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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:

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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

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

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7. Have fun playing with the interactive experience!

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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

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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



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Maya Lin, creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was commissioned to design the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center. Lin found her inspiration in the words “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” a paraphrase from the Book of Amos that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used in his “I Have a Dream” speech and at the start of the Montgomery bus boycott. Photo used with permission from this source.

It was a printer jam that made me realize the full power of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream Speech.”  Growing up in the United States, I had studied Martin Luther King Jr’s  outsize impact on civil rights and American history.  That said, I had never heard the entire speech he gave in 1963  to 200,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Then, a few years ago, the printer at work jammed.  I pulled out the crumpled paper and power cycled it.  While I was waiting, I started reading the poster hanging in the hallway.  It was the full text of the “I Have A Dream” speech.  I was truly moved by the strength of the writing and the ideas it put forth.  I couldn’t believe that I had missed out on this powerful work for so long.  Kudos to people that put up guerilla art in offices!

Nancy Duarte does a great analysis of why the speech is so powerful.  I love her line about the speech “traversing back and forth between what is and what could be, and ending by describing what the new bliss of equality looks like.”

One of my favorite quotes from the speech is this: Continue reading “Until Justice Rolls Down…On Martin Luther King Jr.”



Authors

Olivia Shen Green

No Longer at Cisco

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“We believe economic progress without social development is not sustainable, while social development without economic progress is not feasible.” – Klaus Schwab, Founder and Chairman of the World Economic Forum

World-Economic-Forum-2Historically individuals and institutions have often been limited to the results of their individual efforts to make an impact. With the advent of the Internet and widespread broadband connection, however, it is now possible to efficiently join with others to act collectively – pooling global resources and talents to solve problems too big to solve alone. This is the power of collective knowledge, creativity, and commitment in a connected age. This is what Cisco believes as we consider, plan, and execute our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities.

One way in which Cisco works collaboratively to make a global impact is by participating in events like this week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Cisco is one of the strategic partners of the event and our Chairman and CEO, John Chambers, will be speaking as part of a panel addressing Leading through Adversity on Wednesday, January 23 from  9 to 10 a.m. (CET) (midnight to 1 a.m. PST/3 to 4 a.m. EST).

Continue reading “Cisco CSR Collaborates for Impact at the World Economic Forum”



Authors

Mary Anne Petrillo

Senior Marketing Manager, Digital Strategy

Corporate Social Responsibility

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Please Welcome Helder Antunes to the Manufacturing Industry Blog

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It is with great pleasure that I introduce a key member of the Cisco Connected Industries Group (Cisco CIG), Helder Antunes.

Helder Antunes is Managing Director, Smart Connected Vehicle, CIG . He  is a 15-year Cisco veteran with a background in both network security and the automotive industry.

Helder is currently working closely with all the global automobile manufacturers, in order to explore a partnership between Cisco and the OEMs in defining the next generation Smart Connected Vehicle platform, a key initiative within Cisco’s “Internet of Things” strategy.
Outside of Cisco, Antunes is also a General Partner at Pereira Ventures and a counselor to the Regional Government of the Azores, Portugal.

Helder is no stranger to the cutting edge of the automotive industry. He raced cars for many years and designed some of the early data acquisition systems for race cars. On a personal level, Helder was born on the island of Terceira (Azores, Portuguese Territory) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and traveled to Mozambique, Macau, and other former Portuguese colonies before his family settled in Rhode Island.

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President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Antunes at Cisco HQ, during the 2011 Portuguese Presidential Visit to California.

He has been published in many industry publications on Automotive and other topics including:

Antunes has also received many awards for his work at Cisco and with the Portuguese government and state.

  • 2012 COTEC Portuguese Diaspora Entrepreneurial Innovation Award
  • 2008 CIO 100 Award
  • 2004 Cisco Pioneer Award in Technological Innovation
  • 2003 Cisco Teamwork of the Year Award

Welcome Helder!
Check out his first blog by clicking  here



Authors

Peter Granger

Senior Sales Transformation Manager

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What an exciting time to be in the tech industry. We are at the beginning of a major transition to the Mobile-Cloud era. Trends like bring your own device (BYOD), access anywhere, virtualization, and machine-to-machine connections have given way to a new breed of applications. We estimate that approximately 50 billion devices will be connected by 2020. In 2010 alone, more than 350, 000 applications were developed with more than three million downloads. A 44-fold increase in data creation is predicted from 2010 to 2020, with 34 percent of it in the cloud. All of this leads to a world of intuitive connections between people, processes, data and things on the network – the Internet of Everything.

