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If you had a chance to check out the Cisco Global Cloud Index, it’s no real surprise that data center traffic will nearly triple over the next five years and cloud traffic will nearly quadruple. Customers want cloud solutions to lower cost, speed up IT services delivery, and create business agility—but they don’t necessarily want to do it all themselves.

For our channel partners, building data centers and private clouds has become a significant part of their business. In fact, we’ve seen exponential growth from partners who are building private clouds to help customers create a hybrid cloud environment, where using private and public clouds helps lower IT cost and increase capacity.

Cisco is committed to providing our partners with the tools they need to meet the needs of their customers, including integrated infrastructure stacks for private cloud builders. I’m excited about our most recent announcement of VersaStack with IBM. This new offering as well as our integrated offerings with NetApp, VCE/EMC, and Red Hat enables our partners to build and operate secure and policy-driven hybrid cloud environments for their customers.

In this new hybrid world, customers will need their partners to help manage workloads and migrate applications on and off public clouds. So, cloud builders who offer professional services to build and operate hybrid IT environments have substantial new revenue opportunities. Continue reading “Cloud Builders Monetize Intercloud by Helping Customers Create Hybrid IT”



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Edison Peres

Senior Vice President, Worldwide Channels

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Today’s decision by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to increase funding for E-Rate represents a giant leap forward in fulfilling the goal of connecting every classroom in America to high-speed wireless Internet in the next five years.

This is a truly landmark decision, the effects of which will be felt for a generation.  Not only will it spark more students’ interest in entering the fields that make up STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math – but it will also help make our students and our nation more globally competitive.  And the nations that embrace the digital transition will lead the way in terms of job growth, innovation, and a stronger economy.

In the classroom, this decision will have a dramatic impact.  It will put the power of the Internet in the hands of millions more students, giving them access to amazing videos, creative science experiments, and rich media content of all types.  This will help transform our classrooms and help them be homes of discovery, inventiveness and intellectual exploration.  Just as importantly, it will help connect students in rural areas, so that they have access to specialized courses that may not be offered locally.

The bottom line is this:  E-Rate is the foundation of our nation’s efforts to connect schools and libraries to the Internet.

Under the leadership of Chairman Tom Wheeler, the FCC today has renewed the promise of the E-rate for this new generation of students and will help prepare them to be leaders in the innovation economy.



Authors

Jeff Campbell

Senior Vice President & Chief Government Strategy Officer

Government Affairs and Public Policy

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Here in Silicon Valley and many towns across the globe, it’s that time of year. The time of year when we’re looking forward to spending time with family and friends. It’s also the time of year when we turn our attention to giving back to those who are less fortunate.

This season, I want to direct the focus to just a few of the Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) partners and non-profits who work tirelessly to give back all year long. These connections are what make the CSR work we do possible. Our partners give us the ability to scale our efforts and create exponential social, environmental, and business impact.

One of our CSR focus areas is education. As the world becomes more connected, new career growth and opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are more plentiful than ever. Yet the majority of U.S. students lack foundational skills in STEM. MIND Research Institute set out to ensure that all students are mathematically equipped to solve the world’s most challenging problems. By developing the game-based Spatial Temporal (ST) Math instructional software program, MIND Research Institute is revolutionizing math education through visual learning. Amazingly, schools that fully implement ST Math see double, and even triple, the growth in math proficiency than comparable schools. Cisco has partnered with MIND Research Institute for over a decade now, helping the organization scale delivery and access to ST Math by transitioning the software to a web-based platform. I’m extremely proud that this work and investment has increased access from 55,000 students in 2007 to more than 800,000 students and 31,000 teachers in 40 states, and is helping develop the workforce of the future. Continue reading “Building a Stronger World Through the Power of Giving”



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Tae Yoo

No Longer with Cisco

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Snort 3.0

A little more than a year ago when Sourcefire became a part of Cisco, we reaffirmed our commitment to open source innovation and pledged to continue support for Snort and other open source projects. Our announcement of the OpenAppID initiative earlier this year was one of several ways we have delivered on this promise.

Today we are announcing the alpha release of a new Snort 3.0 architecture. This alpha release builds on several ideas that were part of the original 3.0 prototype developed several years ago and goes well beyond those initial concepts.

Snort 3.0 expands on the extensible architecture users have come to know and includes several new capabilities that make it easier for people to learn and run Snort. We encourage you check out it out at www.snort.org, give us your feedback and help us build a strong foundation for the future. As Joel mentions in his post, this is a very early release that is intended for community feedback more than anything else.

When I first began building Snort, I architected it so that we could continue to extend it over time. By working with the Snort community, it quickly evolved from the initial primitive idea of an easy-to-use intrusion detection engine to the powerful traffic analysis and control capabilities we have today. With millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of registered users, Snort is the most widely deployed IPS technology in the world and has become the standard for intrusion detection and prevention. Snort is also the foundation of Cisco’s Next-Generation IPS and is one of the core technologies that cemented Sourcefire’s position as a leader in the security industry.

Cisco understands the power of open source and how it can help customers solve tough challenges. In the coming months you’ll hear more from us about Snort 3.0 and our continued efforts to deliver meaningful capabilities that underscore this commitment.



Authors

Martin Roesch

Vice President and Chief Architect

Cisco Security Business Group

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Cisco today announced a data and analytics strategy and a suite of analytics software that will enable customers to translate their data into actionable business insight regardless of where the data resides.

