At Cisco we are believers in the Borderless Networks mantra of any device, anywhere. One of the ways we deliver on this vision is with AnyConnect, our secure mobility client that provides a secure, encrypted connection back to corporate, just the thing for road warriors who might have to use public wifi in coffee shops or airports.

That’s one way to do it.

Another way Read More »

Tags: byod, Cisco, citrix, Citrix Synergy, device proliferation, shows, virtualization, waas, XenApp, xendesktop

I started to link  to my fellow Cisco Bloggers for their posts on Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) but already there are too many for which to build the links.  I’m a WAAS guy so I thought I would draw you attention to  the other press release that mentions Cisco WAAS.

The next layer as we peel the old onion is that Cisco WAAS is now optimized for Citrix XenDesktop.  More explicitly, the Cisco WAAS engineering team has been collaborating with engineers from Citrix so that Cisco WAAS can understand the Citrix HDX and ICA protocols well enough to be able to optimize the traffic without Citrix administrators having to change any compression or encryption settings. And because it’s a a collaboration born of the strategic agreement between Cisco and Citrix, it will be jointly validated, marked as Citrix Ready prior to general availability, and will be supported by both vendors, with clean hand off mechanisms defined between both companies’ support teams.

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Tags: Cisco, data center, vxi, waas, WAN Optimization

Everyone looks forward to Friday: it’s the end of the workweek afterall! We get to enjoy dinners out with friends and family, head to the pub, go out dancing, or just have a quiet night at home with a bottle of wine and a movie.

While I definitely look forward to many of those things, too, another thing that caps off the week nicely is to catch up on all of the interesting technology news that took place. This week, Cisco had two networking announcements: one on the Cisco WAAS portfolio and the other regarding everyone’s favorite switch (Catalyst).

Let’s take a closer look at some of this week’s news highlights:

WAAS Up?

Always on top of the latest channel news, the VAR Guy covered the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) portfolio updates. In his blog, he wrote that these appliances are designed to improve application performance and user experience for those bandwidth-intensive applications such as VDI, video at the desktop, and cloud services.

They also offer some major zip: five times the bandwidth, not to mention support for up to three times as many users than the first generation of WAN optimization appliances.

Our friends at TechWise TV created a video to provide an overview of WAAS:

And, keep reading for the latest in switching news… Read More »

Tags: 7L-E, catalyst, Cisco, ethernet, partner, supervisor engine, UPOE, var guy, waas

A common discussion I hear a lot is around how to ensure application performance when accessed remotely over WAN from a centralized data center. At the same time, efficiently utilizing the limited network bandwidth available is key to customers. Cisco WAAS solution can help achieve both these objectives in a cost efficient way.

WAAS (Wide Area Application Services) is Cisco’s WAN optimization solution that helps accelerate enterprise applications delivery and data transfer in cloud. The key benefits that Cisco WAAS solution provides for enterprise applications are:

• Improving end user experience for the global workforce accessing enterprise applications in private/virtual private clouds, resulting in enhanced productivity.
• Improving efficiency (reduced bandwidth requirements/time) for remote replication of the enterprise application data to the DR site are

The requirement for optimizing WAN traffic becomes even more critical as customers continue to adopt data center virtualization and private/hybrid cloud to run their most demanding applications.

Deployment flexibility/options with Cisco WAAS

Cisco WAAS offers multiple deployment options (both physical and virtualized), and can easily plug into different architectures across your datacenter/private cloud, virtual private cloud at service provider, remote/branch offices, Backup/DR site, and mobile workforce. The picture below shows the different deployment options available with Cisco WAAS.

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Tags: Application Velocity, Cisco, cloud, ISR G2, VMware, vWAAS, waas, WAN

With an ever growing mobile and distributed workforce, application developers are being tasked to develop applications that can also be remotely accessed by this global workforce. Application developers, with a very basic understanding of networking, assume the network has no boundaries and applications perform optimally regardless of the mode of access. At the same time, cloud computing is enabling applications to be consolidated into centralized and virtualized data centers, further increasing the distance from where the applications are being accessed. Network architects are also being challenged with current network designs for this application deployment and delivery model. The available bandwidth is being taxed as the ever growing applications portfolio competes for network resources to provide a satisfying user experience across the network without boundaries. This application delivery model also demands capabilities for better visibility and control, WAN optimization, and agility of the network to rapidly deploy and manage enterprise applications.

The Cisco Application Velocity solution addresses all the challenges associated with the delivery and consumption of enterprise applications over the network without boundaries. It is one of the five services in Cisco’s Borderless Network Architecture and is composed of innovative Cisco technologies that help IT professionals meet or exceed business SLAs, maximize user experience, optimize resource utilization, and increase reliability and user expectations.

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Tags: ACE, Cisco, Cisco ISR G2 Services-Ready Engine, Cisco Nexus, Cisco UCS, Cisco WAAS, cloud, Exchange 2010, NBAR, netflow, Oracle E-Business Suite, PfR, QoS, Sharepoint, SQL Server, UCS Express, virtualization, VMware, waas, WAAS Express