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Cisco has been working closely with Hortonworks in delivering turnkey Big Data solutions that expedites the time to market for our joint Big Data Hadoop customers. Cisco’s industry leading UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Big Data, is designed to deliver performance at scale for a wide variety of Big Data workloads. We are working with Hortonworks to integrate Cisco UCS Director Express for Big Data with Apache Ambari, to provide a fully automated solution to deploy and manage Hadoop hardware, networking and the Hortonworks Data Platform. It is built on the solid foundation of the highly successful UCS management platform and the award winning UCS Director orchestration engine.

Today, we are excited that Cisco UCS is HDP certified and Operations Ready. The integration with Apache Ambari allows customers to now deploy and manage their Hadoop clusters in a reliable and consistent manner. The Operations Ready designation is a new certification introduced by Hortonworks to provide the additional assurance that the tool has been integrated with Apache Ambari APIs. Cisco UCS with Hortonworks delivers a fully validated solution and reduces the complexity of managing Hadoop clusters. Cisco is committed to bringing industry leading solutions for Big Data to market, in partnership with Hortonworks and other ecosystem partners.



Authors

Bharath Aleti

Product Manager, UCS Big Data Solutions

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Right now, 66 millions of girls around the world dream of going to school.

Educating girls can break cycles of poverty in just one generation, yet millions of girls aren’t in school. Educated girls stand up for their rights, marry and have children later, educate their own children, and their families and communities thrive.

Yet millions of girls around the world face barriers to education that boys do not. Removing barriers such as early marriage, gender-based violence, domestic slavery and sex trafficking means not only a better life for girls, but a safer, healthier and more prosperous world for all.

Lack of access to education for girls is a real issue, but I must admit I often don’t think of it. Yes, in my daily work with the Cisco Networking Academy I am constantly reminded of the lack of females studying IT, and am involved in projects to help increase these numbers worldwide. But I often forget about the issue one step back. What about the girls who don’t have the luxury of choosing what to study? Those girls who just want to go to school, but can’t?

A few months ago I was reading our Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility newsletter when I saw a post about this very issue. Cisco offices around the globe were showing a documentary called Girl Rising. I was curious and asked for a copy. A few weeks later with a group of co-workers in our Barcelona office we were moved by the story of 9 girls from around the world portrayed in the video.

Continue reading “Millions of Girls Face Barriers to Getting an Education. How Can We Help?”



Authors

Julie Chrysler

Program Manager

Cisco Networking Academy

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Guest post from Lorenz Jakober

Lorenz Jakober - Akamai
Lorenz Jakober, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Akamai Technologies. Responsible for the product marketing of Akamai’s Cloud Networking product line, Jakober brings a wealth of experience focused on cloud networking architectures, web and mobile application design, performance optimization, usability, and content delivery.

Video growth is overwhelming the enterprise network

We have all been there. At work trying to watch the live company all-hands video, or the latest training, or perhaps even the latest YouTube video. But all we end up with are pixelated videos that take forever to start and constantly re-buffer. The workplace video experience can be abysmal if the WAN is not ready. Most of us will avoid a painful experience like that. Or, if we need to watch the content, suffer through it and spend extra time re-playing it until we can get the message. Talk about engaging employees and improving productivity! In all likelihood, at the same time, the IT team has been watching their network choke on all the additional video traffic. And as we all know we are just at the beginning of the video growth curve with HD everywhere, 4K, “engaging video training”, etc. Cisco, for example, forecasts that by 2018 IP video will represent 79 percent of all traffic globally.
Cisco VNI Global IP Traffic Forecast Continue reading “Video & Software Updates Don’t Need To Overwhelm Your Enterprise Network”



Authors

Raakhee Mistry

Senior Director

EN & Cloud Marketing

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What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone talks to you about Policy? Chances are, you think of rules and regulations telling you about what you cannot do while on a mobile app or online. You don’t think about Policy as a way to set you free or a way for your Service Provider to make things better for you.

Graham Finnie from Heavy Reading discusses in his new whitepaper, “Policy as a Platform: Delivering Agility & Simplicity,” how policy and charging control has come a long way in a few short years.

While past generations of policy Continue reading “Deliver Agility with Policy”



Authors

Maywun Wong

Manager, Market Management

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I’ve written a number of blogs on the economic value of Cisco UCS and how it is changing the economics of the datacenter. Now, for the first time we performed a TCO comparison of our new VersaStack solution and how it stacks up versus the competition. The VersaStack solution combines the innovation of Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure which includes: Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), ACI-ready Cisco 9000 Nexus switches, Cisco MDS switches, and Cisco UCS Director— with the efficiency of the IBM Storwize storage system.

