Last week at a grand finalist gala dinner in Sydney, Cisco Australia and New Zealand announced the winner of the 2011 Perfect Pitch Data Centre competition. The Cisco Perfect Pitch Data Centre competition is a partner enablement program which is designed to educate our channel partners and distributors on Cisco Data Centre solutions while at the same time recognising those who demonstrate high achievement in selling the differentiated solution benefits in a given scenario.
Three months ago more than 115 partners accepted the challenge and were paired with a Cisco “coach”. The scenarios were varied across industry verticals. For example, “ You are a public sector Account Executive who is pitching to the CIO of a newly formed State Health Department as to why they should implement Cisco Data Centre solutions to address their department’s business challenges”
Today, Cisco announces the acquisition of BNI Video, an emerging supplier of video back-office and content delivery network (CDN) analytics capabilities to service providers. This announcement is another step forward in Cisco’s leadership in video, one of Cisco’s five strategic priorities. We will continue to drive growth in this important and exciting market through internal innovation, complemented by acquisitions like BNI Video.
In fact, BNI Video is one in a line of strategic acquisitions to accelerate Cisco’s growth and differentiation in video. Over the last year and a half, Cisco has acquired ExtendMedia and Inlet Technologies, which added video content management and adaptive bit rate capabilities to our portfolio, respectively. BNI Video brings back-office video session management and control expertise to Cisco—key elements involved in helping to efficiently deliver ‘TV Everywhere’ services. Together, these additions to Cisco’s video solutions will help service providers in their transition to deliver more powerful on-demand video services and experiences to customers. This move further demonstrates Cisco’s commitment to our service provider customers and our Videoscape strategy. Additionally, with Boost headquarters in Boxborough, this acquisition will continues Cisco’s ongoing effort to grow our already strong presence in the greater Boston area on top of recent acquisitions such as Starent Networks and LineSider.
Cisco’s success in delivering the most innovative switching platforms is because we work closely with our customers to globally deliver network centric platforms that make our customers more competitive and enable them to meet their top goals. What makes a difference to our customers is
The breadth of our product line and technology innovation
The vast scale of our installed base and reach of our delivery model
The deep talent and experience that we can apply to network-centric models
Cisco’s innovations advance key technologies in software and hardware. The impact is highest when these come together to deliver system-level solutions that are magnified by the tight interlock between software and hardware innovations. This includes Silicon technology, software, services, and integrated systems. When I talk to customers on a weekly basis, they tell me that they value our architectural approach that extends the network platform to enable collaboration, data center/cloud transformation and video architectures in ways that expand technology and business relevance on a global scale.
Recent announcements prove that Cisco continues to deliver market-leading innovations designed to meet the needs of the evolving Data Center.
Customers have voted
In just over three years, we have had over 19,000 customers, which is vastly ahead of anybody else in the industry…by a lot. Here are some examples of how customers are benefiting with our flexible and scalable framework:
At Baidu, China’s leading internet search engine, the Cisco Nexus 7000 series and the next generation F2-series line-rate 10GE I/O modules and Fabric2 modules are playing a key role ensure that Baidu can continue to scale and serve its rapidly growing customer base.
At Caltech, a leading higher education institution where the Nexus 7010 is already deployed, they aim to enhance the performance of their network with the smaller form factor Nexus 7009 and its support of higher density 10G modules. Caltech needs a network infrastructure that is reliable, scalable and high performing. They chose Cisco.
Sitel, a global telemarketing business with over 130 call centers in over 25 countries, has deployed FabricPath in order to build a flat, scalable, low latency network fabric without spanning tree. They found that FabricPath improves the availability and increases the bandwidth of their network, but most importantly, it provides the flexibility required to accommodate their growing operations without complex network re-design.
A Volcano of Innovations
Take a look at all the innovations we have delivered over the last few years in the Data Center alone – NX-OS, FabricPath, the fabric extender, OTV with LISP, thinking beyond scaling outside of a pod, inside a data center, between data centers, all the way from a physical to a virtual machine environment. With the rollout of our most recent set of innovations today, Cisco is clearly delivering the most scalable L2/L3 fabric in the Industry today with proven technology, while other vendors are either struggling to go beyond box feeds-and-speeds, or have an unproven fabric approach with minimal customer traction.
