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As the key delivery model for the Internet of Everything (IoE) economy, cloud is helping to drive sweeping changes across nearly all aspects of our lives. But while the growth trajectory of cloud has been carefully charted, there has been comparatively little insight into its impact on IT organizations. To gain a better understanding, Cisco® Consulting Services, in partnership with Intel®, undertook an extensive global survey of 4,226 IT leaders respondents in April-March 2013 to investigate cloud-driven IT change.

The Impact of Cloud on IT Consumption Models” study explored the dramatic changes affecting IT at all key consumption lifecycle stages — how businesses plan for, procure, deploy, operate, and govern IT. This is part two in a four-part blog series that will explore some of the findings of this study and discuss how today’s IT leaders can prepare for the new model for IT.

One of the clearest expressions of this cloud-driven change is the emergence of lines of business (LOBs) — human resources, sales, R&D, and other areas that are end users of IT — both as direct consumers of third-party cloud-based services, and as ever more prominent influencers of companies’ IT agendas. This represents a major paradigm shift from decades of IT tradition, when IT itself set the agenda and made all planning and procurement decisions.

Continue reading “As Cloud Empowers Lines of Business, Challenges for IT”



Authors

Manjula Talreja

Vice President, Global Cloud Practice

Cisco Consulting Services

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Today, Cisco is participating in the Drive the Dream event organized by the California Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) Collaborative. We are excited to be working with Governor Jerry Brown and other organizations making up the electric vehicle ecosystem to promote the on-going effort to improve the environmental sustainability of our transportation system.  By continuing to elevate and discuss the issues and advantages in today’s electric vehicle market, we fuel future innovation and a more sustainable transportation system.

Continue reading “Cisco’s Workplace Electric Vehicle Charging Journey Continues”



Authors

Ali Ahmed

Senior Manager

Workplace Resources Global Energy Management and Sustainability

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The Internet networking industry is at a critical inflection point. For 30 years, networking has concentrated on driving speeds up and costs down, but it’s no longer enough to manage only bandwidth growth.

With Internet traffic expected to explode in the coming years amid new waves of cloud, mobile, video and machine-to-machine connections, Cisco will unveil the first networking system engineered to power the “Internet of Everything,” during a media, analyst and industry webcast on Tuesday, Sept. 24, from 8:00 to 9:15 a.m. PDT. To register, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/systemforioe 

Continue reading “Cisco to Unveil “Internet of Everything” Innovations in Sept. 24 Webcast”



Authors

Pankaj Patel

Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer

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In their highly anticipated announcement this week, Apple introduced two new phones, the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S, and confirmed that iOS 7 would be released on September 18th. Techies like myself took note that iOS 7 will include quite a number of new features. We at Cisco want to help you understand what iOS 7 means for your network, so here’s a quick blog to sum it up:

How does iOS 7 impact your wireless networks?

Soon your employees and guests will be upgrading to IOS 7. Did you know up to 20% of traffic to mobile devices is software upgrades, application updates and synchronizing your devices via the cloud? Cisco’s Application Visibility and Control technology can help you identify and tame these applications and is available on the routers, Wireless LAN and visible via Prime Infrastructure. In addition, Cisco’s ISR can cache these updates to reserve valuable and expensive WAN bandwidth. More details about protecting the WAN is available in another blog.

If you leverage a Captive Portal, you will experience a change in behavior. Apple has enhanced the Captive Network Assistant (CNA) functionality iOS 7 making it more robust. Cisco has proactively developed and tested a new version of wireless LAN controller code to interoperate with Apple’s new implementation while ensuring a seamless experience for all other clients.

Finally iOS 7 also has significant security and manageability enhancements to improve productivity for the enterprise.

What do you need to do in order to optimize for iOS 7? Continue reading “Get Your Network Ready For iOS7”



Authors

Jeevan Patil

Director, Product Management

Wireless Network

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Yesterday Cisco was named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) World and the DJSI North America for the 8th year in a row. This annual review is based on a thorough analysis of Cisco’s economic, social, and environmental performance.

We value our inclusion on the DJSI for a number of reasons. First, it allows us to benchmark our year-over-year performance measurements such as corporate governance, risk management, climate change strategy, supply chain standards, labor practices, and corporate citizenship. Through the DJSI, we can monitor how we are doing in these areas compared to previous years, and also compare our performance to peer companies.

DJSI_Member_Logo_2013

Continue reading “Cisco Named to Dow Jones Sustainability Index for Its Economic, Social, and Environmental Performance”



Authors

Teri Jenkins Treille

CSR Stakeholder Engagement

Sustainable Business Practices

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10254_Surveillance_256For the past 15 years, businesses of all types and sizes have used IP cameras to monitor and protect their physical environments. Whether monitored in real-time by security staff or analyzed following a breach, cameras provide an essential physical security solution to keep employees, data, and network appliances safe.

