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Data centers are undergoing a major transition to meet higher performance, scalability, and resiliency requirements with fewer resources, smaller footprint, and simplified designs. These rigorous requirements coupled with major data center trends, such as virtualization, data center consolidation and data growth, are putting a tremendous amount of strain on the existing infrastructure and adding complexity. Designing a reliable, scalable, and flexible data center requires careful planning.

Register for this webcast to learn about the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director which power high performance, flexible and scalable data center design. We will look at some of the data center architecture options that come with the Cisco MDS 9710 Multilayer Director as well as review the best practices to improve resiliency and protect against silent failures. We will also discuss how we can design a data center that provides investment protection and agility without making tradeoffs.

Register now:   Live Online Event, Wednesday, May 14, 2014,  8–9 a.m. Pacific

Register

Live Online Event, Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Continue reading “Webinar Series: High-Performance Data Center Design with Cisco MDS 9700 Multilayer Director”



Authors

Tony Antony

Marketing

Solutions

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Half-round-trip ping-pong latency may be the first metric that everyone looks at with MPI in HPC, but bandwidth is one of the next metrics examined.

40Gbps Ethernet has been available for switch-to-switch links for quite a while, and 40Gbps NICs are starting to make their way down to the host.

How does MPI perform with a 40Gbps NIC?

Continue reading “MPI over 40Gb Ethernet”



Authors

Jeff Squyres

The MPI Guy

UCS Platform Software

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Here at Cisco, we take customer listening seriously. From the Global Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey to customer advisory boards to social media monitoring – and other avenues – we are constantly listening to what our customers and partners tell us they need from Cisco to enable their business success. One trend we hear in every feedback source is mobility: you want more options for managing your network from your mobile devices.

One way we’ve acted on this feedback is to develop the Cisco Technical Support mobile application, which allows you to:

  • Manage and update open support cases
  • Ask and answer questions in discussion forums
  • Research Cisco products and services.

Many of you are already using the Tech Support app, but we’ve recently added some great features that make it even easier to open a case and look up a contract. I’ve asked Jim Fuller, Senior Director of Services Entitlement, to share details on these new capabilities so that you can do more with Cisco while on the go. Continue reading “The We’re Listening Blog Series: Taking Action – The Power of Mobile”



Authors

Curt Hill

Senior Vice President

Customer Assurance

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You don’t need me to tell you to know that we are in the midst of a technology revolution.  It’s mobilizing the internet.  And it’s transforming the way billions of people around the globe collaborate, communicate, and connect to the internet.

•           The education customers I work with are incorporating video and mobile applications into their curriculum with up to a 100 students in an auditorium accessing the Wi-Fi network simultaneously.

•           Healthcare customers are relying on Wi-Fi to connect patients, devices and provide nurses instant access to medical records.

•           Manufacturing customers are increasingly using Wi-Fi to enable workers on the factory floor to have real-time video conversations with experts anywhere in the globe.

What do these things have in common?  They all depend on Wi-Fi for connectivity.  In these areas, and so many more, Wi-Fi has become a central way that people access the Internet.

The FCC released a historic decision on April 1, 2014 (adopted March 31)with regards to the use of 5 GHz spectrum. Although there were many technical aspects included within this decision, one of the most interesting was making the 5150-5250 MHz U-NII 1 band available for outdoor WLAN use. Continue reading “What, Why, Where, When, How: The New FCC Ruling Around 5 GHz”



Authors

Chris Spain

VP Product Management

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How can leaders manage the transition to a cloud services broker? Check out the new Gartner newsletter to learn more.
How can leaders manage the transition to a cloud services broker? Check out the new Gartner newsletter to learn more.

Is your IT department currently acting as a Cloud services broker?And what exactly is a Cloud services broker?

As our world of many clouds continues to evolve, increased opportunities exist for IT departments to move from the traditional “siloed” working environments to play a more critical role in corporate planning strategies.

Aligning IT and business objectives are duties handled by an IT services broker, who is usually the company CIO.

This role has become increasingly recognized as IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) becomes a piece of the intercloud fabric.

The time is now for corporations to begin viewing their IT departments as more than the group that resets passwords and helps new-hires with their computer set-ups.

 

In order to manage the cloud transition and embrace the role of cloud services brokers, CIOs and IT leaders should consider these five steps:

1) Develop your future thinking and let go of the idea of how your IT department has done things in the past and think about what processes can be reengineered or what new capabilities need to be developed. Your IT group is best able to identify technology gaps in an organization’s processes as CIOs contend with hybrid cloud environments.

2) Create your Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Building Block and ensure it’s agile, so your IT department can manage infrastructure services in a highly automated fashion and deliver to users in just minutes. By enabling a hybrid cloud environment in the IaaS layer, IT can more easily play the role of cloud services broker.

3) Add the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), which uses the agility in the IaaS foundation. Ultimately, this delivers greater efficiencies and flexibility in the deployment and deployment of cloud workloads. Without PaaS, development and testing of initiatives would require dedicated capacity to be allocated by IT.

4) Ensure required security standards. The SaaS and Infrastructure Security building block is where IT’s ability to serve as a cloud service broker plays a critical role and for an organization’s integrity, cloud-based services are best managed by them as a one cohesive infrastructure.

5) Make your vision a reality and implement transformational change! Now that you’ve assembled all the necessary building blocks, find a trusted partner to help you define and implement your vision. Tools like Cisco Domain Ten can help your IT department create evaluation criteria that helps them play their role as cloud services broker.

