In my recent blog, From Cairo to Nairobi- Eye to Eye at the Touch of a Button, I explained how we are achieving massive cost savings and efficiencies at Cisco as a global organisation and more recently across the continent of Africa, thanks to immersive TelePresence.

In fact the vast majority of our sales force in Africa, 7 out of 10 employees, now have access to this flagship communication and collaboration tool at their local Cisco office. This means they can meet face to face in a life-size virtual meeting with colleagues, customers and partners across the globe without the need to travel, as if they were sat in the same meeting room just across the table from one another.  So what are we doing for the remaining 30% of employees on the continent who do not have access to this capability?

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Tags: africa, coc-collaboration, collaboration, communication, cost saving, desktop, Emerging Markets, face to face, high definition, tandberg, video

It’s an interesting activity:

Ask a diverse group of people if they remember their first day at work…you probably get a mix of reactions right? Some people are able to recall the experience quite vividly (particularly if it wasn’t that long ago) and are able to give you precise details -- their start date, their first task, perhaps even what they wore. Others may only be able to recall a vague memory…

Then ask the same group of people if they remember how they felt after week 1 and I bet most, if not all of them, will be able to give you a definite answer: “I knew I had made the right choice”; “I felt overwhelmed”; “I was excited at the opportunities that lay ahead”. Read More »

Tags: Bedfont, coffee morning, customers, Early in Career Network, ECN, Emerging, Emerging Markets, Employee Resource Group, environment, Europe, European Markets, Inclusion and Diversity

It is no secret that technology allows us to be more productive.  Living here in California, I can conduct a meeting with colleagues in India or Egypt while sitting in my living room.   I can answer email while sitting in the car waiting for my son’s soccer practice to finish.  I can leave work early to go grocery shopping, knowing that I can make up for it at home in the evening.

Juggling work and family may not be quite as convenient for many working women in Africa, Southeast Asia, or Latin America, where reliable power supply, affordable bandwidth, and cultural barriers may complicate their efforts.  Still, a growing body of evidence points to a symbiotic relationship between communications technology and the empowerment of women in emerging markets.  What’s more, it makes business sense to tap into and facilitate this virtuous relationship.  It’s a classic win-win situation, if it is done right.

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Tags: Emerging Markets, security, TelePresence

Growth in enterprise and consumer services, including cloud computing, video and collaboration services, are some of the key customer trends that underpin many service providers’ decision to further invest in Carrier Ethernet technology. And Tata Communications is no exception.

On Tuesday, Tata Communications, a global service provider and a leader in the Ethernet market, announced that it has selected the Cisco® ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers to support its new global Next Generation Ethernet Network; and is using the Cisco ASR 9000 to deploy the first global 802.1ah Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) network.

In plain English, this means that Tata Communications’ customers will benefit by having a larger variety of services delivered with greater scalability, reliability, efficiency.

All existing and new services will be delivered with geographic specificity to minimize latency over a highly efficient network. Migrating to 802.1ah PBB will give Tata Communications a network that can deliver multipoint services more efficiently, while at the same time being able to handle a higher volume of services.

This should be exciting news for Tata’s customers specifically as well as the industry in general. The Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2009-2014, projects that global Internet traffic will increase more than fourfold to 767 exabytes, or more than three quarters of a Zettabyte, by 2014. This amount is 100 exabytes higher than the projected level in 2013, or in other words an increase equivalent to 10 times all the traffic that traversed Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) in 2008.

Tags: asr 9000, Emerging Markets, ethernet, india, Service Provider

As of last week, the Kyrgyz National Information Technology Center is home to the first IPv6 lab in the Central Asian region. Donated by Cisco, the lab helps train IT specialist in Kyrgyzstan on next generation internet protocol (IPv6) technologies. 

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Tags: Bishkek, CIS, Emerging Markets, internet, IPv6, Kyrgyz Republic