All of these new innovations truly do add up to one inescapable conclusion -- Cisco is the only vendor that delivers architectural flexibility and revolutionary scale to enable you to be ready for physical, virtual and cloud deployment. We are at least two years ahead of the competition with our solutions, technologies and products, but most importantly in how we bring it all together to deliver real business value now. Cisco ensures investment protection and architectural flexibility.
For starters, you could download all 250 million photos posted daily on Facebook in 114 seconds or stream 4,500,000 3.5GB Netflix movies simultaneously.
In case you haven’t heard the news, Cisco has announced several new data center innovations today that enable the world’s most scalable data center fabric.But why do data centers need scalability? Today’s data centers span a wide range of requirements– from small and medium businesses to large enterprises, Service Providers, architectures that support cloud computing and specialized applications, like high frequency trading (HFT). Trends such as “Big Data” environments that manage huge data sets and the increase in video data traffic require today’s data centers to scale from a few hundred to several thousand server nodes.
While all of these fun facts are great, stepping back and looking at what this means for our customers is really what it’s all about. So we asked Cisco data center fabric customer RackForce, ICT service provider, what they’d do if they had the most scalable data center fabric. Check out their video response:
Learn more about Cisco’s Unified Fabric on October, 25th at the “Evolutionary Fabric. Revolutionary Scale.” webcast and send us your comments on what you would do with the world’s most scalable data center fabric.
Last week was an exciting week in Australia as in tandem with the global launch of the Cisco Virtualisation Experience Infrastructure (VXI), we were very proud to announce one of the solutions first customers is Australian! The South West Alliance of Rural Health (SWARH) is the technology service provider for 13 hospitals and health agencies in rural Victoria, the largest of which is Geelong based Barwon Health Hospital.
Garry Druitt, the CIO of SWARH and both Paul Cohen, the Deputy CEO, and Ann Larkin, the CIO of Barwon Health Hospital joined us at a TelePresence roundtable event to give media their first hand experiences with the new technology. SWAHR is using Cisco VXI to deliver a cutting edge virtual workspace by unifying its virtual desktops, voice and video which takes advantage of both Cisco UCS and our great collaboration suite with voice and video.
This week Cisco unveiled the next phase of its Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) with a series of offerings and innovations that can deliver uncompromised desktop virtualization experiences. Cisco also announced endpoints that enable high-quality voice and video in virtual desktop environments – a development that could help redefine collaboration in the virtual workspace.
This week Cisco and Citrix Systems announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance to develop and deliver solutions that help customers simplify and accelerate large-scale desktop virtualization deployments. Through this alliance, Cisco and Citrix will drive innovations that simplify the deployment of high-definition virtual desktops and applications and improve end-user experiences over a highly secure Citrix HD-enabled Cisco network.
Here’s what to look forward to next week!
The Broadband Debate: Many believe broadband service should be a basic right. Country by country issues vary, but how can access be achieved? Learn more about this issue on Monday!
And that’s it! Have a great weekend and talk to you next Friday!
There is a lot that business can learn from the gaming industry and the floodgates are about to open. Make sure you watch this amazing trend!
Being an avid gamer myself, I’m very excited about how gaming is moving from play into work. This fall, Cisco took our worldwide sales conference from an event where we used to fly 20,000 people into Vegas to hosting it online. This virtual environment was a great place for us to use video, web sharing, badges and quizzes to inspire, collaborate and teach.
In this video, I join Stanford University communications professor Byron Reeves and Mary Jo Kim, CEO of “Shufflebrain”, to discuss this exciting new world of gaming. Here is the video.
“Mixing work and play”
I also want to share this week’s Wall Street Journal piece about “mixing work and play.” Can you really play on the job? The article describes what is happening in some large companies like IBM and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.
Many of the same motivations and tactics used in your kid’s Xbox game are being used in management training, data entry and just plain old brainstorming. Show up for a meeting on time or complete an assignment? You get a badge.
Today, Cisco announced a strategic alliance with Citrix focused on helping customers simplify and accelerate large-scale desktop virtualization deployments—which means the companies will work across a broad range of technology areas, including datacenter, networking, devices, multimedia to deliver more integrated desktop virtualizations solutions.
Sounds nice, but I wanted to know than just vision, so I met with Gary Borad, Cisco’s the partner manager supporting the Citrix relationship to hear how Cisco and Citrix actually hope to deliver on this vision. Here is what he said… Read More »
Cisco and Systems Integration Specialists Company (SISCO) have begun an open source project intended to foster further innovation and faster adoption of IP-standards in smart grid. Together, the two aim to provide an implementation framework for synchronized phasor measurement communications that will help more quickly bring this valuable technology to the fore.
