Avatar

We recently attended Retail Banking 2014 in Orlando, FL, where a wealth of information and best practices were shared, with much of the focus on how the banking industry is moving forward with the evolution of the customer experience. This year’s conference focused on the issues that bankers must deal with now and in the future:  revenue growth, branch optimization, digital banking, analytics, the evolution of social media, and of course, Omnichannel.

I have highlighted below a few of the key concepts and quotes from the speakers at the conference that you might find interesting. Continue reading “Understanding Your Customers – Cisco FSI’s Key Takeaways From Retail Banking 2014”



Authors

Jim Henschel

Practice Manager

Banking, Americas Business Transformation

Avatar

When Cisco first envisioned the concept of an Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) we knew it wouldn’t be possible for ACI to achieve its full potential without the active support of a broad and comprehensive partner ecosystem. Today, more than 26 partners delivering a range of industry-leading infrastructure, security, cloud, mobility and other solutions are actively teaming with Cisco to help organizations achieve our ACI vision.

One of these partners is Splunk, the leading provider of real-time operational intelligence.

Splunk is unique in its ability to ingest massive volumes of data across a multitude of sources, talk to every element of a data centre infrastructure in real-time, and create correlations across technology, application, security and networking and other silos.

Splunk shares Cisco’s vision for ACI and has teamed with Cisco to enable single pane of glass visibility across the datacenter for real-time monitoring of applications and underlying infrastructure components.

Together, Cisco and Splunk have partnered to develop Cisco ACI for Splunk Enterprise. This app, which will be released with APIC controller, delivers centralized, real-time visibility for applications and ACI infrastructures across bare metal and virtualized environments.

Benefits include:

  • Quick isolation of application issues resulting in faster root cause analyses
  • Maximized application uptime through proactive performance monitoring
  • Streamlined administration of multi-tenant environments

How It Works

Cisco APIC enables visibility to the network control plane with a unified, application-driven policy approach that aligns with Splunk’s own ability to provide visibility across all the components or layers in the infrastructure that can impact the application delivery to end users. APIC is in charge of monitoring the  application health from a network viewpoint and assigns a health score for each application network under management.  If any degradation in the fabric occurs and impacts a specific application, APIC recalculates the application health and notifies the fault management system of this change in health score.

SplunkGraphic

Continue reading “Splunk and Cisco APIC drive Network Analytics”



Authors

Sandeep Agrawal

Sr. Product Line Manager

Security Business Group

Avatar

Screen shot 2014-05-08 at 9.26.42 AM

This blog post was written by Priscila David in collaboration with Anuja Singh and Rima Alameddine

Exactly one year ago, during the launch of the Cisco Empowered Women’s Network at Cisco Live Orlando, we asked the audience: “What would you do if you were not afraid?” On that day, we couldn’t have imagined the incredible journey we would take in answering that question and, ultimately, in building the Cisco Empowered Women’s Network (CiscoEWN).

CiscoEWN was created out of a collaboration between myself, Priscila David (Director, Systems Engineering, US Commercial East); Rima Alameddine (Sales Director, Enterprise NY); and Anuja Singh (Manager, Systems Engineering, Public Sector).  All three of us work in the field sales organization at Cisco and have daily interactions with customers and partners. We realized that Continue reading “Cisco Empowered Women’s Network (CiscoEWN) at Cisco Live US enters its second year!”



Authors

Priscila David

Systems Engineer Director US Commercial East Area

Avatar

cisco_sg500-52p

 

There are almost 28 million small businesses in the US which have generated over 65% of the net new jobs since 1995. Of those with websites, the average annual revenue was $5.03 million. With those statistics in mind, how do you build an infrastructure to support growth through it’s first 5 years and beyond? How are these small businesses integrating the various components of a network together such as wireless, VoIP, and security?* Continue reading “Cisco 500 Small Business Series”



Authors

Avatar

To keep their viewers happy, video broadcasters find themselves increasingly eager to offer the best possible deal. Crafting offers that win business has not always been easy. Traditionally, offers have been tied to a single device, such as a set-top box, and limited to rudimentary models such as subscribing to one or more channels or purchasing a single event. Even if one overcame that obstacle, supporting commercial offers on multiple devices – many of which employ different proprietary Digital Rights Management (DRM) standards – meant that it was difficult to ensure a seamless user experience.

