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For most of us, technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and promises to become even more prevalent in the near future due to the emerging technological revolution called the Internet of Things (IoT). The number of connected objects now exceeds the world’s human population, and is expected to grow exponentially over the next three to five years.

The early stage of IoT has already started making our lives easier and far more comfortable, giving us the ability to remotely monitor our homes and businesses, turn on the lights and heat before we return home from a long day, and even help us find a place to eat in an unfamiliar city. In fact, so many of our daily activities are becoming automated through the use of IoT technologies, we will soon wonder how we could have functioned without them – similar to looking back now on the pre-smart phone era! Continue reading “Hacking Made Easy – Courtesy of IoT”



Authors

Jeff Aboud

IoT Security Manager

Internet of Things Technologies

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The retail industry is facing unprecedented changes. Since Amazon went online in 1995, technology has been blurring the boundaries between virtual and physical retail space. The third annual Cisco study of consumers found that nearly 80 percent of U.S. consumers use the Internet to shop. Armed with their smartphones, customers now walk into a store with much more knowledge and power in the palm of their hands than ever before, enough to keep retail executives up at night.

Nearly one out of three shoppers search on their mobile device before purchasing in store. Customers want to know if items are available in the right size, right color, and right now. These shoppers expect the same prices, products, and offers regardless of the channel being used (e-commerce websites, brick-and-mortar stores, or mobile devices). I’m surprised at how many stores really don’t know what’s in stock.  To keep up with today’s savvy shoppers, retailers need to update their inventory systems using signals from their supply chains, online presence, back rooms, and front stores in real time. And all of this is the in the context of shrinking customer spending, rising business costs, and competition.

With these monumental shifts in consumer behavior, it shouldn’t be a surprise that the biggest Internet of Everything (IoE) Value at Stake opportunities reside in extracting customer insights and creating better experiences. For years, retailers have trusted jGrubb-RetailCisco innovations to help them improve the store experience, increase supply chain efficiencies, and deliver a consistent multi-channel experience to their customers. Just last month, on stage at Cisco Live with John Chambers, I demonstrated Cisco’s location-based services to help retailers improve planogram and measure campaign effectiveness through the movement of customers. But there is much more that the Internet of Everything can do to address the two main goals of retailers: revenue and loyalty.

Continue reading “IoE and the Impact on Retail and Consumer Experience”



Authors

Jim Grubb

Chief Technology Evangelist

Cisco Customer Experience Center

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I often get questions from those who are just starting with MPI; they want to know common things such as:

  • How to install / setup an MPI implementation
  • How to compile their MPI applications
  • How to run their MPI applications
  • How to learn more about MPI

This will be the first blog entry of several that attempts to guide MPI newbies down the parallelization path.

Continue reading “MPI newbie: Requirements and installation of an MPI”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software

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There is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong. – H.L. Mencken

As a long-time practitioner of the art of beating computers and communications systems into submission, I am as enamored with the latest gee-wiz technology trends and tools as the next self-respecting geek. I’m also not completely above the allure of the herd-mentality; all for one and all for the new tech. As an IT Director looking at the business side of the house, however, and having to translate all of the latest trends into actionable business intelligence and strategy, I am far less quick to jump on the latest bandwagon. Sometimes what my cohort are talking about, and what I find fascinating personally, isn’t what the business needs. Often, it’s not even close.

It can be a challenging thing, trying to match potential technology solutions to existing or future business problems. It can be even more challenging separating the latest trends and market buzz-word bingo, from the actual solutions that will help my company move forward. Finding those solutions can sometimes seem like a search through the proverbial haystack.

Continue reading “SDN in the Enterprise: aligning with business needs”



Authors

Teren Bryson

Cisco Champion

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On Wednesday 14th August, Cisco Australia is partnering with The Snowdome Foundation to hold the Great Shake-Up; an interactive web-based fund-raising event that is streamed live into your own boardroom from 12.30pm – 1.30pm for an hour of education and entertainment.

Cisco and The Snowdome Foundation intend to shake up fund-raising by streaming the event live to over 500 boardrooms across Australia. In fact, the event can be streamed live to anywhere with an Internet connection; it can be viewed on big screens, computers and even tablets. Some people are even planning to hold an event at home and invite friends to watch via their home computer.

Continue reading “Help Improve the Outcomes for Australians with Blood Cancer on Your Lunch Break”



Authors

Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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Speed is everything. Continuing our commitment to make data center infrastructures more responsive to enterprise applications demands, today, we announced FlexPod Select with Hadoop, formerly known as NetApp Open Solution for Hadoop, broadening our FlexPod portfolio.  Developed in collaboration between Cisco and NetApp, offers an enterprise-class infrastructure that accelerates time to value from your data. This solution is pre-validated for Hadoop deployments built using Cisco 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects (connectivity and management), C220 M3 Servers (compute), NetApp FAS2220 (namenode metadata storage) and NetApp E5400 series storage arrays (data storage). Following the highly successful FlexPod model of pre-sized rack level configurations, this solution will be made available through the well-established FlexPod sales engagement and channel.

