A Republican task force recently released a limited set of near-term recommendations for cybersecurity legislation that emphasized voluntary standards instead of regulation. Interesting. Several words jump out at me in that sentence. “Voluntary standards”, “near-term”, “not regulated”. I paraphrase.

Seems to me that something as important as a task force that was put together should be working on an overall strategy to address cybersecurity rather than trying to patch holes in the dike. Read More »

Tags: cybersecurity, DHS, FISMA, government, legislation, private sector, security, vulnerabilities, White House Cyber Plan

Technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace. Organizations are increasingly adopting BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies.  Businesses and governments are changing how they work.  In a recent article by the Wall Street Journal, “Employees Alone Together, ”  the author features organizations that are growing because of their alternative work arrangements.  Technology is allowing these organizations to innovate in ways previously never envisioned.  They are creating communities of interest virtually, celebrating success and planning for tomorrow -- without requiring employees to work longer hours.

Do you want greater work flexibility for your organization?  Learn how technology, when aligned with policies and procedures -- can increase productivity and accelerate your mission task or goal.

Tags: cloud, collaboration, Flexible Working, government, grid lock, telework, workforce mobility

Today, there is lots of buzz around the big news from Cisco and our ecosystem partners with the launch of next generation VXI validated solutions.   If you missed our launch event, you can still get all the details online via our community.

Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) delivers desktop virtualization with secure access to data, voice, and video for fixed and mobile devices.    

Pretty cool but, why is virtualization important for government agencies? 

1. cost control, more than ever government agencies are focused on strategies to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs
2. flexibilty, allow government workers ability to work in different workplaces, from city hall to public works, with choices of different combinations of virtual desktops, voice, and video devices including latest smartphones, tablets, and Cisco Virtualization Experience Clients (VXC)
3. security, better security and control of information in the data center rather than distributed endpoints and with the ”bring your own device” (BYOD) to work phenomenon, security is more critical than ever
4. uncompromised, helping government agencies achieve mission objectives without compromising cost or resilience mandates

See more details below. Read More »

Tags: Borderless Networks, Cisco Validated Designs, collaboration, cost control, CVD, data center, desktop virtualization, desktop virtualization infrastructure, endpoints, government challenges, software appliance, thin client, thin clients, vdi, video, virtualization, virtualization experience infrastructure, Voice, vxi, waas, WAN, wide area network

In her BNET column, “168 Hours,” Laura Vanderkam recently shared “22 Things to Do During That Boring Conference Call.” While I applaud Vanderkam’s suggestions to write love letters and thank-you notes, read poetry, and do other things that arguably make the world a better place, I also agree with her that if people need conference call distractions to pass the time, perhaps they should instead think of ways to make the calls more worthwhile.

So how do you make a conference call productive? Host it over telepresence. The face-to-face connection commands people’s attention—you can’t hide from the person staring at you across the virtual table! With telepresence, participants can read each other’s nuanced body language and engage in lively, natural dialogue without the common audio call hazard of talking over one another. Just by paring down the confusion of faceless communication, telepresence calls can take regular 60-minute conferences down to 45 or 50 minutes. Add up those savings over the course of the week, and you’ve earned back several hours of quality time. Read More »

Tags: telework, telework enhancement act, telework research network, video conferencing, videoconferencing, web conferencing

The need for cities to balance social, economic, and environmental resources is becoming increasingly critical. Cities, however, now have an opportunity to use the network as the platform for visualizing and modeling urban infrastructure to provide innovative urban services and manage urban sustainability. Using the network as the fourth utility (in addition to electricity, water, and natural gas), cities can integrate multiple systems to deliver on-demand services over an Internet-enabled cloud infrastructure supported by open innovation.

Busan Metropolitan City is one example of a city poised for Smart City development. Busan is South Korea’s second-largest metropolis and home to the fifth-largest port in the world. It also boasts an established 10GB broadband infrastructure, Busan Information Highway. As the city continues to grow, it faces the same environmental, economic, and social issues as other metropolitan areas. Because of this, the Busan government is investing in expanding the existing broadband infrastructure to improve urban services and service quality. Read More »

Tags: Busan Metropolitan City, Cisco, cloud services, IBSG, infrastructure, meeting of the minds, network, S+CC, Smart City, Smart+Connected Communities, u-City, urban services, urban sustainability