Year: 2013

July 10, 2013 1 Comment
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Accelerating the shift to renewable power

When we announced Cisco’s new environmental sustainability goals, one goal continued to require the most clarification from both internal and external stakeholders:  having our corporate electricity emissions factor at half of the International Energy Agency (IEA) world average.

This goal, and it’s delicate wording, perhaps only makes sense to us sustainability nerds who are immersed in the Greenhouse Gas conversation…

Given the recent market report from the IEA on renewable energy, I thought a post would be useful to explain the reasoning behind this goal, and how it helps both Cisco and the planet by including this goal in our efforts.

Continue reading “Accelerating the shift to renewable power”



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Ali Ahmed

Senior Manager

Workplace Resources Global Energy Management and Sustainability

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VOIP….meh….

I really do not why I don’t care much for Voice Over IP. It’s certainly technical. Heck man, if you’re stuck on QoS, go ask a voice geek. Resellers are begging for more voice engineers, so it’s a great career path. You can really do some very cool things with it that your end users just will love you for. Heck, if there’s a more visible direct impact to a business other than voice, I’d like to know what it is.

But still; when funding comes thru for a voice show I’m always thinking…”meh”… Which is funny because without a doubt our best and most award winning shows have been on voice! You’d think I’d love it right? Hey ya what? when was younger growing up in the hills of Tennessee (hereby referred to as God’s One True Love from henceforth) my first experience with hacking was on our telephone system with rapid hook switch tapping to become a tandem or punching thru busy signals was a real hoot. Of course the Capt’n introduced us to blue boxing and a splendid time was guaranteed for all…

Next week is a TechWiseTV taping week for us. Right now, this show has two things going against it; first off, it’s a voice show and second (and most important) it’s also an upgrade show. Yep folks, that’s right a push to get you to upgrade your CUCM.

Now look, we all have bills to pay so there always some level of butt kissing and boot licking that has to go on any show. Video is expensive. For me, I never ever ever promote ANYTHING on TechWiseTV that I would not be happy to stand by or even support in the future. I’m grateful TechWiseTV can do that. We turn down shows because we just do not believe it’s the best for the network.  Like my Grandmother taught me all those years ago…”If ya ain’t got nuthin’ nice to say, then shut the friggen crap up goober…” Ah she was quite the wordsmith for sure.

I don’t know about y’all, but I am not a big upgrade person at all. Upgrading sucks worst then a going camping with your mother in law on Indy 500 race weekend and forgetting the beer. From and engineering view point; why fix something that isn’t broke? Upgrading means my hardware is going to be slower (if it’s compatible), my licensing is going to be really messed up, tech support is going to be worthless, major downtime, oh yeah…and this is voice? Namely Cisco voice, wholly friggen shnikasourus rex man! You need a PhD in  CUCM licensing to figure that one out, plus my dial plan, migrating my DB…and you know what…that camping trip is looking better all the time now….

Robb and I designed this show to have the voice team prove us that we need to upgrade. To be honest, they better bring their “A” game. ‘Cause I ain’t buying it yet. TechWiseTV is unscripted and we do not see the content that our guests bring on the show beforehand. We like to keep it real and spontaneous. We just ask that slides have minimal words, no marketing or vision statement crap, any quote from any analysis puts you in Aldrich Ames status and removed from the set and have the slides in 16×9 format. 

I’m bringing all of these doubts onto the set on Tuesday morning to see if they can address them. It’s still early, so if there is something you want to make sure we cover, toss in your comments before 16Jul13 and we’ll cover ‘um…then tune it see…upgrade or not?? In the meantime, anyone got a tent I can borrow?

Jimmy Ray Purser

Trivia File Transfer Protocol

A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold. This is because feathers are measured in avoirdupois weight which is 16 ounces per pound and gold is weighed in troy weight which is 12 ounces per pound.

  



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Jimmy Ray Purser

Former Co-Host of TechWiseTV

No Longer at Cisco

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Cisco Hacks: Notes from the CMX Hackathon

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by two Wireless Networking Group interns, Nonie Grewal and Nivedita Jagdale, to capture their thoughts on the Connected Mobile Experiences Hackathon that they helped plan and execute.

June 29th marked the start of the Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Hackathon in the Cisco San Jose campus. CMX, powered by the Mobility Services Engine, provides a unique way of providing personalized real time location services over Wi-Fi. CMX aims to increase customer-oriented and operational efficiencies through analytics and personalized mobile services. The contestants at the hackathon were invited to help build prototypes that could help complement these goals, focusing on enhancing user connectivity and visibility.