The FlexPod Select with Hadoop architecture is an extension of our popular Cisco UCS Common Platform Architecture (CPA) for Big Data designed for applications requiring enterprise class external storage array features like RAID protection with data replication, hot-swappable spares, proactive drive health monitoring, faster recovery from disk failures and automated I/O path fail-over. The architecture consists of a master rack and optionally up to nine expansion racks in a single management domain, creating a complete, self-contained Hadoop cluster. The master rack provides all of the components required to run a 12 node Hadoop cluster supporting 540TB storage capacity. Each additional expansion rack provides an additional 16 Hadoop cluster nodes and 720TB storage capacity. Unique to this architecture is seamless management integration and data integration capabilities with existing FlexPod deployments that can help to significantly lower the infrastructure and management costs.

FlexPod Select has been pretested and jointly validated with leading Hadoop vendors, including Cloudera and Hortonworks.

Resources:



Authors

Raghunath Nambiar

No Longer with Cisco

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Cisco and Oracle today announced their support for S. 1353, the Cybersecurity Act of 2013, sponsored by the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and John Thune (R-SD).

In a letter of support, Cisco’s VP of Global Government Affairs,  Michael Timmeny, and Oracle’s VP of Government Affairs, Jason Mahler wrote:

“We appreciate the leadership you have shown to find solutions for the cybersecurity
issue, and in introducing S. 1353, the Cybersecurity Act of 2013. Your thoughtful,
bipartisan legislation is a significant step in developing the meaningful publicprivate
partnerships that are necessary to secure cyberspace.

Cisco and Oracle strongly support S.1353 and the voluntary, industry-led approach
you have taken. The legislation incorporates concepts that are important in the U.S.
and globally: a voluntary approach based on technology neutrality and innovation; a
focus on industry-led best practices, using the existing foundation and expertise of
the innovation-oriented National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); the
protection of privacy; preventing conflicts with, and duplication of, existing
regulatory processes or requirements; and a considered focus on increased research
and development, education, workforce development, and cybersecurity awareness.

As leading information technology companies, Cisco and Oracle are squarely focused
on driving innovation and security into networks and systems. We appreciate your
sensitivity to the importance of technological innovation globally. Ultimately,
innovation will provide the best defense against cyber incidents and data breaches.

We thank you for your outreach as you considered a path forward, and we look forward
to working with you and others in Congress on this critical issue.”

 



Authors

Scott Gerber

Senior Manager, Government Affairs

Government Affairs

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This blog was originally published on the Huffington Post

I recently spent two weeks in Uganda and Kenya, meeting with nonprofit organizations that are applying technology-based solutions to help underserved populations access the knowledge, skills, and financial products and services they need to become economically self-sufficient. I lead the economic empowerment portfolio for Cisco and the Cisco Foundation, so it was an opportunity to get an up-close view of the progress and impact of our investments.

Let’s put this into perspective: When we talk about underserved populations in developing countries, we are talking about people who are living on less than $3 a day. They may have never had a formal job and most likely have, at most, a high school education. They don’t have a bank account, they may live in a slum, and they may not have enough money to eat three meals a day.

To permanently break the cycle of poverty, these people need a life-changing experience. One that will help them develop skills they need to get jobs, earn good salaries, and be supporters and role models for their families and communities.

Continue reading “Internet-Powered Jobs Transform Impoverished Youth into Lifelong Workers”



Authors

Charu Adesnik

Executive Director, Cisco Foundation; Director, Social Innovation Investments

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I was sitting in a small tapas café in Barcelona with Robb and his wife enjoying a plate of Jamon Iberico. It’s amazing ham served with tomato bread and it is the best ham I have ever ate in my life.  Oh man, one slice in your mouth and your taste buds sing like David Lee Roth on Ice Cream Man. We cannot get it in the United States like that. It was illegal in the U.S. for a while then they started selling it, but it’s not even close to the same, don’t waste your money. OK either way, I’m getting off track here, it’s awesome, and plenty of yums were heard.

As we were sitting there, I popped my knuckles. I’ve been doing it since grade school. So now, I just do it without thinking about it kinda like breathing. Robb’s wife leaned over to me and in a kind and delicate Texas accent said; “if you pop your knuckles one more time I’m gonna jab this fork right in your skull…bless your heart…”  Understand too, she had been eating dinners with us for about a week now listening to me blabber on about OSPF timers, ASIC floor planning and how much power the Death Star would need to actually blow up a planet. Robb is used to it. He’s had seven years of Jimmy Ray practicum training, but his poor wife…man, respect to someone that has that much control to last a whole week.

We all have pet peeves that we either hate or do that other folks hate. Of course not you dear reader, your perfect, keep reading. Like any engineer, my pet peeves are indexed, cross referenced and compartmentalized. I have them for fishing, scuba diving, racing and of course…networking. Here are five things that really make me say; “Oh Dude…come on man!”

