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Internet of Everything (IoE) is touted as the next big thing in 2014. Tech pundits, Silicon Valley executives, entrepreneurs and government officials predict that Internet of Everything will be a “multi-trillion dollar business,” which has the potential to transform our physical world with a variety of remotely operated objects. Cisco predicts some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020.

Within the public sector, IoE has the capacity to reveal new ways to manage infrastructure, reduce operational costs and improve the lives of citizens with innovative service offerings. This includes public safety initiatives involving first responders, physical  security and fleet management in municipalities. For example, IoE helps keep first responders in constant communication with dispatchers, traffic management systems, and other agencies.  It can also provide  greater situational awareness with onsite video surveillance access and other environmental sensors.   Similarly, IoE also provides greater safety and convenience for passengers and drivers with real-time monitoring of vehicles, GPS data mapped to schedules and interactive onboard services. Continue reading “IoE’s Promise for the Public Sector”



Authors

Dan Kent

Director

Public Sector Engineering & CTO

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Yesterday in Los Angeles, CA I attended XChange Solution Provider, where Cisco was honored with multiple Channel Champions awards. This conference brings together 225 solution provider decision makers from across the United States and Canada and provides a great chance to network. The 24th annual Channel Champions Awards were part of this event, and it was great to see Cisco perform so well once again.

Cisco Channel Champions Awards 2014
Channel Company CEO Bob Faletra; Cisco Senior VP Worldwide Channels, Edison Peres; Cisco VP, Global Partner Marketing Sherri Liebo; Cisco Senior Manager, Executive Communications Carol McCutcheon; Cisco Senior Director, Channel Business Development, John Growdon; and Channel Company Editor, Steve Burke.

Cisco picked up awards for:

Converged Infrastructure – overall winner and swept the category

Enterprise Networking Infrastructure – overall winner and swept the category

Network Security Appliances – technical satisfaction sub-category

Networking Hardware – overall winner with wins in the technical and support sub-categories

Unified Communications – overall winner and swept category

Video Conferencing – overall winner and swept category

This year saw us strengthen our position in Enterprise Networking Infrastructure where we swept the category, after being the overall winner with two sub-category wins last year. We made the same move in video conferencing this year as well. Also of note, this is the 14th year in a row that we’ve received  the overall award for unified communications (UC).

This is no small feat, and I am so proud of Cisco’s strong presence in these Channel Champions awards. We obviously take a lot of pride in winning these awards. Ultimately though, we don’t win these awards at Cisco without our partners’ commitment and hard work.

As always, your efforts and feedback are the reasons we continually evolve our programs and tools. We always strive to give you the best return on your investment in Cisco and I hope these types of awards give you what you need to close deals with Cisco technology. Again, thank you partners! We were awarded these honors, but we earned them together with you. Let me know your thoughts on these latest awards in the comments below.

I look forward to hearing from you at this year’s Partner Summit, which is right around the corner. For those of you not in attendance this year, remember that you can access Virtual Partner Summit (VPS). In fact, I’ll be holding a global executive chat on March 27 as we close out this year’s event. Register for VPS now so you can add my session to your calendar. Bring your questions to that session so we can interact, even if you’re not in Las Vegas at Partner Summit this year.



Authors

Edison Peres

Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels

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One of my passions is around PCI compliance. I know that sounds oxymoronic. How can someone actually be passionate about something as dry as compliance? Well, for the sake of argument, I prefer delusional rationalization. I think of myself as Batman! I don’t have his intelligence, money, car, or cape (well, I do have the cape, but that is another story), but I DO want to fight injustice where I can. I do think that there are bad guys out there trying to steal my family’s hard earned money. PCI compliance is the leading method for securing the world’s payment systems. The bad guys are real, security is getting harder, and I want to fight on the side of good.

The problem with fighting crime with compliance is that it can be so complex. The general strategy to minimize the complexity of PCI compliance is to use segmentation. Segmentation typically involves putting credit card applications and devices onto its own network, and use traditional firewalls to secure the perimeter. Although effective, this method brings about its own headaches around management. Firewall rulesets can become tedious and complex. Readdressing an entire enterprise with the sole driver of compliance is Herculean. Over time, if not properly managed and sustained, this method, can lead to bloat, misconfiguration, or worse, a breach.

Continue reading “Batman, TrustSec, and PCI”



Authors

Christian Janoff

Enterprise Architect, Compliance

Security Technology Group

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Imagine that you have several branch offices that are using WAN demanding applications like Salesforce.com, Office 365, Virtual Desktops, Video Teleconferencing and more.  You are using those expensive MPLS/VPN WAN connections as you don’t want to risk it and probably because when you started to work there it was already there and … why mess around with something that is working, right?  Normally I would agree with that but when IT budgets are shrinking and the network needs to step up and support those business critical apps, there is no other way but to innovate.

