Avatar

Cisco is honored to be on the Global 100 list of the worlds’ most sustainable companies as announced today at the World Economic Forum in Davos by Corporate Knights, a Toronto, Canada-based media and investment research company.

Being recognized by Corporate Knights as a company that takes sustainability very seriously is a nice reflection of the values that our 66,000 global employees hold.  We certainly want to be a successful company and a measure of that success includes operating in a sustainable and responsible manner.  Cisco strongly believes in creating shared value for the communities in which we operate as well as our business.

Tae Yoo, Cisco’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs commented, “We are very proud of our inclusion on the Global 100 list. Cisco is deeply committed to corporate social responsibility and utilizing the power of people and technology networks to multiply our impact on society, the environment and our business.”

Commenting on this year’s Global 100, Toby Heaps, Corporate Knights CEO, remarked, “the Global 100 are leading a resource productivity revolution, transforming waste into treasure and doing more with less. They are steering our civilization away from ecological overshoot and back to a place of balance with our planet.”

Continue reading “Cisco Recognized on “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World” List (#WEF)”

Authors

John Earnhardt

No Longer at Cisco

Avatar

RiversandBlogUnderstanding the true capacity of an application and how it responds under stress is always top of mind for ISV’s as they bring solutions to market. Recently at Microsoft’s  Partner Solutions Center (MPSC) in Redmond we and our partners X-IO and Scalability Experts worked with ISV Riversand Technologies to provide the ‘hard proof’ that their SQL Server based retail application could scale to expected demands.

Comprised of UCS servers for compute, Windows Server and SQL Server for the Microsoft stack, and X-IO storage system components we worked with the technical staff of Scalability Experts and our aforementioned partners to execute a comprehensive benchmark test on the Riversand solution MDMCenter.

The joint benchmark test not only confirmed MDMCenter solutions capabilities, but additionally showcased its speed and scalability that exceeded all expectations of the aspects that the benchmark aimed to measure. Read the case study here and learn how Cisco UCS, working with our technology partners, can deliver high-end SQL Server performance.

Visit www.cisco.com/go/microsoft to learn more on Cisco’s technologies and solutions for Microsoft environments.

Authors

Rex Backman

Senior Marketing Manager, Big Data Solutions

Data Center and Cloud

Avatar

The visibility and importance of service provider WiFi solutions have grown tremendously in the last year or so, based on a growing realization of the benefits.  And it’s not just for offload.   WiFi is a valuable tool in helping operators optimize their networks, monetize various applications, and handle the explosion in devices people use to connect to the Internet.

Cisco has been a mover and leader in the WiFi arena, and two recent customer deployments – Virgin Media in the UK and PT Telekom in Indonesia – further underscore the momentum.

Cisco and Virgin Media have collaborated on a Wi-Fi network that would bring mobile broadband to passengers of the London Underground subway system.  Working with Transport for London, the transportation authority for all London mass transit systems, Cisco and Virgin Media designed and built a Wi-Fi network that would not only bring a reliable broadband signal to London Underground’s stations, but would be robust and durable enough to withstand the less-than-ideal environment under the streets of London. Continue reading “WiFi All Around Us”

Authors

Carter Cromwell

Global Analyst Relations Manager

Corporate Communications

Avatar

The Cisco Aironet 3600 features the Highest 802.11n performance with Cisco CleanAir™ technology and is the industry’s first 4 x 4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) access point with three spatial streams. It has add-on options for 802.11ac or Wireless Security and Spectrum Intelligence (WSSI) Module and standard 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) .

All right. Who is still awake? Show of hands?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G_iN5aJ05o

One of the challenging things about working for a technology company is avoiding getting lost in the details.  There’s a time and place for technical specifications, to be sure.  But I believe that most people really want to know “How will all this technology make my life better?”. 

Continue reading “Cutting Through The Techno-Babble”

Avatar

The Cisco Process Orchestrator has very rich integration capabilities, yet we often hear the question, “Does it integrate with…” or “Does it work with” [insert product]. The Cisco Process Orchestrator is a primary component in the Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud management solution.

The fact is that in modern environments with modern orchestrators the answer is always yes. The reality is that cloud automation requires a Process Orchestrator tie into a variety of different systems in order to start offering cloud services. Remember, Cloud is an operating model, not a product. This means that to deliver self-service, on-demand services requires all the elements of the service be orchestrated.

Cisco’s internal private cloud is one such example.

The graphic below shows the components in the deployments. You see integration with Cisco UCS, VMware and storage, as you would expect. It also orchestrates IP address management (that IP won’t provision itself), Remedy incident, CMDB, ActiveDirectory (so tenants can log in), image management and a few other things such as Service Assurance.