Synchrophasors are an important element in making the electrical infrastructure more stable and reliable. Analysis of past electricity blackouts shows that precisely monitoring synchrophasors has the potential to detect system instability much earlier than current systems. This will prevent large-scale blackouts by giving system operators more time to respond to disruptive events and enabling them to take corrective action before system stability is affected.
Synchrophasor projects are currently taking place across North America.
Cisco and SISCO are gathering at NASPI this week and will begin rolling out the source code over the next month or so. They are seeking other industry participants to help move the technology forward quickly. Interested? Click here to learn more!
Until the good times return, it’s likely that you, I and buyers of IT equipment everywhere will continue to look carefully at price labels. That’s the nature of things in these uncertain economic times, right?
Well, maybe not. Before we get carried away with economizing, perhaps we should reflect on the words of the author Josh Billings:
“Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return,” said Billings. In other words, the wise invest now to earn later.
That pretty much sums up the contrasting propositions of the Cisco ‘Next Generation network’ and the H-P ‘Good Enough’ network. With one (H-P), network buyers save a few bucks up front knowing it will cost them more (financially and in terms of capabilities) in the future.
With the other (Cisco), they invest a little more up front, knowing that the future return (and ability to grow with their business) is superior and safeguarded.
The infographic below details exactly what’s at stake.
Cisco HP Networking Total Cost of Ownership Comparison
My usual perch is in the heart of Silicon Valley, but this week I’m in New York City for Interop. So when I heard the news Wednesday night about Steve Jobs passing, I felt a sense of the surreal. Nothing like hearing about something hard-hitting and close to home when you’re 3,000 miles away. While I didn’t know Steve Jobs personally, he has been a source of inspiration for me, from the start of my career, on. He was part of the legend of Silicon Valley that drew me from Toronto.
Clearly he has moved many and inspired untold numbers. So much has already been written, but I feel compelled to share two things that, for me, characterize the essence of his inspiration:
A Steve Jobs quote as reported in All Things Digital: “When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”
From Forbes a few weeks ago, “The Top 10 Lessons Steve Jobs Can Teach Us – If We’ll Listen”: “To create the future, you can’t do it through focus groups…The customers today don’t always know what they want, especially if it’s something they’ve never seen, heard, or touched before.”
Steve Jobs challenged all of us to ‘think different.’ But more to the point, he set the bar that much higher. He inspires us to not settle for easy or mediocre, but to push for excellence not yet defined.
And, if you have a spare 15 minutes, please listen or watch Steve Jobs commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 where he says, among other elegant, inspiring things: “do what you love.”
Long commutes and being in an office at a certain time with limited flexibility is gradually becoming a thing of the past. The future will see an increase in workplace mobility creating the “anywhere office,” a place where employees can work anytime from anywhere.
Which global region will lead the way in mobility by 2013? Click on our interactive infographicto find out.
In terms of sheer mass, the Asia-Pacific region will have the largest amount of mobile workers, topping out over 700 million people and making up for 62% of all the world’s mobile workers. In regards of being the leader in mobile penetration, the US will lead the world with Japan in tow with roughly three-fourths of all employees having workplace mobility options.
“The world lost a true visionary and great man today. Steve Jobs did more than simply shape our concepts of technology and invention, he helped define our understanding of how great innovation and design can bring people closer together. I, and everyone at Cisco, am deeply saddened by Steve’s loss. Our deepest sympathies go out to his colleagues and family. We’ll miss you, Steve, but your legacy will continue forever.”
Our neighbors in Palo Alto have been making a lot of noise about the difference in price between Hewlett-Packard and Cisco networking equipment. They’d like customers to believe they can offer similar capabilities to Cisco but at much lower prices—“Cisco for less,” if you will.
Most folks understand that the first part of that claim isn’t true. They’re not Cisco. To start with, when a company spends just 2% of revenues on R&D (as HP does), it isn’t capable of generating the type of innovation that a company spending 13% can (as Cisco does). We explained how Cisco innovation delivers differentiated capabilities when we debunked the myth of the ‘Good Enough’ network.
But some customers still ask me about the price difference—the “for less” part. After all, everyone is looking to cut costs, right?