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As summer college interns volunteering at the event, we walked into the Deep Space Nine room where the hackathon was held, to find clusters of intense developers at each table. With each passing minute, we felt the name “Deep Space” seemed apt for the cause it was hosting – deep thought and real coding! Continue reading “Cisco Hacks: Notes from the CMX Hackathon”



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Shweta Saraf

Software Engineer

Wireless Networking Group

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Behind the Scenes at the Ciscolive! Network Operations Center

I have been privileged to be part of a very dedicated team of networking subject matter experts for the past 5 years in prepping and running the Ciscolive! event  network.  Before 2008 the network was installed and monitored by a commercial events networking company.  However, it became clear with the number of Technical Marketing Engineers, Services Engineers and product developers on-site for Ciscolive! that we were well equipped to take on the responsibility in addition to our speaking responsibilities.

Planning

The preparation for Ciscolive! starts many months before the event with weekly, collaborative Webex sessions to discuss design criteria, venue particulars and product/feature configurations.  Generally the teams align into core Route/Switch, Data Center, Security, Wireless, and Network Management/Operations, however we work collaboratively to design and implement the best show network possible.  We have individuals that are part of our Cisco Remote Management Services (RMS) team, Video Surveillance and partner support from our CenturyLink Internet Service Provider and NetApp storage vendor.

A small part of the NOC staff will travel to the venue to survey the wireless, power and Internet service capabilities several months beforehand.

Continue reading “Behind the Scenes at the Ciscolive! Network Operations Center”



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Jason Davis

Distinguished Engineer

Cisco Developer Relations

July 9, 2013 1 Comment
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Relationships, Relationships, Relationships: Cisco at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

When I think of why technology solution providers should attend Microsoft’s WPC, I decided to pay homage to one of Steve Ballmer’s mantras with my blog title.

Last year, at Microsoft’s WPC in Toronto, I was approached by KEMP Technologies (a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner). They gave me an elevator pitch on their products and explained they were interested in partnering with Cisco. Their load balancing solutions sounded interesting and anything that might sell more UCS servers sounded like a win win to me. After all, Cisco didn’t become the #2 blade server vendor worldwide1 by itself. I told them I would try and find the right contact for them.

A few emails on my part and a lot of hard work by the Cisco and KEMP teams, a year later KEMP is now IVT Certified for UCS. While not an exclusive relationship, we can now offer our customers another excellent choice.

Stop by the Cisco booth (#1401) and talk with the datacenter team or KEMP’s booth (#1725). You never know what might come of it.

Kemp_Banner

1. Source:  IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, Q1 2013 Revenue Share, May 2013



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Bill Shields

Senior Marketing Manager

Product and Solutions Marketing Team

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Three Imperatives for Today’s CISO for Data Center Security : Why you should attend our upcoming Webcast on July 16

AJ25293The data center landscape is undergoing remarkable transformation and security is being forced to evolve as organizations embrace more dynamic services.
For instance, Gartner predicts 17.9% CAGR in cloud services usage through 2016. As such, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) will need to consider how to secure non-standardized Business-to-Business interconnects across their organizations. CISOS will play a pivotal role in shaping the next-generation data center if they are able to act more strategically.
I call this my 3 imperatives for CISOs.

I am teaming up with my former mentor from McAfee and now colleague through our Cisco partnership, Rich Noguera, Sr Manager, Security Strategy and Risk Management at Accenture, to discuss this topic on July 16- 8:00 am PST/ 11:00 am EST

1.     Enabling IT security to play a more strategic and advisory role within the organization – today’s CISO needs to think much more in terms of establishing a risk-aware culture as increasingly the economic advantages of moving to the cloud becomes much more compelling.  Strategically speaking, CISOs must consider building or buying a cloud services brokerage that is capable of enforcing corporate security policies across the business’ varied providers.  There is an opportunity to shift IT away from being considered a necessary cost center to a department, which can enable self-provisioning of new services (with the right tools and training). But to do this, it requires a forward thinking organization with a security steering committee with stakeholders from across the enterprise engaged to ensure that security and risk considerations are factored in.