Peeve 00×01: Setting long TTL’s and/or long XLATE timeouts. Network Geeks are like the digital equivalents of Jack Lelanne (including the blue jumpsuit) they all want to reduce something. For us, it’s network traffic. Setting long TTL’s will work…but if you make a fat finger error typing something… it may take hours before you know it.  Plus, many social sites that are pulling content from other sources are sitting their TTLs in the seconds range. Don’t do it. Resist the dark side because troubleshooting this is a real pain.

Peeve 00×02: Using the HOSTS or LMHOSTS to get around something; “real quick”. Back in the day, when Microsoft network used WINS (they still do and yes you need to config it), these files saved a tons of time especially in the earlier Outlook Express days and it’s much faster.  MS networks resolve names in the following order LMHOSTS, Local Cached Info, HOSTS file, DNS then NetBIOS. (you can change that behavior in the SYSTEM.INI file). Sounds good right? Ahhhhh….NO. All networks now are very DNS centric although the name resolve order is still the same. So if ya make a change in the HOSTS file, then later on run into an “odd DNS error” you know one that makes ya say…Hmmmm…never saw that before…that’s odd…chances are it’s a HOSTS file. Too many hours of troubleshooting cutting into our XBOX 360 time have been lost here.

Peeve 00×03: Lack of Documentation. Nobody likes it. Ok I can feel myself getting mad typing this one….It seems like a waste of time especially as busy and dynamically changing as our jobs are. Without documenting and/or commenting scripts/configs you are not only putting the network at a massive risk, you are absolutely guaranteeing that you’ll be called in on your day off or vacation. Basically, you’re a friggen whanker. When I’m at a Star Trek convention dressed up as a Klingon showing off my totally groovy Bat’leth moves, it’s a total buzz kill to take a call on legacy firewall rules that I didn’t either clean up or document. Comment configs, write down changes, type it in a doc. Store it in a central place for IT teammates. Do not make it long and detailed or you’ll stop doing it. Time (24 hour clock), Date, Exact Change, System name, Your name. This quick and simple procedure will save tons of time and really make you the network rock star! If you don’t take the time to document, when you pass away, your eternal punishment will be following someone driving slow in the fast lane, riding shotgun with an old man talking to his grandkids on a cell with bad reception in a Prius with Justin Beber playing on the radio non stop. 

Peeve 00×04: Using non routable User Principal Names.  Ah remember when Family Guy was still funny and domain.local was just fine? Then along came this friggen cloud thingy and messed everything up. Many network admins have tested cloud technologies and turned them away due to slowness, SSO not working, log on failures and other “weird errors” Then here comes the bashing! “Cloud Networking sucks worst the Star Trek NG episodes with Barclay in them” Look folks, Barclay does suck for sure, cloud networking can really make our life A TON easier! If you are still using non routable UPNs, you’ll have a ton of cloud issues. It’ ain’t gonna work! Flipping over to a routable one is really easy and hey, since it’s TechWiseTV, I’m here to help! (Otherwise I charge by the hour…) Chances are most users are using their email (SMTP) namespace then just:

          AD DomainsTrustsright click PROPERTIES then add Alternative UPN. Add your domain you actual own and use for email.

          Now you can use my cool script thang:

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

 Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase ‘DC=domain,DC=local’ | ForEach-Object ($_.SamAccountName) {

 $CompleteUPN = $_.SamAccountName + “@domain.com”

 Set-ADUser -Identity $_.DistinguishedName -UserPrincipalName $CompleteUPN

 }

I just used this a couple weeks ago at a site having probs with Office365 in a test lab. Worked great!!

Peeve 00×05: Not verifying backups. This is the last one because it’s the biggest one on the list. If you forget everything else, please, I beg you, test your backups at least once every two weeks. I do not mean the verify process that runs at the end of a cycle. Your logs should tell you successful backups for sure. Test them. Pull the media from a few random servers and restore one in your lab. Make sure your team knows exactly how to do this.  Learning this during a system failure will destroy your cred with the check signers. DOCUMENT THE TEST!!! (that’ll save your tail in a post mortem analysis). Like our favorite sports teams, our networks will fail. Sometimes for a good reason and other times…you’re gonna be like…ummm…what?  No doubt about it. Practice it like a fire drill because in many ways it is. I have seen many good IT folks shown the door because of data loss. Data protection is the absolute easiest thing to get money from bean counters on. Nobody wants to be the no vote on that line item. If so DOCUMENT IT! My Dad always taught me; “Never go cheap on what comes between you and the Earth” Buy the best shoes, socks, tires and mattress. I’d add backup solutions to that list also.  Buy the best and know it inside and out.

Well looks like TechWiseTV is going back to Barcelona for VMWorld. Now where did I put that helmet??

Jimmy Ray Purser

Trivia File Transfer Protocol

The name; “Fido” is linked to dogs because of their loyalty.   Fido comes from the Latin root word “fidus” meaning loyalty. 



Authors

Jimmy Ray Purser

Former Co-Host of TechWiseTV

No Longer at Cisco