It’s a well known fact in the IT industry that there is a spending push at the end of the calendar year as companies look to close out their budget. This year-end spending trend represents a great sales opportunity for both Cisco and our partners.

Helping our partners boost profits and provide value to our mutual customers are two core principles of our partner strategy. With that in mind, we recently launched a global sales initiative called “Year-end Sprint” (YES), which will allow us, together with our partners, to capture coveted year-end IT spending.

YES is a collection of several high-value, global architecture product and service offerings for customers that include additional incentives for partners. These offers span our four key architectures: Borderless Networks, Collaboration, Data Center, and Service Provider, including IP NGN and SP Cloud.

The countdown to the New Year has already begun, so  I encourage you to quickly learn more about YES, by visiting the YES Sales Initiative page on Partner Central (CCO login required).

To give you a flavor for YES, let me take a moment to highlight three of our YES architecture offers.

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Tags: architecture, Borderless Networks, Cisco, collaboration, customer, data center, IT, partners, Service Provider

One of the phrases sometimes heard in certain circles I have traveled in was “Don’t be a victim,” or its near cousin “Don’t allow yourself to be victimized.” While these words of wisdom were passed around in some of the rough, hard biker hangouts up in the Santa Cruz mountains, they are relevant to the world of Borderless Networks as well.

In terms of mitigating risk, one of the very best things you can do is actually one of the simplest. When it comes to passwords, pick a good one and use it. Mix in numbers, special characters, uppercase and lowercase and avoid names and dictionary words and you are going to be in a far better place. Oh, and as 4chan illustrated when they hacked a Christian dating site, never assume that your password will not be stolen – you may want to use different passwords. For mobile devices, which are prone to being left in various places, it is critical to have a password protected locking home screen.

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Tags: Borderless Networks, password, pci

Hardev Singh and the new Sup6E

Welcome to the technology grab-bag…we have a little somethin’ somethin’ for everyone I think -- bottom line -- the hits keep coming!  Tons of huge stuff from our Borderless Team that we have the privilege of breaking down for you…but you gotta watch the show.  In a nutshell:  Catalyst 4500, New SUPS, Old SUPS with new Skills….plus the 800 series ISRs, Fire and Forget security now available on your iPhone with AnyConnect, AND UCS Express….(Cisco data center mojo now available in snack size…)

So how do we cover so much in a single show?

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Tags: 4500, anyconnect, borderless network, Borderless Networks, catalyst, iphone, ISR, JimmyRay_Purser, Sup7, TechWiseTV, UCS, UCS Express

[Part III of our blog series on Cisco Data Center Business Advantage. Part I, II, IV, V, VI]

Deliver information fast…really fast!

Never go down, ever!!

Enable great user-experiences, regardless of where the user is on the planet.

Those are the table stakes requirements of today’s Data Center networks. Do that and business leaders will ignore it like a referee that never makes a bad call in a sporting event. Click-to-“Right Now”, Borderless, 24x7x365 networks. No problem. We can do that.

But with the pace of technology change in today’s Data Center, so much more is being expected of the network: Read More »

Tags: Application Mobility, Borderless Networks, Data Center Business Advantage, FabricPath, FCoE, High Availability, Live Migration, OTV, SMT, Unified Fabric, Vblock

Yesterday we took a look at some concrete examples of Borderless Networks in the enterprise and home office.

Today, while we have seen that there is plenty of meat in Borderless Networks in the office, Borderless Networks has plenty of meat on the road as well. Bob, our enterprise worker, travels a lot, doing tradeshows and customer visits and dispensing Kool-Aid of various types. When he knows he is going to have to do some heavy lifting with PowerPoint he is sure to take a laptop running AnyConnect, a secure VPN client that works with the Cisco ASA firewall back at HQ to give secure, encrypted remote access. Even if he is in a coffee shop using public Wi-Fi, he knows that his data is safe because everything is going back through that encrypted tunnel. But it is more than just connectivity that we are talking about here because traffic goes through a Cisco Ironport web security appliance, filtering spyware, trojans and the like. And, just like when he is in the office, TrustSec ensures that he has access to what he needs and can’t touch the things he doesn’t. Security is deeply integrated into the network itself, not just an afterthought or add-on appliance.

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Tags: anyconnect, ASA, Borderless Networks, Cius, Ironport, TrustSec