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I have just returned from a very interesting and jammed-packed week at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona. More than 75,000 people were estimated to have attended this year’s MWC, and its fabulous new conference facilities proved a great place to celebrate the industry’s accomplishments and catch a glimpse of its potential future.  Much has changed in the industry over the last year since I reported my observations of MWC 2013.  However, what is most remarkable is how the boundaries of mobility continue to expand and morph – everything now seems to be mobile?

The following are my personal observations and extrapolations from the show, based on my conversations with operators, customer meetings, analysts, and colleagues, as well as from simply walking the show floor: Continue reading “Observations from Mobile World Congress 2014”



Authors

Stuart Taylor

Director

Service Provider Transformation Group

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Studies show the importance of quality education when it comes to the development of a country. The education system of the 21st century is very different from a few years prior due to the technological advances. There is a massive change in the way information is accessed today.

We can no longer limit students to books for knowledge because of the plethora of information that students can access on the internet through the various devices. The Common Core Standards introduced in the United States aim to prepare students for the future in the 21st century. Continue reading “Common Core Mobile Technology Uplifts School Performance”



Authors

Anand Jobanputra

Marketing Specialist

Mid-Market Mobility Solutions

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#CiscoChampion Radio is a podcast series by Cisco Champions as technologists, hosted by Cisco’s Amy Lewis (@CommsNinja). This week we’re talking about the Cisco Networking Academy.

Listen to the Podcast

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Featured Guests:
Cisco Champions: Richard Grotegut (@OhloneRich), Ike Ozurumba (@IkeNetworkGuy)
Cisco Subject Matter Expert: Suzanne Jonas (@hitechzippy)

Highlights:
The early days of NetAcad and how it has evolved
How NetAcad helps I.T. students become more employable
How NetAcad connects NetAcad students to jobs
Updates to the new CCNA curriculum, like IPv6
New courses, like Entrepreneurship
Partnership with Linux Professional Institute, Linux Essential
CCNP program in UK; roll out to North America and Latin America
Tips for NetAcad students Continue reading “#CiscoChampion Radio S1|Ep3: Cisco Networking Academy”



Authors

Rachel Bakker

Social Media Advocacy Manager

Digital and Social

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Every area of your business has a stake in the way IT delivers services. Each one needs speed, agility, efficiency, and a clear definition of its relationship with all of the other areas and the business as a whole. In order to get there and create an agile and efficient organization that flows, you need to unify IT with all areas of the business. There is no way around it.

If your company is one of the four out of ten companies moving to a private cloud by the end of 2014, then you know you need a solution that does more than dispense virtual machines in minutes. You need a solution to deliver diverse services across an entire solution stack. You need a cloud partner that can align with the demands of your business today, tomorrow, and well into the future. Always keep in mind that your cloud technology choices are major decisions with business-critical impact.

Selecting a cloud management solution is a strategic decision for your organization. In a previous blog, I wrote about Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) receiving the highest score in the Forrester Private Cloud Wave Report for cloud vision and strategy. What we presented to Forrester, and even more, is now available for your organization through the latest release of Cisco IAC.

How does vision and strategy translate into IT better aligning with your business? Sit back and watch this informative, short video to find out.

Every day customers tell me what keeps them up at night is not how to reduce costs but how to survive. Just as in nature, survival for business depends on intelligence and fast and agile execution of processes. To make these capabilities part of your organization’s genetic composition, so that they are intrinsic, almost intuitive, you need a cloud management solution that sees, understands, and manages your whole environment: physical and virtual, networks, applications, and more – whatever comprises your stacks.

Plus, you need cloud efficiencies to extend beyond your data center securely and encompass business functions such as delivery of development environments within minutes, the ordering of a new laptop or virtual desktop, onboarding of a new employee, or even the ordering of office supplies. And you want to be able to do all of these things from a unified user interface.

That’s exactly what the latest release of Cisco IAC brings to the table:

• The integration of Cisco IAC and Cisco UCS Director delivers a comprehensive private cloud, which frees you to focus on creating differentiated services instead of building your cloud.
• A unified self-service portal and catalog covers your enterprise, providing a modern online shopping experience across all data center and workplace functions.
• Advanced cloud governance offers the ability to manage demand, suppliers, and service consumption tracked to specific budgetary or resource thresholds.

But wait, there’s more. There’s the network. Any NOC expert will tell you that delivering network services in the cloud is a manual, trouble-ticket-based grind. At a time when your business needs speed and agility, manual network service delivery slows down IT and your business.

Unchain your business with Cisco IAC’s out-of-box templates that automate the delivery of VPNs, firewalls, and load balancers. We’re not talking about a single configuration applied to every organization, but the ability for each tenant to define its own unique network service configuration.

Cisco understands that cloud management is more than dispensing virtual machines. The latest release of Cisco IAC allows IT to align with your business, so that you’re free to not just survive, but to thrive.

Take the next step and watch this technical video overview of Cisco IAC.