By the way, the architecture below is Cisco Process Orchestrator provision across multiple Cisco data centers.

Continue reading “Duct Tape for Cloud: Integration Features of Cisco Process Orchestrator and IA for Cloud”

Avatar

As educators increasingly take advantage of networked video technology to move their traditional classrooms online, there is a growing need for both instructors capable of engaging students in these next generation online classrooms, and skilled networking professionals with the knowledge to meet the growing demand to deploy, support and maintain networked video solutions.

In 2011, Learning@Cisco introduced a Leading Virtual Classroom Instructor course that teaches participants how to prepare and manage a virtual classroom, effectively deliver material online, and use video and collaboration tools to maximize student participation and comprehension.

As the paradigm of education continues to evolve to meet new institutional and business requirements, developing instructional strategies for new virtual education environments based on networked video is becoming key to improving student results. The Virtual Classroom Instruction Specialist training and certification help ensure that instructors have the most comprehensive understanding of the latest video technologies and effective classroom collaboration strategies.

Continue reading “Next Generation Video-over-IP Solutions Change How Trainers Train”

Authors

Jeanne Beliveau-Dunn

Vice President and General Manager

Cisco Services

Avatar

It’s only been a few days since we said goodbye to 2012 and we are already seeing what many predicted for 2013: an increase in the creation, enhancement, and usage of numerous exploit kits by cyber criminals. Cyber criminals don’t take long vacations in December. On the contrary, they “work hard” and make lots of money during the holiday season! These criminals are continuously improving their tools to keep up with us (the good guys) and continue enhancing their “money-making machines.” A real-life example is how cyber criminals were able to quickly incorporate the exploits of the recently found Java vulnerability that I described in a post a few days ago.

Exploit kits make it easy for these criminals because they can easily spread malicious software that exploits well-known and new vulnerabilities. New exploit kits are loaded with some of the most dangerous zero-day exploits and other features that allow criminals to increase their profits.

Continue reading “Happy New Exploit Kits! (I mean Happy Belated New Year!)”

Authors

Omar Santos

Distinguished Engineer

AI Security Engineering, S&TO

Avatar

I always enjoy Fast Company and Wired. But this month there’s something extra in both: You can make the Internet of Everything come alive using your smartphone or tablet, via a Cisco ad in the magazine, just like my colleague Jeanette is doing here with her phone:

Jeanette-AR-1

FastCompany-AR-4

You can do it, too:

1. First, get the app. If you don’t already have the newest version, download the Cisco app (available for iPhone, iPad and Android) from Cisco.com/app or from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

2. Next, go get the magazine. Grab the newest (February) editions of Wired or Fast Company. Inside you’ll find Cisco’s TOMORROW starts here ad. (If you can’t pick up a copy of the magazine, check out the experience and learn more about the Internet of Everything on the TOMORROW starts here web site. )

3. Start the app and touch the Wake up an Ad icon.

4. Press Start to wake up the ad.

(Again, if you don’t have the actual ad you can also print or view on the screen a copy of the ad from your computer, or visit the main TOMORROW starts here site.)

5. Point your phone or tablet at the ad

Jeanette-AR-3

 

6. Choose “Magazine” when the translucent overlay appears.

AR-splash-screen-magazine

7. Have fun playing with the interactive experience!

FastCompany-AR-4

Some tips:

  • Zoom in close to the pictures, because several of them pop out or animate when you do.
  • Click on the activate images: They’ll come alive in video, and from the video you can link to more background information.

Try this with friends, colleagues and neighbors, and if you like it be sure to use the Share buttons from within the app.

Authors

Martin Hardee

Director, Cisco.com

Cisco.com

Avatar

Do you have to deal with re-authentication when your wireless internet connection drops? Isn’t it annoying when you have to deal with minutes seconds of failover?

You may be suffering from downtime resulting from your primary controller going down.

Symptoms include: network downtime, poor quality of experience for users, and major headache for IT. This is because when the controller goes down, the access point has to rebuild the CAPWAP tunnel completely from scratch, rebuild all channel and power settings on the Access Points, resulting in the users having to reauthenticate and lose all data from the previous connection. This can be annoying for users, which in turn puts pressure on IT.

Luckily for you, Cisco has Stateful SwitchOver for Wireless!

Cisco Stateful SwitchOver solves all the problems of controller fail-over downtime with its innovative setup of a secondary stand-by controller that holds a replica copy of all the data being exchanged between the access point and the controller. This means that when the primary controller fails, there is a sub-second (yes, less than one-second) switchover for hundreds of Access Points to the secondary controller AND a seamless user experience! Sound too good to be true? It’s not.

Check out this short 2 minute video on the basics of SSO:

For more information, check out Cisco Stateful SwitchOver