th iteration, which brings together interview feedback from IT professionals.   You have to love a good old 2×2 (especially the upper right.)   Here, customers located Cisco in the lead among server vendors on both the Promise and Fulfillment indices:

Infopro vendor market window

Report highlights:

  • Cisco tops the charts in both promise and fulfillment among large and midsize enterprises, significantly leading HP, IBM, and Dell.
  • Cisco ranks highest of all vendors in strategic vision and technical innovation.
  • Cisco’s rating is extremely positive, above average in 13 out of 14 categories.
  • Cisco is the ONLY server vendor to be ranked in the leading quadrant in 2010, 2011, and 2012 of the TheInfoPro study.

Now, please re-read that list, but this time out loud and in your best Dick Vitale voice.   You have to throw in a few “BAAAAYBY”s to achieve the full effect.    ‘Tis the Season, after all.

Keep an eye out during the tournament this year, you might just see a TV spot about a Cinderella story….

 



Authors

Todd Brannon

Senior Director, Cloud Infrastructure Marketing

Cisco Cloud Infrastructure and Software Group

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Here I sit… In Mel’s Drive-In Diner, San Francisco, CA. I just inhaled the “El Ranchero Americano”, which I am sure to regret later, and am enjoying tunes from yester-year complete with Doo-Wop and Presley. You may ask, “Why do I care…?”  Well, before this turns into an episode with Anthony Bourdain, I will let you know that I am in ‘The City’ attending RSA Conference 2013.

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RSA Conference 2013 Video

 

Allow me to give you a quick background.  RSA’s goal is to connect security professionals from around the world in order to continue the growth and importance of security as technology aggressively expands. RSA started these conferences in 1991 when internet security really became a topic of discussion.  Everyone who is anyone is here, from start-up companies to our own Cisco.

Again, you might ask “What’s the big deal?”  I listened to a keynote by Vint Cerf, widely known as ‘The Father of the Web’, he gave an ‘If you can imagine…” speech. In this talk, he said if we could imagine our refrigerator being able to ‘talk’ to us… explore the internet for recipes in which the ingredients are what we currently have in the fridge and have a list of those recipes ready for us on the door or emailed to us. Pictures on our refrigerator being streamed live from our loved ones as they are posted on various social media sites, keeping us in the loop with our families across the world… It’s not ‘If’, it’s most certainly ‘when’… We are currently living in the era of the ‘Internet of Everything’.

With this, though, comes the most important element:  Security. How? How do we secure all of our information as we move forward? How do we secure billions of people while maintaining a ‘free moving internet?’ That’s why we’re here. We are here to discuss current security initiatives, evolving ideas, discussing the gaps in our current security… We are here to protect you.

As we move forward, it is absolutely essential to protect our ‘freedom’ to use the internet anytime, anywhere, and on any device. There are professionals working tirelessly in order to maintain that connectivity, and conversely, there are just as many trying to take our freedom away by disrupting our service and ‘stealing’ our personal information for their personal gain.

In our progression to ‘work our way’ in every way, we must stay vigilant and always on guard. I don’t know about you, but I do enjoy my flexibility and I also know I can sleep well at night knowing that there are people invested in my cybersecurity safety.

Until next time.

Mark



Authors

Mark Rogers

Marketing Manager

Global Public Sector Marketing Team

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Most of us did not grow up sharing our private feelings with the world.  Today we are faced with the challenge of needing to build our brand.  This test can help you understand how socially connected you already are.

Be as web savvy as a librarian

When was the last time you visited a library?
Hint: Wikipedia counts.

Learn how future librarian, Elizabeth Lieutenant, is using Twitter to connect with like-minded students, professors and prospective employers.

Continue reading “How to build the future you”



Authors

Silvia Karina Spiva

Thought Leader

Influencer Marketing

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Once again, Cisco is honored to be on Fortune Magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” List.  Fortune tells us that the Most Admired list is the “definitive report card on corporate reputations.” We are also included in the Top 10 “Most Admired Tech Companies” list.

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers stated, “We are honored to be recognized by our peers as one of the most admired companies in the world. We know we would not be on this prestigious list without our customers, our innovative employees, our partners and our investors. So, on behalf on all of them, we thank Fortune for this honor and will strive to live up this honor each and every day.”

Congratulations to all Cisco employees who develop the best technology in the world and help solve our customers’ most pressing business needs.  Congratulations also to our fellow Silicon Valley companies on this list: Apple, Google, Intel, E-Bay and Facebook.  The full list is here.

And, as our CEO reminds us, those companies that are on top today can be gone or on the bottom if they miss a market transition. To further prove this point, Fortune also includes a list of companies that were on their FIRST list of companies ranked by reputation from 1983. Seven companies that were on that list, including Kodak, Wang and Rockwell are no longer around.  So, if you are a Cisco employee reading this, my advice for you is this: pat yourself on the back, then GET BACK TO WORK*!! : )

 The methodology and survey for this list, developed at Hay Group, is as follows:

Continue reading “Cisco on Fortune’s “World’s #MostAdmired Companies” List”



Authors

John Earnhardt

No Longer at Cisco

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Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Leadership Awards awarded to Cisco the EPA 2013 Supply Chain Leadership Award for innovation, commitment, leadership, and technical achievements in managing and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout our supply chain.

The award is among several given by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Center for Corporate Climate Leadership, the Association of Climate Change Officers, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and The Climate Registry.

Winners of the Supply Chain Leadership Award are at the leading edge of managing GHGs in their organizational supply chains.