Authors

Joann Starke

No Longer with Cisco

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Information security is one of the largest business problems facing organisations. Log data generated from networks and computer systems can be aggregated, stored, and analysed to identify where misuse occurs. The enormous amount of data involved in these analyses is beyond the capability of traditional systems and requires a new, big data approach. Given the right tools, skills and people, security teams can take advantage of big data analysis to quickly identify malicious activity and remediate attacks. Together, the big data platforms, the administration tools, analysis tools, skilled analysts, and pressing problems form an evolving ecosystem driving innovation. It would be a mistake to believe that this ecosystem is not without its challenges.
Continue reading “Big Data Ecosystem Challenges”



Authors

Martin Lee

EMEA Lead, Strategic Planning & Communications

Cisco Talos

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Wow, that was one heck of a week.  MWC 2014 is over, but, it was incredible.  The show was packed, the collaboration with customers was dynamic and, once again, Barcelona was a fantastic host.  For me though, it was also a clear statement that the Internet of Things (IoT) is exciting and gaining steam with mobile operators.  In fact, as I looked through three discreet lenses, I could clearly see the excitement from customers and the advancement of the technologies that will help to enable them.  I walked no less than 5 miles a day, traversing what became my own personal MWC IoT Triangle, jamming in customer and partner meetings in the Cisco booth, running to SAP’s booth to collaborate on our joint demos and then to the Plaza De Palau where I was hosting Smart and Connected City tours. Continue reading “IoT at Mobile World Conference with Cisco and SAP”



Authors

Bill Gerhardt

Director Service Provider Vertical

Internet of Things (IoT) Business Unit

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Ahh travel. As I arrived last night for XChange Solution Provider, I was lamenting the fact that I had just traveled 2,428 miles from Charlotte, NC to Los Angeles, CA and my bag didn’t make it with me. Woe is me, right? Little did I know that my bag would arrive at my hotel in time for me to be ready for breakfast, and the opportunity to listen to Adam Steltzner, lead engineer, Mars Science Laboratory, NASA .

Opening General Session
Opening general session for XChange Solution Provider.

Well guess what, he led a team of engineers that landed the Mars Curiosity rover within a predicted space about the size of the conference room I’m now sitting in, after it had traveled millions of miles. Pretty amazing stuff, and considering all the things that could, and did, go wrong while planning and executing that maneuver, I feel bad complaining that my bag arrived at my hotel about 15 hours after I did.

Now it might have been more of a tragedy for my conference mates at XChange Solution Provider had my toiletries not arrived in time for me to brush my teeth… Through human planning and execution though, the Mars Curiosity lander made a 350 million mile journey and I got my toothbrush in time to be clean and fresh for the start of today’s events. Continue reading “XChange Solution Provider Launches with Fresh Perspectives in L.A.”



Authors

David Durham

Content Strategist

Channels

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  • How ACI lets you manage a network cohesively instead of box-by-box ?
  • What a network looks like in ACI mode vs. stand-alone mode ?
  • How ACI works with network protocols like spanning-tree and TRILL ?
  • Upgrading the Nexus 9000 Series to ACI
  • When does ACI make sense for your business ?

For this new episode of the podcast with Cisco Champion, we are fortunate to have a great technical (and casual) dialog between two active members of the data center and cloud social media sphere.

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Colin Lynch (@UCSguru) based in London is a subject matter expert for Cisco UCS, Integrated Systems, Converged Infrastructure and writes also on SDN . Colin has an independant blog at UCSguru.com He was nominated ComputaCenter Consultant of the Year in 2013 .

Colin talked with Joe Onisick (@jonisick) who works for Insieme Networks, now part of Cisco. Joe writes an independant blog at DefineTheCloud.com. He talked about ACI in multiple videos and podcasts.

After attending Cisco Live Europe in Milan, Colin was at VMware PEX to have an in-depth analysis of NSX , and wanted to “challenge ” Joe on several points, which makes this conversation even more lively !

I found this dialog extremely rich, as both participants were willing to address difficult and controversial aspects of the Data Center architecture today and tomorrow,  for instance around layer 2 and layer 3,  network programmability and management, or the future of networking certification ! You will also better understand, why Cisco is heavily investing in ACI solutions, when at the same type keeps developing other paths .
A very exciting 40 mn conversation between two great subject matter experts, really passionate by this topic, spiced  with additional questions from other Cisco Champions and…humor.

Listen now to our guests and enjoy the show hosted by @commsninja.

I also encourage you to read this very didactic explanation from Tom Edsall, Cisco Fellow and CTO of Insieme Networks, in this new blog from Shashi Kiran
ACI Design Principles : The Role of SDN Overlays in Application Centric Deployement . Shashi  will publish the second part tomorrow .

As a reminder, Cisco Champion is a community of  technical professionals who are passionate about sharing their knowledge and expertise. They are ready to offer their time to help others to learn about Cisco and connect with Cisco in unique way
For Data Center and Cloud , we have now more than 40 members, who have been nominated by peers for one year . We invite them to give their opinion on market trends, Cisco solutions and products . We encourage also them to participate to our Cisco Live events , webcasts, podcasts , Google + HOA , blogs and tweet to share their experience and wisdom.

 

 



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Brian WalshBy Brian Walsh, Service Provider Mobility Senior Marketing Manager

Among the discussions we had with global Mobile Service Providers in Barcelona at MWC 2014, here’s something that was certainly NOT breaking news: in the face of relentless growth of mobile data usage (see Cisco VNI), a top imperative expressed was to drive profitability by monetizing new opportunities.

What’s unfortunate is that the challenges continue to grow. Over-the-Top (OTT) competition continues to preempt new Service Provider (SP) services initiatives. New revenue partnerships with OTT and Content Providers remain elusive. And SP’s see more and more new sources of services substitution challenging their legacy voice & messaging services, for example, the WhatsApp move into voice services.

Of course, Service Providers also want to Continue reading “Mobile Monetization Takes a Step Forward”



Authors

Keith Day

Marketing Director

Service Provider Mobility Business