Referencing the VersaStack for Data Center Design Guide, each vendor analyzed their parts of the solution and then combined the results into an overall TCO study. What were the results? Continue reading “The Economic Impact of a VersaStack Solution”



Authors

Bill Shields

Senior Marketing Manager

Product and Solutions Marketing Team

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We all know that Big Data is getting bigger. And, the gap between the amount of data with hidden value and the amount of value that is actually extracted keeps widening. In fact, according to IDC, less than 1 percent of the world’s data is currently being analyzed. What good is data if it doesn’t produce actionable insights that generate improved outcomes?

A large portion of the world’s data is produced by the billions of connected objects that make up the Internet of Things (IoT), a critical enabler of the Internet of Everything. In Cisco Consulting Services, we recently conducted a blind global survey to learn more about how organizations are harnessing IoT to transform their businesses — and what they can do to drive more value. Continue reading “Why Data Integration Provides the Critical Foundation for Capturing Actionable Insights”



Authors

Nicola Villa

Managing Director, Global Analytics Practice

Cisco Consulting Services

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User Experience - RetailIn the US, this is the time of year when holiday shopping kicks into high gear. From Black Friday to Cyber Monday and beyond, retailers begin their big push to drive nearly a quarter of their annual revenue. And whether their customers are online or inside a traditional store, retailers today have the ability to understand shopper behavior better than ever before. This information – from purchasing patterns and advertising effectiveness to dwell times and foot traffic – allows retailers to provide their customers with a more personalized, richer digital experience that’s more likely to result in a sale. It’s a win-win. And it’s made possible through an intelligent network that manages the data analytics, location information, security, and mobility applications that drive a more enhanced and personalized user experience.

Software plays an integral role in this intelligent network. Whether it’s driving data virtualization and analytics, for example, or enabling an application-centric private and hybrid cloud, or providing comprehensive threat protection – software plays a vital role. But even more than that, software enables businesses to be more agile and innovative with market and technology transitions.

Continue reading “Driving Agility and Innovation Through Software”



Authors

John Brigden

Senior Vice President

Offer Monetization Office

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Lisa Garza Bio PicBy Lisa Garza, Cisco Service Provider Marketing, Mobility Solutions Everything old is new again, and that’s true for voice over Wi-Fi. When Apple announced support for Wi-Fi calling on the new iPhone 6 this fall, a new hype cycle was born. In the most extreme cases some industry players are claiming the resulting death of residential licensed small cells. As in most technology introductions, the truth will unfold over time as the technology is applied in the real world. Voice over Carrier Wi-Fi If voice over Wi-Fi were a simple panacea, then we would all Continue reading “Voice over Carrier Wi-Fi: Reality vs Hype”



Authors

Keith Day

Marketing Director

Service Provider Mobility Business

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As a company with deep roots in the North Carolina community, Cisco will today present a $463,000 check to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina.  This contribution is part of the Cisco’s 12th Annual Global Hunger Relief Campaign and reflects donations from more than 600 employees to the Food Bank, as well as matching funds from the Cisco Foundation and John Morgridge’s TOSA Foundation.

The donation will be presented today at a food sort at the Food Bank’s Durham branch, which will be attended by U.S. Congresswoman Renee Ellmers of North Carolina, Food Bank President Peter Werbicki, Food Bank Board Chairman Barry Barber, as well as three dozen Cisco volunteers.

Hunger is a silent tragedy, which affects more than half a million people in North Carolina every month.  At Cisco, we’ve made fighting hunger a company-wide priority, and are incredibly proud of our longstanding support for the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina.  The work the Food Bank does is critically important in our community.

Helping Families in Need
Food insecurity remains a serious problem in Central and Eastern North Carolina.  More than 651,000 individuals struggle to access nutritious and adequate amounts of food every year.  One in 3 of these individuals are children, and 8 percent are elderly, and 30 percent of these households have at least one employed adult.

Established in 1980, the Food bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina is a nonprofit organization that provides food for people at risk of hunger in 34 counties.  Last year, the Food Bank distributed more than 53 million meals to a network of more than 800 partner agencies such as soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters and programs for children and adults through 6 branches in Durham, Greenville, New Bern, Raleigh, Sandhills (Southern Pines) and Wilmington.

Cisco’s Global Hunger Relief Campaign
In addition to the direct donations, Cisco employees have volunteered more than 1,500 hours at the Food Bank.  Cisco has proudly supported the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina since 1996, and is the single largest corporate contributor to the organization.

Tuesday’s event is just one part of Cisco’s annual giving campaign to help stop global hunger in Raleigh-Durham and around the world. This is Cisco’s 12th annual Global Hunger Relief Campaign, involving over 160 food agencies worldwide.

Since Cisco began our hunger relief campaign, we have raised more than $40 million dollars for hunger relief, which translates into nearly 160 million meals for those who need it most.



Authors

Ed Paradise

Cisco RTP Site Executive and Vice President of Engineering