In a competitive business environment, the ability of broadcasters to monetize their video services with creative and attractive offers should not be limited by Continue reading “Finally offer your viewers the packages they’ve wanted all along”



Authors

Ezra Olman

Technical Writer

Service Provider Video Software & Solutions Group

Avatar

As technology becomes smarter and capable of more connections and interactions, we will begin to see certain trends arise in the mobility industry. Trends such as, low-cost mobile devices will positively impact developing regions around the world, Internet of Things (IoT) partnerships will drive transformation of mobile networks and the proliferation of wearables will further increase the number of connected devices.

These trends and more are shaping the future of mobility, and what they mean for executives in today’s business landscape. In addition, the convergence of mobile, cloud and infrastructure is demanding that executives prepare for what will certainly be an evolutionary time in our history.

So looking ahead over the next twelve months, what mobility trends have immediate business implications for organizations and service providers?

Future of Mobility Podcast on iTunes
Listen to the Future of Mobility Podcast on iTunes

What do CXOs need to watch for?

Continue reading “Top Five Mobility Trends CXOs Should Watch”



Authors

Doug Webster

Vice President

Avatar

I had the opportunity to attend Cisco’s annual Partner Summit last month and I am excited about the news announced at the summit as well as the valuable conversations I had with our partners. The reoccurring topics I heard included cloud, innovation, speed, scale and, most importantly, differentiation.

The partners I spoke with viewed exceptional service as a key enabler of future growth. As solutions get ever more complex, partners increasingly look to services as their key competitive differentiator.

Partners have a unique opportunity to leverage recent Cisco investments in software enabled services to enable differentiation. In discussions at Partner Summit, one question came up time and again:

“Customers are demanding more complex solutions, but they want a simpler support experience – how do we balance these seemingly competing objectives?”

Multi-vendor solutions are by their nature complex. Integrating support across these disparate components enables partners to create a simplified support experience – speeding resolution times and increasing transparency across the support process. Customers also look for integrated SLA’s, no matter how many parties might be involved in delivering support.

By connecting all service partners in the cloud, partners can deliver a unified support experience, opening new opportunities for partners to provide differentiated services. Better still, this “ecosystem” of connections in the cloud enables automation of IT service management and better exchange of support information between providers and customers for faster mean time to resolution for IT issues.

One partner at the forefront of this new paradigm is BORN Green Technologies of Switzerland. I caught up with Patrick Spreng from BORN at Partner Summit. He told me about BORN customers who had visibility into multi-vendor support processes they’ve never had before, using Cisco ServiceGrid. What had previously seemed an unmanageable mess created from a highly fragmented environment was brought together into a single support experience – with one overall SLA. On a daily basis, Patrick reported, it just made support easier.

Services will continue to grow as a major competitive differentiator for partners. Partners that embrace new models and innovate in this space will win new customers. Nowhere is this more important than in managing the growing complexity customers are facing every day.

Watch our interview with ATP Partner BORN Green Technologies to learn more about how it is leveraging the power of Cisco ServiceGrid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgG3o6wuf0E&list=UUzx3f4L9O21pfbpMyJ9Fs5w

 



Authors

Jim McDonnell

Director, General Manager

ServiceGrid, CMCP, UCSF Alliance

Avatar

This two-part blog series discusses the future of wearables and mobility in an #InternetOfEverything world. 

Check out the first post of this series that discusses why contact, connections and context will drive the next generation of wearables.

When 24-year-old Jason Barnes lost part of his arm in an electrical accident, he also lost the ability to drum. Thanks to engineers at Georgia Tech, he now has range with his artificial hand that is impossible with a normal human hand. Arguably, now he has new capabilities that other musicians don’t have – all because of an incredibly advanced replacement part.

If you consider how wearables may evolve, we may see a time where people take a perfectly good limb, eye or ear and replace it with something synthetic because it gives them a skill that they haven’t had before. Perhaps it gives a solider infrared vision at night or a baseball pitcher a robotic arm that throws a perfect game.

These new capabilities will propel us into a new phase of human history – this period of self-designed evolution. As the power of Internet of Everything (IoE) technology merges with biology, we can create a self-evolving population. Let’s take a step back and look how this has developed over time.

How it Began

If you look back throughout human history, we’ve always adorned ourselves with some kind of capability. Usually it’s because we want to differentiate ourselves or show status or an association with a tribe or group. This has traditionally been accomplished through wearing jewelry, getting tattoos or piercings and so on. Today, we’re beginning the wearable phase and it’s about smart watches, glasses and jewelry, but tomorrow will bring the era of embeddable technology.

Continue reading “Wearable 2.0: The #FutureOfMobility”



Authors