At any given time your network carries information from LAN to WAN and vice versa, some is important and some is less important. In many cases as a network admin you don’t have the visibility to distinguish between them, so what do you do when those critical apps are starting to act up? Usually the answer will be to buy more WAN bandwidth and that will give the apps and the user experience behind them some breathing space. But all you’re doing is buying time.  Buying time never solves the problem because you will need to treat the symptoms again in a few weeks or months.

However, you can solve the problem and not just treat the symptoms using Cisco Intelligent WAN or IWAN for short.

Continue reading “IWAN Wed: What is Intelligent WAN?”



Authors

Ido Glazer

No Longer with Cisco

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This is the second of a two-part blog series developed in association with Tom Edsall, a Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, recently acquired by Cisco Systems. While Part 1 focused on the role of SDN overlays and deployment considerations, this one delves into the benefits derived from such a model in an ACI implementation.

First, an insight into these design principles and the focus on applications from some of the top Insieme engineers-

Benefits of Overlay Integration in ACI deployments

If you have a small amount of state to update when an application moves or is added to the data center you will scale better than if you have a lot of state to update.  With the ACI implementation, we are pretty fortunate in that the amount of state required by the mapping database is relatively small.  It is a simple binding of identity to location.  There is other state not related to the overlay such as access policy which may be larger, but that will be discussed at another time as it is not strictly required for the overlay.  The amount of state that changes for a single move does not change with the size of the data center.

Continue reading “ACI Design Principles: The role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployments – Part 2”



Authors

Shashi Kiran

Senior Director, Market Management

Data Center, Cloud and Open Networking

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In the heart of the overall shift from cloud computing as an isolated project to a central IT strategy, a particular tenet is reigning supreme: hybrid IT strategies. As cloud computing continues to evolve, new technologies are emerging to support the dynamic creation of cloud services. CIOs are increasingly feeling the need to deal with hybrid environments.  But how? Enter the rise of hybrid IT process models and the positioning of IT as a service broker.

Gartner recently identified hybrid cloud and IT as a Service broker (ITaaSB) in its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends; they also highlighted how to move to an ITaaSB environment in their research titled: Top 10 Technology Trends, 2013: Cloud Computing and Hybrid IT Drive Future IT Models.

 
ITServiceBroker

But what exactly is an IT services broker? And how can we help make this shift?

Continue reading “CIO or IT Services Broker?”



Authors

Giuliano Di Vitantonio

Vice President

Data Center and Cloud Marketing

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This blog was originally posted on the Huffington Post.

When people ask why we should encourage women and girls to pursue technology education, I tell them about Soso Luningo.

Soso grew up in one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, a rural village where lack of economic opportunity is the norm. A fraction of the country’s 9000 high schools offer information and communications technology (ICT) as a subject, even though it provides strong career prospects. Unemployment in South Africa is 25 percent, and without the financial resources to attend college, young people like Soso end up trapped in poverty.

But when I met Soso in 2012, she was anything but a statistic. She had a thriving career, had built her parents their dream home, and was a role model to other young women with similar backgrounds. And it was all because she was educated in ICT.

Continue reading “One-Third Of Women in STEM Said They Felt Isolated at Work. Here’s How We’re Helping.”



Authors

Kathy Mulvany

VP Corporate Affairs

Corporate Affairs

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We have a few full on episodes coming out of Cisco Live Milan soon as we cover launch details on hybrid cloud enablement with InterCloud plus the new APIC EM, Application Policy Infrastructure Controller, Enterprise Module. Again, these are coming soon. For now, we whet your appetite with a few of the great standalone conversations we had that are now trickling out.

Connected Transportation, which I initially confused with our IoE or Internet of Everything….but its not the same of course. Barry Einsig comes to Cisco from a very in depth background in all things transportation. Its a great example, if you are not familiar already, with how much depth there can be in any one subject. Great, industry specific examples showing where we can make a difference when connecting the previously unconnected.

In Network Programmability for Better Automation we asked about advancements in Continue reading “From Cisco Live Milan…with Love”



Authors

Robb Boyd

Producer, Writer, Host

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Google is creating a vehicle that drives itself. This isn’t really news, right? They’re testing it all over the place, and it’s on the roads in California, at least on highways and freeways (it’s my understanding Google employees are required to be hands-on on side streets and residential areas) and few would argue that the era of computer-driven vehicles is coming soon.

IOENapkinMath Continue reading “#IoE Napkin Math and Your Daily Commute”



Authors

Rob Coote

System Analyst

Northern Alberta, Canada