In real estate, location, location, location is the most important thing to remember. It doesn’t matter the condition of the house, the color of the walls, or whether or not there are stainless steel appliances. All of that is cosmetic and unimportant, as long as you are in a desirable neighborhood with safe streets and a grocery store nearby.
The only downside is that once you buy that house, you are locked into one location for the life of your mortgage payments. The thought is daunting and requires quite a commitment. Location can be a blessing or it can be something that holds you back.
For the 194 member states of the United Nations that participated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), however, location was not a cause for concern. For their 17th annual Conference of Parties (COP17), member countries from across the globe gathered to debate climate change strategies with a goal of coming to a global political deal between all attendees.
Committed to their mission of reducing impact on the environment, the United Nations chose Cisco to provide HD and quality video communication tools and web conferencing capabilities for its expected 20,000 attendees to participate. With trust in Cisco’s stable and secure communications network, attendees were able to engage face-to-face in conversations with each other from telepresence rooms and via desktop video from all around the world.
COP17 represents a milestone in the ability of the international community to work together on climate change by leveraging virtual collaboration capabilities as the parties agreed to adopt a universal legal agreement on climate change by 2015. Disparate locations could have limited the UN’s ability to effect transformation in global sustainability, but instead, TelePresence enabled each participant to bring his or her perspective from all across the globe to make change.
What do a telecommunications company and a University have in common? Well, at first glance, not a heck of a lot — unless you consider their network requirements. After talking to a telecommunications company and a University I found out they both wanted:
To know the exact status of all networking devices…within minutes.
A simplified service contract structure for said devices
To better predict, and budget for, support and upgrades of devices
Reduced network risk, simplified operations, and increased employee productivity.
Are these objectives your company is trying to achieve, too? Let’s explore how Alestra, a Mexican service provider, and George Mason University, a U.S. institution of higher education, have achieved these results, and more, with Cisco Smart Net Total Care.
Never heard of Cisco Smart Net Total Care? I included a brief description at the end of this blog.
When I remodeled my bathroom a few years ago, my initial plan included only a few things: I wanted it to feel bigger (it’s a small space), and everything needed to be replaced – the utilities, furniture, walls, floors, and window.
I know what I like, and I know what I want, but I don’t know the first thing about designing a new bathroom. Add to that a full-time job and three children under the age of 10, I knew I needed to hire someone who could take complete control of the project while still delivering everything I wanted.
I hired a contractor who could not only do the physical labor, but one who had the expertise to plan and design the whole thing. He asked me questions about which members of the family use the bathroom, and how often, in order to deliver the most relevant plan that fit our lifestyle. Through his consultation, he discovered that this bathroom was the main bathroom in the house, heavily used by our family and visitors alike. Based on that fact, he recommended a redesign that provided the optimum privacy for our family of 5 – something I hadn’t even considered when initially launching the project. Read More »
The UK is recognized these days as a leader in moving government to the cloud. Through its G-Cloud Programme, Government Digital Service, and other initiatives, the British government is making the effort to put technology innovation at the heart of the public sector. The London Borough of Hillingdon is just one example of how a community of 250,000 is being unified and better supported with cloud technologies. Watch the video.
More than 1,100 gaming establishments worldwide come to Global Cash Access (GCA) for ideas and innovation. GCA is a global leader in providing tightly integrated solutions to the gaming industry by optimizing cash access processes. These services allow gamblers to access cash through ATM withdrawals, credit card and debit card transactions, check verification, and money transfers. When 60%-70% of the money on a casino floor comes from these devices, a reliable network infrastructure is imperative. In 2011, GCA processed more than 90 million transactions and dispensed more than $19 billion in cash. In this industry, minutes of down time translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed transactions.
With over 8000 patron touch points around the world, GCA needed a data center infrastructure that could support their current needs but scale to be the foundation for future growth. GCA engaged Nexus IS, a Cisco Gold Certified partner with Master specializations in Security and Unified communications, to help them design a data center architecture flexible enough to add new devices and enable new services for GCA to provide to their customers.
Watch as Scott Betts, CEO of GCA, and Jim King, Vice President of IT at GCA, discuss how Nexus was able to provide a strong foundation of one unified IP-based infrastructure to help GCA meet the uptime and reliability necessary to their business.