2.     Business-driven security and risk metrics  – It is a well-known phenomenon that when nothing negative in data center security happens (for example, malware disruption, data breach), it may become challenging to demonstrate the ROI on security even though security met its purpose.  Leading organizations are twice as likely to use metrics to monitor progress and their ability to deal with future technologies as well as metrics to justify the purchase and need of new technologies.  As the old adage goes, ‘you cannot manage what you cannot measure.’ Given the range of cloud enabled B2B services, CISOs should concentrate on what matters most – who (i.e. users) and what (i.e. crown jewel data) – to the security of the business.

3.     Balancing key technology focus areas with risk metrics – As data center workloads spiral and so too, correspondingly does the volume of security data, CISOs and security teams will need to find ways to filter data to a meaningful metrics.  That is where expressing security policy in business contextual terms and security intelligence data and filtering becomes critical.

Register here for this webcast on July the 16th to further discuss these key issues and see how datacenter can enable security to be transformative. Additionally, for more news and discussions, head over to @SecDatacenter or Secure Data Center Trends



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Evelyn de Souza

Cloud Data Governance Leader

Chief Technology and Architecture Office

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10,000 U.S. Patents Down–And Thanks to Our Amazing Innovators, Many More to Come

Milestones and markers are important. They give us a chance to reflect and to celebrate, and they inspire us with what’s next. I’m very pleased to share that Cisco has just been granted its 10,000th U.S. patent.  And worldwide we’ve surpassed 13,000 patents awarded to Cisco innovators.

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Our Journey

By the measure of patents, Cisco’s journey started in February 1988, when the company’s first patent was filed. To put that time in context, that was the year President Ronald Reagan gave his last State of the Union address in his second term, U.S. sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (aka Flo-Jo) set a still-standing women’s world record (21.34 seconds) in the 200-meter dash at the 24th Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea, and also the year when the Morris worm was distributed via the Internet, initially written to gauge the size of the Internet.

Continue reading “10,000 U.S. Patents Down–And Thanks to Our Amazing Innovators, Many More to Come”



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Pankaj Patel

Executive Vice President and Chief Development Officer

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Creating a Wi-Fi Monetization Virtuous Circle

In the decade or so that Wi-Fi has existed, most technologists and mobile industry executives viewed it as the “poor cousin” to licensed mobile communications.  Now mobile operators around the world are asking how they can effectively use Wi-Fi to help them cope with the huge surge in mobile data traffic and to meet customer needs and expectations.  In addition, they are all eager to understand how they can make money from Wi-Fi and to make the business case to justify investments in deploying Wi-Fi networks.

As many leading SPs are now discovering building a Wi-Fi network creates not only significant business value, but creates a virtuous circle that leads to ever-increasing sources of new Wi-Fi value. As the Wi-Fi Monetization Virtuous Circle outlined below shows, the reinforcing network and scale effects of Wi-Fi investments not only deliver unique business benefits at each of the levels, but also establish a valuable platform to exploit additional monetization opportunities at the next level.

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Stuart Taylor

Director

Service Provider Transformation Group

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A Router for the Ages

CRS Family Exemplifies Cisco’s Commitment to Innovation, Internet Networking Leadership

Last month, when we formally introduced the Carrier Routing System X (CRS-X), we said it was joining the CRS family.

As I reflect on the last 10 years, the term family certainly feels appropriate to those of us fortunate enough to work on a product line that has had such a profound impact on the networking and telecommunications industries.

CRS-X
The new CRS-X delivers 10 times the capacity of the original CRS-1

I remember the day we unveiled the original CRS-1.  It was a sunny morning in May, 2004 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.   Technology trade media had anticipated the announcement for months.   And soon business reporters were sniffing around our campus, trying to get the scoop on what was coming.  Everyone knew Cisco was working on a secret “super router.”  But no one knew exactly what was behind the curtain.

Hundreds of reporters, industry and financial analysts, and industry opinion-leaders attended the half-day product unveiling.

Most Ambitious Project

I was on the marketing team that helped launch the product, which took over four years, half a billion dollars, and 500 engineers to build.  The CRS-1 was a global effort, with team members heralding from the four-corners of the world, including Israel, Canada, England, India, Scotland, and several cities in the United States.

It was the most ambitious project Cisco had ever undertaken.

The press release that day dubbed the CRS-1 “a new class of routing system designed to deliver continuous system operation, service flexibility and extended system longevity to telecommunications service providers to enable (them) to scale network capacity to new levels…and deliver next-generation services over a converged IP network while protecting their investments in the system.” 

Continue reading “A Router for the Ages”



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Doug Webster

Vice President