While this use case is still very much relevant today, the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has dramatically expanded the scope and capabilities of connected cameras now acting as powerful sensors and intelligent platforms to also deliver extraordinary gains in operational efficiency, situational and acoustic awareness, and forensic investigations.  Furthermore, the evolution of video analytics such as facial and license plate recognition, as well as audio analytics, has significantly enhanced the ability of IoT-enabled cameras to deliver superior insights into all application areas – from safety and security, to business intelligence.

Continue reading “IoT World Forum: Getting More Out Of IP Cameras”



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At the 14th International Common Criteria Conference (ICCC) held in Orlando this week, it was announced that India has become a Common Criteria Certificate issuing nation. We congratulate India on this significant achievement and look forward to working closely with the Indian Common Criteria Scheme. For more information on the announcement, see the article “India Earns Authorizing Nation Status for IT Product Testing”.



Authors

Kathleen Wilson

Sr. Manager, Marketing and Communications

Security and Trust Organizations

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Having just moved into a new house, my wife and I are looking to see how all our old furniture can be re-used – with her eye on the best design (she’s a designer by trade), and my eye on cost. We’ll end up somewhere in the middle I expect, slightly geared towards ‘design’ if past experience is anything to go by!

An example of Vitra design – the VitraHaus

Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra pulls off both objectives – providing customers with great design, AND managing to reduce cost in the organization, How? With Cisco of course!

Take a visit across the Swiss border into Germany and you can visit to the VitraHaus location, its flagship store. Visiting Vitrahaus is like taking a trip through design history, but it also offers the opportunity to encounter the work of leading contemporary designers. Furnishings and objects from the Vitra Home Collection are arranged in a variety of settings for both living and working.

Communications and collaboration are central to bringing these concepts to life. Vitra has been partnering with Cisco for over a decade, evolving its IT infrastructure and expanding wireless LAN deployments. The biggest concentration of wireless access points, more than 70, is at Weil am Rhein. The latest stage of that IT strategy intends to make wireless a key enabler for business transformation.

“Improving guest Wi-Fi access was very important,” says Marco Gersbacher, head of IT infrastructure services at Vitra, “while we also wanted to make sure the business was fully prepared for bring-your-own-device.

Although Vitra had no formal bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, a growing number of employees were using personal smartphones and tablets alongside company laptops in the workplace.

Vitra Style - style is pervasive in all that they do.
Vitra Style – style is pervasive in all that they do.

This trend created problems with device recognition and password reset requests. Certain devices could connect only over the wired network, others just to Wi-Fi, and some not at all. So, a robust BYOD framework was a strategic priority. Without visibility of devices, however, the company was unable to guarantee network performance and security.

A validated Cisco® Borderless Network design has helped enable Vitra unify access across all network domains: wired, wireless, and VPN. The solution was installed by NextiraOne and includes the following components: Continue reading “BYOD with Flair – Cisco Customer Vitra AG has Designs on Manufacturing.”



Authors

Peter Granger

Senior Sales Transformation Manager

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Following the last MSE blog on CleanAir, today I wish to explain how we prioritize the Mobility Service Engine’s user experience.

Listening to customers and implementing changes/features based on customer feedback has been a great strength of Cisco products. We from the Mobility Services Engine team strongly believe in this principle and make sure that we reach out to each and every customer who has provided a feedback on Cisco MSE and take their experience with MSE into consideration when designing future features and enhancements.

After analyzing the feedback we received during the MSE 7.4 release, I am pleased to announce that we have decided to implement the following two features as part of series of enhancements that we believe will improve the customer’s user experience with MSE.

Convenient Backup and Restore

Until the 7.4 release, MSE users had limited options in backing up their MSE data. The only supported option was to use the NCS FTP server as the destination for MSE data backups. Due to the limited disk capacity on NCS, as well as sharing of the disk space with other network elements, disk space limitations prevented MSE users from regularly backing up their data. If you are one of those users who always wished you could regularly backup MSE data without running into NCS disk space limitation, or if you wish you could back up your MSE data to non-NCS devices, we have some good news for you.

In the latest MSE 7.5 release, we have added the option to backup and restore your MSE data on remote FTP servers, provided there is connectivity between the MSE and the FTP server.  Similar to NCS Backups, MSE data can be backed up to configured repositories (internal or external FTP servers).  Love the command shell? We will also be coming up with CLI to backup MSE data. You can now start MSE backup using just a single command.

msecsat1 Continue reading “Enhancing the MSE User Experience: Backup & Restore, Menu-based Device Setup”



Authors

RameshDasika

Software Engineer

Mobility Service Engine