With the number of connected devices projected to grow from 10 billion today to 50 billion by 2020, the flood tide of new data — widely distributed and often unstructured — is disrupting traditional data management and analytics. Traditionally most organizations created data inside their own four walls and saved it in a centralized repository. This made it easy to analyze the data and extract valuable information to make better business decisions.

But the arrival of the Internet of Everything (IoE) — the hyper-connection of people, process, data, and things – is quickly changing all that. The amount of data is huge. It’s coming from widely disparate sources (like mobile devices, sensors, or remote routers), and much of that data is being created at the edge. Organizations can now get data from everywhere — from every device and at any time — to answer questions about their markets and customers that they never could before. But IT managers and key decision makers are struggling to find the useful business nuggets from this mountain of data.

As an example, take the typical offshore oil rig, which generates up to 2 terabytes of data per day. The majority of this data is time sensitive to both production and safety. Yet it can take up to 12 days to move a single day’s worth of data from its source at the network edge back to the data center or cloud. This means that analytics at the edge are critical to knowing what’s going on when it’s happening now, not almost 2 weeks later.

Continue reading “The New Analytics Imperative”



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Mala Anand

No Longer with Cisco

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kelly“We are going through unprecedented change in the service provider industry – and it’s increasingly becoming a mobile and cloud-based world, with competition around every corner,” Kelly Ahuja, senior vice president of Cisco’s service provider business, told 70 international journalists during Cisco’s third annual Global Editors Conference in downtown San Jose earlier this week.

“Change is the lone constant,” he continued, “with several major trends driving dramatic impact on every player in the industry.”

Ahuja then chronicled several trends impacting the industry. The world has gone mobile, forever altering customer expectations and the rise in cloud computing is dramatically transforming telecom infrastructures, he noted. Also, he said machine-to-machine Internet of Everything (IoE) experiences are at the cusp of wide-scale proliferation in many markets and video continues to drive global IP traffic growth at a clip of 23 percent global CAGR.

Three Keys to Success: Increase Revenue, Reduce Opex, Enhance Service Agility

Each service provider faces unique geographic and competitive challenges, but according to Ahuja, they are all looking for three things from their technology solutions. “Operators want to improve their top lines,” he said. “They also need to reduce their spending, particularly Continue reading “Key to Service Provider Success: Transformation Through Innovation”



Authors

Jim Brady

No Longer with Cisco

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Our 2013 IT Impact Survey highlighted the importance of collaboration between business leaders and IT as trends like BYOD, data center consolidation and Cloud applications put more pressure on the network. Why collaborate? The survey highlighted that 34% of application roll outs over the prior 12 months were delayed because of not enough budget. You would think that if applications were a priority IT would be given sufficient budget to make sure the network was ready to handle the extra traffic. Unfortunately, according to Nemertes, most organizations’ WAN budgets will remain flat or decline in 2015, meaning that adding bandwidth is often not an option for IT. So how can you do more with less?

Continue reading “Looking for cost savings? Start with the branch.”



Authors

Kiran Ghodgaonkar

Senior Manager, Enterprise Marketing

Intent-based Networking Group

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The sheer size, variety, and speed of data traversing today’s networks are increasing exponentially. This highly distributed data is generated by a wide range of cloud and enterprise applications, websites, social media, computers, smartphones, sensors, cameras, and much more — all coming in different formats and protocols.

Whether it is in the cloud or at the edge, data generated by the Internet of Everything (IoE) must be analyzed to identify actionable insights that can be used to create better outcomes (such as from process optimization or improved customer engagement). Without this critical step, data remains just “data.”

There is often an immense gap, however, between the amount of data with hidden value and the amount of value that is actually being extracted. According to IDC, less than 1 percent of the world’s data is currently being analyzed. What good is data if isn’t analyzed to gain insights?

It’s no surprise, then, that in a recent survey conducted by Cisco Consulting Services, IT and Operational Technology leaders indicated that they perceive the Internet of Things (IoT) — a critical enabler of IoE — as being about much more than just “things.” When we asked them which area (people, process, data, or things) they needed to improve most to make effective use of IoT solutions, the largest number (40 percent) indicated “Data,” while “Process” (27 percent) ranked second. “People” placed third (20 percent) and “Things” finished last (13 percent).

Continue reading “How ‘Data’ and ‘Process’ Are Reshaping the Future Workforce”



Authors

Blair Christie

Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer

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It started with voice: Get more from your corporate infrastructure investments by moving audio traffic onto the data network. It was a good idea that made good financial sense. It caught on. It became pervasive.

As it did, we looked for more ways to leverage that same network investment – extending it to include instant messaging, presence, and video. This evolution vastly increased the significance and value of these collaboration tools. But that sophistication came with management challenges.

When limited to IP telephony, the management tools could live within the solution itself. But extending the scope with more elements added complexity and new challenges: Not only were there additional pieces to roll out, monitor, and manage, but now you had to master management interfaces for each one.

Simplicity is one of the key tenets of an effective collaboration solution. Collaboration is about making connections. It’s about removing barriers that make it difficult or frustrating for people to connect. You want it to take fewer clicks to access the information and people you need to make decisions and interact effectively. The smoother the process, the quicker and better quality the results.

For users across an organization to adopt a collaboration solution, it has to be easy and intuitive. By the same thinking, if the deployment and management are too difficult, chances are the IT department won’t adopt the technology. The last thing IT needs is more complexity.

Cisco has made significant efforts to consolidate and simplify the management of collaboration networks. Continue reading “Simplifying Management of Consolidated Networks”



Authors

Michael Murphy

No Longer with Cisco