Additional Resources:

If you want to learn more about how to prepare for growing cloud workloads, how to evolve your IT department to harness the true potential of the cloud, and how to develop a more strategic approach to IT operations and service management, be sure to :

Watch the Cisco Intercloud Workload Migration Webcast (Available on demand).

Cisco Live, May 18-22

or follow the conversation online @CiscoCloud with #CLUS and #CiscoCloud.

Watch the Cisco Live Opening Session and Keynote by John Chambers on Monday, May 19 at 3:30 p.m. PDT.

Watch the Cisco Live Technology Business Vision  keynote by Rob Lloyd on Tuesday, May 20 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

Register today for the Cisco Powered Cloud Day at Cisco Live on Monday, May 19. The insightful day will focus on opportunities and challenges that can be addressed with cloud.

Watch the Cisco Live Cloud Technology Trend Keynote – Aligning Your Strategy and Business for Cloud Success by Dr. Gee Rittenhouse and Faiyaz Shahpurwala on Tuesday, May 20 – 1:30 p.m. PDT.Visit

Cloud Executive Perspectives to get additional cloud insights for IT leaders.

 



Authors

Scott Clark

Vice President, Advanced Services

Cloud & Networking Services

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The Internet of Everything (IoE) is changing the business and IT landscape, fueling unprecedented growth and disruption. As such, just thinking about cloud deployment is not enough. Organizational leaders need a cloud strategy to help future-proof their business and better meet objectives.

In fact, according to Gartner, organizations that continually monitor cloud computing trends and subsequently update the enterprise’s cloud strategy, will likely avoid costly mistakes and garner the most value from market opportunities over the next few years.

Cloudy Future SlideShow by Gartner

 As CXOs adopt cloud strategies, what key trends should they keep in mind?

Here’s a short list for consideration:

Trend #1: Prepare for Growing Cloud Workloads

Today’s world isn’t just a world of many clouds, but also a world of growing cloud workloads.

According to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index:

Annual global cloud IP traffic will reach 5.3 zettabytes by the end of 2017. By 2017, global cloud IP traffic will reach 443 exabytes per month (up from 98 exabytes per month in 2012).

Global cloud IP traffic will increase nearly 4.5-fold over the next 5 years. Overall, cloud IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 35 percent from 2012 to 2017.

Global cloud IP traffic will account for more than two-thirds of total data center traffic by 2017.

In this video, find out how these growing cloud workloads are driving IT to become a broker of cloud technologies.

Continue reading “What CXOs Need to Know About the Cloud”



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To meet customer demands in a rapidly changing IT market, at Partner Summit, Cisco announced our strategy for Intercloud, our value-oriented global public cloud.

Cisco is committing a $1B investment and has formed a dedicated worldwide organization with three leaders for Development, Delivery and Sales for fast execution; Dr. Gee Rittenhouse leads Cloud Orchestration, and Faiyaz Shahpurwala leads Cloud Infrastructure and Services Delivery,  and Nick Earle leads the Cloud Sales and Go-to-Market.

To be successful we need to be creative and move fast – at cloud speed. Today, Nick Earle announced the newly formed Cisco Cloud and Managed Service Organization (CMSO) and his new leadership team to our internal stakeholders.  I am excited to be part of that leadership team and will be transitioning to my new role, to lead this new Cloud and Managed Services Partner Organization, over the next few weeks. Continue reading “Cisco Cloud and Managed Service Organization”



Authors

Edison Peres

Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels

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Not all workdays begin with a convoy of cyclists hailing from India, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and America. And fewer still wind up with creations made of LEGOs, spaghetti, string, and marshmallows.

Yet every workday — no matter how challenging — should have the same spirit of diversity, adventure, and assumption-busting repartee that I experienced at THNK — The Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership.

Once our Cisco Consulting Services colleagues finished winding through the streets of central Amsterdam each morning, we got down to the serious business of “hacking” some key global issues, together with our friends at THNK.

THNK-NVilla

One of those issues has evolved into a Cisco/THNK partnership challenge, inwhich we will share Cisco’s expertise on the Internet of Everything (IoE) to solve some global problems around food safety and food distribution. I will speak more about the Internet of Food initiative in a subsequent blog.

Another key challenge was to foster digital disruption in the Internet of Everything (IoE) age — a time when our enterprise customers, and especially their end users, are demanding rapid transformation.

That level of change stems from the kind of open innovation and inclusive creative processes promoted by THNK in Amsterdam. Those processes are also being embraced by Cisco at our innovation hubs in such places as Rio de Janeiro, Toronto, and Songdo, South Korea. At these centers, IoE cornerstones such as cloud, mobility, Big Data analytics, and social media are already enabling digital disruption — and will continue to accelerate it.

Continue reading “Driving Serious Digital Disruption, with a Spirit of Fun”



Authors

Nicola Villa

Managing Director, Global Analytics Practice

Cisco Consulting Services

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This time of year is always exciting – with students going off to college, coming home from college, graduating, switching majors and sometimes changing schools. It’s especially exciting when we hear stories like that of the 16 year old Florida student who received her college degree days ahead of her high school diploma.

Reading that success story this week reminded me of the importance of colleges and universities offering dual enrollment to high school students – and how technology can make it more accessible to more students.

One example that comes to mind is that of Coastal Bend College here in Texas. They are preparing their 3,700 students, from across four campuses, for jobs in the real world. They achieve this by providing hundreds of academic classes, as well as vocational and technical training. The College also partners with local high schools in order to provide dual-enrollment courses for students who are often rural and wouldn’t otherwise be able to participate. Continue reading “#HigherEdThursdays: Virtualizing Dual Enrollment”



Authors

Kerry Best

Marketing Manager

Public Sector Marketing