What does this mean?

https://youtu.be/bAOWpdQeyBQ

Continue reading “The Future of IT”



Authors

Padmasree Warrior

Chief Technology & Strategy Officer

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CMTriviaOnce again this year Cisco will be a Platinum sponsor at Microsoft’s Management Summit 2013 (MMS 2013) in Las Vegas, April 8 – 12.  At the event we will showcase new Cisco solutions and technologies applicable to the world of Windows Server, System Center, and Hyper-V.

We’re participating in a small way via sponsorship with Microsoft in their Cloud OS Trivia Challenge. Join your peers in the Microsoft Cloud OS Trivia Challenge; test your knowledge with trivia for a chance to win some excellent prizes-including a trip to MMS 2013. You also have a chance to win a Microsoft Surface, Windows 8, Windows Server, or a Linksys Router. Play Now!

 



Authors

Rex Backman

Senior Marketing Manager, Big Data Solutions

Data Center and Cloud

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Yesterday, via Cisco TelePresence and WebEx, Cisco hosted an international roundtable examining the current demands placed on the healthcare industry and how technology is addressing many of these issues. A panel comprised of Cisco executives and customers discussed how connected technologies and services can enable healthcare providers to help improve patient care, address security and patient privacy, and manage BYOD devices all while increasing  efficiency and lowering costs.

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Participating in the panel were representatives from Seattle Children’s in Seattle, WA; Resolute Health in New Braunfels, TX; Fundación Peluffo-Giguens in Montevideo, Uruguay; and Albert Einstein Israelita Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, along with Kathy English, senior director, public sector and healthcare marketing for Cisco.

Kathy kicked off the discussion by offering several eye opening healthcare statistics. Did you know, for example, that 41% of patients would switch hospitals for a better experience? Or that in 95% of countries, the rising cost of medical care exceeds the rate of general inflation?

These statistics illustrate the difficult challenges many of our healthcare customers face today.  Therefore, during the healthcare roundtable, Cisco unveiled two new connected health offerings – Cisco HealthPresence 2.5 and Cisco Services for Connected Health. These solutions help enable efficient, convenient, high-quality patient care, and more collaboration across the healthcare continuum.

Roderick Bell II spoke directly to the successful deployment of Cisco HealthPresence at Resolute Health – so successful, in fact, that local schools are now connecting nurses to students across the district, thereby lowering costs and expanding the access of nurses to students in need. Roderick expects local businesses and county jails to join Resolute Health’s HealthPresence initiative later this year. Likewise, via Cisco TelePresence, Fundación Peluffo-Giguens in Uruguay has connected 10 hospitals in the country with the central hospital in the Montevideo, improving access to specialists and avoiding travel and logistics complexities for remote patients and their families. Similarly, the implementation of Cisco’s TelePresence endpoints in Brazil have allowed Albert Einstein Israelita Hospital to deliver care from a distance to seriously ill patients if no specialists are available at the public hospital or if a second opinion is required to provide a more extensive assessment.

Wes Wright, CIO of Seattle Children’s spoke to his overall success with Cisco. When tasked with building a virtual desktop infrastructure program at the hospital, he found that Cisco’s Unified Computing System is the best out there: During the event he said, “I wanted the power of Cisco behind me… and it’s worked!”

Yesterday’s roundtable further demonstrates Cisco’s commitment to connecting the previously unconnected with an intelligent network at the foundation.

You can view the discussion here on YouTube and we’d love to hear your thoughts about the future of healthcare delivery. How do you think video collaboration tools will transform the way your health is monitored?



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I wish the topic of Server management was as juicy as Lance Armstrong’s confession or as intriguing as Manti Te’os girlfriend hoax, but it is NOT.  It is, however, intertwined with two of the domains– 1) infrastructure management and 2) automation and orchestration described in the Cisco Domain Ten model. Server management was also one of the topics in a series of discussions with Mike Spanbauer from Current Analysis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YTh-C0RFIA

Cisco UCS Management addresses the problems of complexity and scaling which the panel discussed.  Service profiles ease the deployment of policy based server management and simplify routine setup tasks as well as server repurposing tasks within the typical server lifecycle.  The Cisco UCS is architected for automation from the very core with an open API.   The operational benefits can usually be quantified in $$ and cents as some of these customers have experienced.

Travelport   –  “86 percent savings in total support hours”

Hendrick Automotive Group – “Boost IT staff productivity by more than 30 percent”

Xerox –   “Staff productivity has improved 20 percent…”

Peak10  – “We can certainly quantify the impact Cisco UCS has had on our operations: the benefits are clearly there…”

To create an effective computing platform that supports mission-critical applications and cloud-computing environments, automation and efficiency are basic requirements. With traditional rack and blade servers, the operational complexity of managing discrete infrastructure Continue reading “Server Management – Critical consideration for data center automation and orchestration”