Today, we ‘re featuring a guest post from Brian Blatnik, a senior manager within Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group:

In the month since our CloudVerse announcement the notion of a world of many clouds – public, private, and hybrid – has resonated with our customers, partners, and industry analysts. I’d like to share some perspective on how those types of clouds address different customers in the collaboration cloud services market. Since last month’s announcement highlighted our private cloud model in that market, Hosted Collaboration Solution for Large Enterprises, I’ll focus on that model. As a reminder, the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution gives partners, including service providers and integrators, the ability to deploy multiple collaboration applications on one server in a virtualized environment and then host those applications for multiple client organizations. The solution is designed to be run from partner data centers.

I’m often asked, “Haven’t enterprise voice and other UC services always been delivered from what we now call a private cloud?” It’s true that IP PBXs and other UC servers, like their PBX predecessors, provide services to users from a remote room or facility via a network. But there are two ways in which today’s cloud service delivery differs. First, there is the efficiency of pooling computing, network, and storage resources across multiple locations and services. Second, the services can be delivered in an on-demand fashion with elastic scaling.

The financial and strategic benefits deriving from these two factors are leading many businesses to consider consuming collaboration services in a utility model from Cisco’s partners in the Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). But the same drivers can result in substantial benefits to businesses that aren’t looking for services from a third party’s public cloud. Read More »

Tags: Cisco Cloud Services, Cisco CloudVerse, Cisco collaboration, Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Cisco Partners, Cisco Unified Communications., cloud, cloud collaboration, cloud services, cloudverse, cloud_computing, collaboration, data center, Enterprise, enterprise voice, Hosted Collaboration Solution, Hybrid Cloud, infrastructure, Mobile Apps, mobile devices, private cloud, Public Cloud, unified communications

I previously discussed using LISP to optimize your client-server traffic so today I’ll discuss the reverse direction: Egress Path Optimization from the Server to the Client. Let’s go over the need for Path Optimization in the direction from Server-to-Client with some pictures and explanations.

The Virtual Machine (VM) server is configured with a default gateway IP address, 192.168.1.1, which is the next hop IP address that the VM will forward packets towards as the traffic returns to the client outside the data center.  In this data center environment, we’ve deployed the default gateway using the First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP).  In reality, FHRP is an umbrella technology term that includes Hot Standby Routing Protcol (HSRP) and Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), two main technologies that provide transparent failover and redundancy at the first hop IP router.  Please see info on FHRP here.

Also notice that the VM default gateway is the same as the HSRP Virtual IP Address (VIP). The HSRP VIP binds itself to one of the physical HSRP Routers via an HSRP election process using Layer 2 control packets between the two physical HSRP Routers and this means that the VM default gateway, since it points to a VIP, may move between physical HSRP Routers, and of course which is then intent and design when using any type of FHRP.

In the above picture, the Path is Optimized from Server to Client, so now let’s take a look at what happens when we migrate the VM to the new data center.

Read More »

Tags: cloud, data center, Data Center Interconnect, DCI, FHRP, HSRP, LISP, mobility, N7K, Nexus 7000, OTV, vMotion, Workload Mobility

Hopefully everyone is back from the Christmas/New Years Holidays by now and already hit the deck running. I know we in the Manufacturing team are already off, well, most of us. I started the New Year by having cataract surgery. So I am going to combine some Healthcare with some Manufacturing in this blog. Consider yourself forewarned!

First, what to expect from us this coming year: much more on the value of mobility and the ability to collaborate across the global workforce, wherever they are (yes, that is Borderless Networks); then a lot on the vast amount of data presenting itself to the factory and from the factory to the enterprise (you will hear the term “data deluge”); also the impact of “the cloud” on the factory; also the growing prevalence of tablets and other smart devices in manufacturing operations. And we will undoubtedly have new areas of concentration throughout the year as new technologies take hold in manufacturing.

So, that is the preview of the year. But now I want to talk about my personal experience with Healthcare and how it relates to Manufacturing. Read More »

Tags: 2012, Borderless Networks, brain, cataract, cloud, collaboration, data deluge, education, eyes, healthcare, machine builders, Manufacturing, mobility, systems

Cisco’s comprehensive TV platform, Videoscape, brings new exciting entertainment experiences for consumers and new revenue streams for Service Providers with new ‘video in the cloud’ services.  Today at CES, Cisco is launching several new Videoscape products and announcing how major service providers including Rogers Communications of Canada, YES of Israel and Numéricable of France, have selected Videoscape to deliver their next generation video services.

These new Videoscape products power ‘video in the cloud’ experiences by bringing live and on demand video together, offering a consistent look and feel across devices whether its a PC, MAC, iPad, iPhone or Android device.  Videoscape is leading Service Providers through the migration, with a unique open software platform, providing a path to an all IP-based video infrastructure.  Service Providers can now provide their consumers the ability to move, pause and resume video content on any device, following them whenever they go.

Read More »

Tags: Any Screen TV, CES, cloud, IP-based video, Numericable, Rogers, tv anywhere, video in the cloud, videoscape, YES

Happy 2012, partners! Inspired by Channel Maven’s lively list of resolutions, I began to pontificate on Cisco’s new year’s resolutions for partners this year.

1. First and foremost: profitability.

C’mon, who doesn’t want more profits in 2012? Services now represent 40-50% of Cisco channel partners business, up from 20% five years ago. Our recently created Services Rules of Engagement offers partners a definitive roadmap on how to engage with Cisco Services and maximize your Cisco services investment.

Plus profitability programs like Cisco’s Value Incentive Program (VIP) ensure that you’re rewarded for focusing your practice on Cisco’s architectures. Stay tuned for new signup periods.

Check out the full list of incentives on Partner Central.

2. Helping partners help customers become one with the cloud.

To help ensure partners have a successful Year of the Cloud, Cisco’s Cloud Partner program (with three tracks) will help you prepare for growth in cloud adoption. Combine that with CloudVerse to help you build public, private, and hybrid clouds for customers and you’ve got a winning combo. You can’t lose with the intelligence of the network, the power of the data center, and the flexibility of cloud applications.

3. Work less! Programs and services to make your job easier. Read More »

Tags: architectures, Borderless Networks, cloud, hiring, IT, keith goodwin, marketing, partner, partner velocity, program, smb, social media, talent, VIP