Continue reading “Cisco’s Supply Chain Climate Leadership Recognized with EPA’s 2013 Supply Chain Leadership Award”



Authors

Edna Conway

Chief Security Officer

Chief Security Officer, Global Value Chain

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More and more this novel idea of user classifications and workload profiles is being used to separate VDI user allocations. I’ve worked with many customers who prefer to stack rank their users based on the importance of their role/job function and the typical applications that user needs in their role as a means to (hopefully) gain a more appropriate VDI resource allocation. Again – this is a great idea and a good excuse for organizations to take a long hard look at their users and the applications they use day to day.

In case you are finding this blog for the first time, we have been attempting to defy blog physics and host a series of blogs – this requires the use of a manually updated table of contents:

  1. VDI “The Missing Questions” #6: What do you really gain from a 2vCPU virtual desktop? 
  2. VDI “The Missing Questions” #7:  How memory bus speed affects scale
  3. VDI “The Missing Questions” #8: How does memory density affect VDI scalability?
  4. VDI “The Missing Questions” #9: How many storage IOPs?

You are Invited!  If you’ve been enjoying our blog series, please join us for a free webinar discussing the VDI Missing Questions, with Tony, Doron, Shawn and Jason!  Access the webinar here!

Most of the time the three main items separating user classes are:

  1. vCPU quantity
  2. Memory allocation
  3. Disk space

The first sort of pitfall that I see occasionally is too much granularity in the workload profiles. Don’t get me wrong, if you have a good view into your users and applications that you see the need to support and manage 5 different user classifications – that’s great news! But most of the time it comes down to 3 particular types of user classifications:

  1. Gold (Multiple vCPU’s, a lot more RAM and disk space than other folks)
  2. Silver (Could be a couple of vCPU’s, usually more RAM than the OS calls for, can be required for specialized apps, etc)
  3. Bronze (These are almost always single vCPU and minimum amount of RAM profiles)

A good sort of buildup approach to start determining your workload profile requirements must take into consideration the users and compute requirements based on the apps those users will be running. In most cases, the Operating System you choose will be the foundation to start your buildup approach. The aging Windows XP platform is quickly being consumed by Windows 7 in the corporate workspace. There are few folks out there continuing to stand up net new systems for users and using Windows XP. This is for a number of reasons – most new PC’s and their manufacturers (not to mention this little company called Microsoft) are not developing drivers and supporting the workhorse XP operating system. Let’s be honest, Windows XP came out in 2001. Windows XP is older than my twin girls that are in 4th grade! It was a good ride, but it must come to an end. You probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned Windows 8 yet. After all, it is the newest desktop Operating System (OS) that Microsoft has out. There are a couple of reasons for this: Most corporate users don’t jump onto the latest OS because they have to support many users, must test/qualify their applications on a new operating system and as we all know – anything new usually has fixes and enhancements to follow. Plus, as a general rule of thumb, the first Service Pack must come out before anyone will give real consideration to mass deployment in any organization. Beyond the general newness of the Windows 8 OS, it will be interesting to see how “Corporate America” will integrate the new look and feel of Windows 8. With that being said, we have Windows 7 which came out in 2009 and already has Service Pack 1 with a host of subsequent updates. This is the OS that most folks are planning their VDI environments for. Per Microsoft, the requirements for Windows 7 are as follows:

Continue reading “VDI “The Missing Questions” #5: How does 1vCPU scale compared to 2vCPU’s?”



Authors

Shawn Kaiser

Consulting Systems Engineer

Data Center

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Mobility and application access capabilities have encouraged many of today’s work patterns. Some work behaviors were recently noted in a Cisco-commissioned research report on mobility and BYOD comparing IT and end user viewpoints. Striking about the findings is that day-to-day business activities were relatively balanced on wired and wireless connections—so while mobility is here and growing, usage is no more than wired. Core to the findings were end users’ view that mobile devices are 37% less effective than their corporate laptop for conducting business activities. From an IT perspective, managing devices and multiple policies in a wired and wireless environment was a key challenge. Mobile device usage behaviors surveyed suggested a personal and social flair. The predominant applications used on mobile devices are not specific business applications (22%) but collaborative applications (56%). The report also indicates that mobile devices are used for personal use more frequently than IT estimates.  Continue reading “Consider Mobile Work Patterns and Security Impact”



Authors

Kathy Trahan

Senior Security Solutions Marketing Manager

Global Marketing Corporate Communications

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A few weeks ago we launched new Cisco Unified Access solutions at Cisco Live. These included the new Catalyst 3850 switch and the new Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller, both built on the new Unified Access Data Plane ASIC.  These will be key for Cisco partners and their customers as they implement BYOD policies and add more wireless access in branch offices, stores, and other remote locations. It’s a great opportunity for you to help your customers deploy these technologies with a converged approach.

To capitalize on this opportunity, of course, you’ll need to learn something about Cisco Unified Access and I’ve got some ideas for you on that.  Continue reading “Take the Unified Access Partner Challenge for a Chance to Win an iPad”



Authors

Lauren Friedman

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks

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Financial markets today have become so dependent on well-designed technology architecture in support of growing automated trading business. I was recently part of a webinar centered on discovering how optimized latency performance, mitigation of microbursts, traffic filtering and analysis, and precise timing and synchronization are beneficial to all participants in the trading value chain.

The webinar was hosted by Wall Street & Technology, entitled, “Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance.” If you weren’t able to make it, register here to view a recording.

During the discussion, I was joined by some great minds in the financial services sector including Alex Tabb, Partner, TABB Group and Paul Jameson, Senior Director, Financial Services, Cisco. We discussed how high-performance trading fabric architecture and innovations like Cisco Algo Boost and the Cisco Nexus 3548 can help financial firms address challenges and capture opportunities in today’s financial markets. Here are a few key take-aways from the webinar I would like to highlight. Continue reading “Post-WEBINAR: Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance”



Authors

Dave Malik

Cisco Fellow and Chief Architect

Customer Experience