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In opening this rulemaking, the FCC has taken a major step toward modernizing the E-Rate program.  

Since its inception 15 years ago, E-rate has connected over 100,000 schools and millions of children to the Internet in all 50 states.  It’s the cornerstone of America’s efforts to provide quality digital education to students, and its track record has been nothing short of amazing.

But given the rapidly changing technology environment, E-Rate needs to keep up with the times and ensure that our children have the skills necessary to compete in the globally connected marketplace.  Other countries are making major investments in digital education.  For the sake of our children, we need to do the same. 

Cisco stands ready to work with the FCC to modernize and streamline the program. 



Authors

Jeff Campbell

Senior Vice President & Chief Government Strategy Officer

Government Affairs and Public Policy

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Kiran-Mattyola-mabadejeWritten By Kiran Matty, Marketing Manager, and Ola Mabadeje, Marketing Manager

If “Big Data” is crude oil, then Analytics is its refinery. According to a Cisco IBSG report, “if ‘crude” data can be extracted, refined, and piped to where it can impact decisions, its value will soar”. The trends, patterns, and insights that can be gathered from the various sources of Big Data are virtually limitless. However, this blog shall primarily focus on the analytics that can be generated by refining i.e. analyzing the data that’s resident in a mobile network and is largely untapped.

According to Cisco VNI, the number of connected devices will be three times the global population by 2017 and the global IP traffic will also increase threefold in the same time frame. Mobile Networks have not only been primed to sustain this onslaught but have also transformed into a programmable platform that can collect, correlate, and contextualize data rapidly. Network data, Policy, and Analytics interplay in a multitude of ways and form the basis of Data in Motion that’s at the heart of network monetization.

Hidden opportunities exist in the market gaps

As you might be aware, CPM (Cost per Mille) for mobile Ads is lower than that of other advertising media such as online, television, etc. This is because mobile Ads are generally untargeted, which leads to ineffective Ad campaigns, and could be attributed to a large extent to the lack of contextual awareness vis-à-vis location, demographics, browsing history, network conditions, screen size, etc. Although market researchers have perfected the measurements for other advertising media, they haven’t yet cracked the nut for mobile and the mobile metrics remain fuzzy at best which is impeding the flow of advertising dollars to mobile. On the other hand, as much as we love applications like Apple Siri and FaceTime, Angry Birds, etc., and devices like the Apple iPhone, they have turned out to be an operational nightmare in certain cases for the mobile operators around the world because of the data and signaling Tsunami that they can potentially bring about. This is due in part to lack of network analytics that can predict such surges in the network traffic with reasonable accuracy to allow for timely management of the network in terms of network capacity and bandwidth. This would eventually lead to operational efficiency and hence cost savings. Further, think about Internet of Everything and the 50 billion devices that would come online by 2020!

Mobile network operators are well positioned to address the above pain-points. With access to millions of subscribers, they can predict network and consumer behavior with high degree of accuracy quite simply because of the law of large numbers. Unlike many pure-play analytics vendors, network operators have direct access to data from a variety of sources such as CDN (Content Delivery Network), devices, applications, network billing and charging systems, not to mention the various mobile network elements. Some may even have access to subscriber Wi-Fi data. Lastly, many have the cloud infrastructure that’s needed for analyzing data at a bigger scale.

Translating opportunities to $$$ Continue reading “Unlocking the Value of Data in Motion Through Analytics”



Authors

Doug Webster

Vice President

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We attended ISTE 2013 this year and came away filled with ideas and excited about a bright future of technology in education. One of the most inspirational takeaways was from the keynote speech by Steven Johnson, “Where Good Ideas Come From”.

Kevin talked about the evolution of ideas. Contrary to popular belief, the best ideas aren’t a light bulb going off, they take time to mature and develop. He defined this as the “slow hunch”, the source of true creativity. Furthermore, ideas are usually not single and solitary, but are built on a network of other ideas. Within this incubator of ideas, connections and collaboration become more and more important, both for development and implementation.

Continue reading “ISTE 2013: The Idea Incubator”



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Partner-Weekly-Rewind-v2

Every Friday, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories of the week, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Off The Top

We are always seeking to make it easier for partners to do business with Cisco. One of the items both customers and partners have inquired about is our Return Materials Authorization (RMA) process. Historically, Cisco has operated an RMA back-end swap process. Based on feedback from Cisco customers, we have now moved to a front-end RMA swap process that immediately updates your contract information with the new part information at the start of the RMA process.

