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Originally posted on the Huffington Post on 01/23/2013

Stephen Ondieki lives in Africa’s second-largest slum, Kibera in Kenya, where most residents earn less than US$1 a day. However, Stephen owns a computer repair shop that not only enables him to earn US$8 a day, but also to give back to his community by turning his shop into a hang-out spot for youth, whom he mentors and teaches about IT and networking. “They see me overcoming the same challenges they face and they’re motivated to try to make some changes themselves,” he says.

Stephen acquired his IT skills through training with the Cisco Networking Academy, a program that collaborates with organizations around the world to teach hundreds of thousands of students the skills needed to build, design, and maintain networks – an increasingly crucial skill in an increasingly networked world.

Tae_BB_012313Stephen Ondieki is a graduate of the academy at Raila Education Centre in Kibera.

Stephen’s success and community outreach in Kibera would not have been possible without reliable and affordable access to a broadband connection. For Stephen and for many other individuals in developing countries around the world, broadband connectivity acts as a powerful catalyst as well as an anchor for economic and social advancement.

Read the complete post on Huffington Post Impact X.



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Tae Yoo

No Longer with Cisco

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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)”



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John Earnhardt

No Longer at Cisco

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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.



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Rex Backman

Senior Marketing Manager, Big Data Solutions

Data Center and Cloud

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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

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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?

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”



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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”



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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

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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

Cisco Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) Security Research and Operations