Cisco’s been busy this week with news from the collaboration space and the Enterprise 2.O conference this week. It’s been about QUAD—Cisco’s enterprise collaboration platform for today’s workforce: social, mobile, visual, and virtual. It puts people first by offering an integrated and personalized experience that brings together the collaborative, business-oriented, and transactional tools and applications people use over the course of the workday. Sounds awesome doesn’t it? As long as people use it…that’s the trick to real success with any technology driving for a business outcome…utilization.

Along with the technology, Cisco also is offering some important Advanced Services for QUAD and Collaboration including new change management and adoption services — allowing customers to get the best out of their collaborative technologies, while minimizing the disruptive impact of change to employees, partners and customers. These services were designed to help with the adoption of QUAD and handle everything from assessment, planning, strategy and governance, marketing communications to training.

Change isn’t always an automatic and that’s exactly why there’s the need for Professional Services and change management to go along with the technology that really gets people to actualize the benefits of the offerings. Hans Hwang VP Advanced Services shares some further insight on this issue on his blog . And, if you want to go deeper there’s a paper and some interesting upcoming workshops you can attend on Defining a Collaboration Strategy & Architecture to Accelerate Time-to-Value or a Enable a New Collaboration Experience with Enterprise Social Software webcasts.
Here’s to success change and QUAD!

Tags: Cisco, cisco_services, Enterprise 2.0, quad, Social Software

Today marked an exciting milestone in the continuing convergence of Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) and cellular technologies as the Wireless Broadband Association (WBA) and the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) co-announced  that the industry’s first HotSpot 2.0 (HS 2.0) trials are scheduled for later this summer and the HS2.0 certification test beds will be available in mid 2012.  HS 2.0  is an industry initiative to develop standards-based interoperable Wi-Fi authentication and handoff.  In a nutshell, this enables a seamless handoff between cellular and Wi-Fi networks that allows mobile handset users to roam between the two networks without the need for additional authentication — much as you experience roaming between cellular networks while using your cell phone.

Industry organizations and standards bodies working on the HS 2.0 initiative include the WFA, focused on interoperability; the WBA, the industry group organizing the field trials; and the Global System for Mobile Communications Alliance (GSMA) that ensures the HotSpot 2.0 spec is aligned with the 3GPP framework.

Cisco is a strong supporter of the HS 2.0 initiative and is participating in the upcoming trials with its SP Wi-Fi Carrier Solution.  I will continue to provide updates as we move forward with this timely and critical initiative. In the meantime, take a look at this white paper, “The Future of Hotspots: Making Wi-Fi as Secure and Easy to Use as Cellular,”  which explains the technology behind HotSpot 2.0. 

Sarita Kincaid
skincaid@cisco.com
Twitter: @saritakAR

Tags: authentication, cellular, Cisco Wi-Fi Carrier Solution, Cisco WLAN, GSMA, HotSpot 2.0, HS2.0, seamless roaming, security, WBA, WFA, wi-fi

Musings and mutterings from this week’s annual three-day fraternity get-together formally known as NCTA/The Cable Show . . .

• The bash in Chicago is the yearly event for the rather insular cable industry . . . at times, it seemed like everyone there knew everyone else.
• NCTA is one of the few shows at which one can catch celebrities who have actually accomplished things in their lives – Oprah Winfrey, Chicago Mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, actor Kelsey Grammer, professional skier Bode Miller – and ones who haven’t . . . Paris Hilton.
• Though the total exhibitor space seemed a bit smaller than in past years, and official attendance figures won’t be available for a few days, foot traffic seemed good and there was an energetic vibe.

Prevalent themes included:

• The “TV Everywhere” concept
  • “People don’t live just in the home.  They need TV everywhere.”
• The consumer experience
• Over-the-top management
• Second-screen experience
• Multi-screen content and delivery
• IP video
• CMAP

Cisco Videoscape was prominently featured in the Cisco booth.

• “One thing that Cisco does really well is present a solution,” an analyst said.
• “[Videoscape] is a powerful message,” another said.

An interesting nugget from one of the keynotes – smartphones consume an average of 25 times the bandwidth of standard mobile phones, and tablets consume between 100 and 140 times that of standard devices.

Analyst observations:

• “There are some interesting things here, like the Motorola/Skype relationship, but I don’t see much in the way of new technology.”
• “Samsung continues to add services via its Internet-connected TVs . . . They’re becoming an aggregator for OTT services.”
• “Does the head-end eventually become the cloud?”
• “In the future, the big trend for TV is about ubiquity across networks and devices.”
• “IP video is very important in an increasingly competitive environment of connected TVs, over-the-top (OTT) video providers and fiber build-outs by telcos.”

No word on what Paris thinks, though . . .

We know that you’re always keen to hear from our customers. Tomorrow, Wednesday 15th June, Cisco will be hosting a live broadcast with Mike McNamara, CIO of Tesco, the world’s third largest retailer, and Shawn Prince and Aaron Hibbard, Senior IT Directors for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, operator of three regional and international airports in Ohio.

The broadcast will be hosted by Cisco’s Paul Mountford, SVP of Global Enterprise Markets.

In addition from hearing from these customers on how they use their network as an innovation engine to drive their business, there will also be live Q&A. Please join us and submit your questions for the panel.

Broadcast Details
Date: Wednesday 15th June 2011
Time: 08.00 PT / 11.00 ET / 16.00 UK Time / 17.00 CET
Link: Please go here to register. If you cannot attend the live broadcast, a replay will be available via the same link within 48 hours of the event.

In addition, please join the online conversation on Twitter using the following hashtags: #engn  #Cisco

For any queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Tags: Borderless Networks, Columbus Regional Airport Authority, customer, ENGN, innovation, Paul Mountford, Roundtable, Tesco

Around the world, organisations have been gearing up for World IPv6 Day -- a widespread, global ‘test flight’ for IPv6.

Participants include technology providers like Cisco plus content providers and other industry players who will come together to enable IPv6 on their main websites for at least 24 hours.

Why now?
Earlier this year IANA announced that they had allocated the last remaining IPv4 addresses. At the same time, with changing regulatory requirements, more global organisations are having to more to IPv6.

In the meantime, we have a plethora of new devices appearing and more people than ever getting connected to the Internet worldwide.  For content providers, connecting to a global audience is a key factor driving the move towards IPv6.

So, what is Cisco doing to help customers? Our message to customers is very simple:

Preserve your current investment by auditing the existing system; then

Prepare by making a plan and starting a managed migration, even if only in one focused part of the network; this ensures one will

Prosper through the transition to a full IPv6-enabled Internet experience.

Read More »

Tags: Address Exhaustion, Borderless Networks, ipv4, IPv6, World IPv6 Day