Check out Cisco Senior Director of Technical Services Jim Fuller’s comments on the new process and how it will make it easier for you to do business with Cisco.

Are You Doing All You Can With Social Media? Continue reading “Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – July 19, 2013”



Authors

Anna Sui

Social Media Strategist

Global Partner Marketing, Cisco

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In a world of connected people, process, data and things, what would you connect? That is the question of the day as Cisco hosts an all-day Tweet Chat next week with WIRED Magazine.

Cisco Tweet Chat WIRED

On Tuesday, July 23 between 6:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. EST, submit an item you would like to see connect to IoE, and Cisco experts like me will be there live to talk about your idea. The latest ideas and conversations from around the globe will be featured on the WIRED.com homepage throughout the day, so be on the lookout for your ideas to appear in the feed. You can add your ideas directly within the experience on WIRED.com, or via Twitter.com. Either way, simply tag your tweets with #IoE and @Cisco to join the conversation.

So, what do you think should be connected to the Internet of Everything? Mark your calendars to chat with us live on Tuesday on WIRED.com, and join the IoE conversation on Twitter until then.



Authors

Jim Grubb

Chief Technology Evangelist

Cisco Customer Experience Center

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Students bounding into schools touting the latest device is creating big problem for K-12 IT departments. How can schools support BYOD initiatives while securing these mobile devices and the student information embedded within them if IT staff numbers aren’t growing?

In his latest blog, K-12 BYOD. Secure Students, Determine Internet Access, and Yet Provide Awesome Network Performance?, Cisco’s Rahul Chohan discusses how Identity Services Engine policy deployment as a part of Cisco BYOD Solutions for K12 Education helps simplify mobile device security streamlines the IT security processes required to deploy BYOD. Rahul’s blog covers how ISE helps protect minors, ensure performance, and simplify IT over the wired and wireless infrastructure. How exactly can it do this? You’ll have to read his blog to find out.

For more on Cisco BYOD Solutions for K12 Education page.



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If you’re a bargain basement HPC user, you might well scoff at the idea of having more than one network interface for your MPI traffic.

“I’ve got (insert your favorite high bandwidth network name here)! That’s plenty to serve all my cores! Why would I need more than that?”

I can think of (at least) three reasons off the top of my head.

Continue reading “How many network links do you have for MPI traffic?”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software

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Cisco intern, Renee Yao recording videos from WPC 2013
Cisco intern, Renee Yao recording videos at WPC 2013

The Cisco Data Center team recently wrapped up a great week at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2013. Cisco’s VP of Unified Computing Marketing, Jim McHugh took the opportunity to interview Cisco experts about how Cisco UCS provides an optimal platform for Microsoft oriented data centers and creates opportunities for channel partners to drive new customer engagements and increase sales.

Special thanks Renee Yao for producing these videos as part of her summer internship at Cisco. Renee is a rising senior at UC Berkeley and has done a great job for the UCS marketing team this summer.

Check out our WPC 2013 video collection to learn about joint channel programs and solutions from Cisco, Microsoft and our partners.

Empowering Cisco and Microsoft Partners in the Data Center

Listen as Brian Allison, Cisco Director of Partner Solutions discusses how the Cisco Microsoft Alliance is creating business opportunities for channel partners.

https://youtu.be/kpf-aYDQeq0



Authors

Gary Serda

Senior Strategic Partner Marketing Manager

Global Partner Marketing

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We’ve made some important updates to the search experience on Cisco.com:

  • For some top product searches, we delivering a “product information box” of the most important information in one place.
  • We’ve done some significant redesign of the user front-end to improve the user experience
  • Searches using Product IDs
  • Significant work to greatly reduce the number of zero search instances you might encounter
  • Better search results on country sites, with inclusion of supplemental US results where appropriate
  • Faster: Improved performance

Try these searches to see examples:

ASA5510-K8 or 5510  (for Cisco ASA 5510 Next Generation Firewalls)
TelePresence  (for Cisco TelePresence)

See if you can identify some of the new features.

New version:

After_HW-Model_2911-ISR-cropped

Previous version:

Before_HW-Model_2911-ISR-cropped

Enjoy!

 

 



Authors

Martin Hardee

Director, Cisco.com

Cisco.com