Cisco’s foundation for delivering the service provider Cloud is our Unified Service Delivery (USD) solution, featuring tightly integrated, data center and IP NGN technologies to deliver a virtualized end-to-end infrastructure for cloud services. We thought it would be useful to share some new capabilities that Cisco has added recently to the solution:
MPLS in the Data Center: To streamline the end to end operation across the data center and IP NGN, Cisco announced, last week, that Nexus 7000 supports Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) for Layer 3 virtual private networks (VPNs). This allows MPLS to be deployed at the data center core/aggregation layer rather than terminating at the data center edge. This capability enables Service Providers to greatly simplify L3 segmentation, especially for multi-tenant cloud offerings, depending on their scale and service needs.
Another key to the delivery of a data center built for Cloud requirements of scale, virtualization and multi-tenancy has been the use of a Unified Fabric. Unified Fabric provides the flexibility of high performance, highly available networks to support the needs of both LAN and SAN on a consolidated fabric. Cisco’s Unified Fabric announcements last week bring new capabilities which extend our already robust offerings to further build out a Service Provider Cloud foundation.
On Wednesday, Cisco announced technology innovations across its entire Data Center Business Advantage portfolio. With these innovations, Cisco continues to tightly integrate its Unified Fabric,Unified Computing, and Unified Network Services into a holistic data center fabric designed to be simple, scalable and highly secure, delivering any application across any location, within the data center, across data centers, or to the cloud.
Andrew and I missed our college days so much that we decided to join the spring break revelers and film Partner Update from sunny Coronado Beach in San Diego, California. In this episode, we’ll be delving into such important spring break topics as:
SPF 15 vs. SPF 20? Choose the right SPF for you!
Survival Guide: What to do if your friends bury you under sand while you’re napping.
Salt water – more nutritious than you realize.
Watch our special “Spring Break Survival Guide” edition of Partner Update.
Curious about how to prepare for your upcoming spring break? Read More »
Today, as I watched the Cisco Data Center webcast “Evolutionary Fabric, Revolutionary Scale: A Nondisruptive Way to Handle Dynamic Data Center and Cloud Environments” I thought about how data centers can provide an advantage for government agencies seeking ways to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs.
In many ways, data centers today have similar characteristics when compared to government organizations with:
isolated silos of information
labor-intensive manual processes
rising costs of service
limited flexibility
mandates to provide open access to information
changing workplace with mobile applications, video, …
requirements to ensure security
In the data center, silos include servers, storage, applications, and network devices. In many government organizations, different agencies often operate independently in separate silos.
The strategic advantage for both government IT organizations and government agencies is to develop holistic strategies that unify the separate parts into a system to deliver better efficiency with higher resource utilization that is easier to manage and costs less.
If you were making a movie or television show about the future, what fantastic technology would you feature? How many years do you think it would take for that technology to not only be invented but also come in to common usage?
I participate frequently in Telepresence calls for my job. Video communication was the stuff of science fiction long before being developed to the point that any of us could use it in real life, though. Back in 1966, Star Trek showed starship-to-starship video transmissions alongside molecular transporters, food replicators and faster-than-light space travel. More than 40 years later I still can’t beam on to a starship or travel at warp speed but I can and do have real-time video conversations with people around the planet.
Fascinating, as Mr. Spock would say.
As we use video more and more in our everyday activities, how is Cisco accommodating increasing traffic on its own network infrastructure?
