Cisco Partner Summit is just 10 days away, and if you aren’t attending the live event in Boston, consider this another reminder to register for Cisco Virtual Partner Summit (VPS). You’ll be joining thousands of our partners from all over the world for three lively days of Cisco Partner Summit keynotes, executive chats and breakout sessions on business-critical topics. During Cisco VPS, you’ll also gain access to a range of activities unique to the virtual platform, and a full program designed to maximize your online experience.

Let’s take a few minutes to look at what we have in store for Cisco VPS this year.  Read More »

Tags: americas, APJC, Cisco, EMEAR, john chambers, partner, partner summit, virtual partner summit, VPS Dialogs

To help us understand what business executives think about ‘the cloud’ and the impact of cloud collaboration to their businesses, we asked Forbes Insights to conduct research.  In response, Forbes surveyed over 500 senior executives from global companies with sales ranging from $250 million to over $20 billion, and interviewed 15 executives.  The study examined the ways business executives increasingly look at cloud collaboration as a way to increase productivity, accelerate business results, and enhance innovation and collaboration across borders and functions. We weren’t surprised by the positive response to cloud, but some new and very interesting findings opened our eyes.

The survey results show Read More »

Tags: cloud, cloud collaboration, collaboration, Forbes Insights, research

Earlier this month Shane Snow, Tech journalist and co-founder of @Contently, opened up a can of worms with his article “Hug vs. Handshake”. When he, a “married dude”, runs into a male acquaintance both in and outside the workplace, a handshake is an acceptable and preferable greeting for both men. But “with females, I feel like I’m trapped between two walls of a deep-space garbage compactor. On the first meeting, we shake hands. Easy. But the next time we cross paths? Is a handshake now too formal (especially if we got along well in the first meeting)? Will a hug be awkward?”

Jessica Roy, a reporter for Betabeat and the New York Observer, offers a different angle on this conundrum:

The problem with shaking hands, of course, is that you might fracture our brittle bones with your manly monster shake. But the problem with hugging is that you might accidentally touch our delicate lady areas. What’s a dude to do?

And Tim Sackett, a journalist at Ragan.com, summarises the whole debate in his (literally) bold words:

Women will hug anything.

What are we talking about here? Our desks? Coffee machines? A lion at the nearest zoo?!

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This may seem to some a rhetorical question, right? It’s in the name! A guide that describes the design and implementation of a system or solution. That seems simple enough. Cisco Design and Implementation Guides (DIGs) can be found in the Cisco Design Zone. Many of these designs are Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs) that include internal or external testing, some are reference designs, and some are visionary architectures or best practices documented by experienced engineers.

As a Network Architect, I came to Cisco to develop CVDs and accelerate business solutions beyond just the “marketecture” vision. I wanted to prove how products and systems can be used to create end-to-end solutions that work better together, more than just the sum of their parts, solving real-world business problems.

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Tags: Cisco Design Zone, Cisco ISE, cisco live, Cisco LMS, Cisco Security, Compliance Solution for PCI DSS 2.0, Design and Implementation Guides

Nexus 1000V is a finalist for Best of TechEd

Cisco is making a big splash with our virtual networking portfolio at Microsoft TechEd North America 2013, running June 3-6 in New Orleans, Microsoft’s premier event for IT professionals and developers. There will be over 7,000 attendees and there is still time to make plans to get there yourself if you want to learn more about Cisco’s role in the Microsoft ecosystem. For details, visit our show microsite.

The event is well-timed with the GA release of our Nexus 1000V virtual switch for the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor reaching customers next week. Not coincidently, the Nexus 1000V has been selected as a finalist in the 2013 Best of TechEd awards in the Virtualization category and is eligible for the overall Attendees Pick award for the show. (If you do go as an attendee, make sure to vote early and often, as they say!)

It’s great to see the enthusiasm and interest in our whole virtual networking portfolio as we ramp up to tap this market in a big way now. I’ve been writing the last couple of months about how much interest there was in the beta version and how well it was received, and how we’ve removed the main barrier to adoption by making the Essential version of the Nexus 1000V virtual switch available at no cost.

Read More »

Tags: Hyper-V, InterCloud, Microsoft TechEd, Nexus 1000v, SCVMM, vPath