It has been three months since we launched the most complete end-to-end cloud solution in the industry with Cisco CloudVerse, and so far it has been a huge success. The data center has finally been unified, and now it is connected to the intelligent network to deliver applications and services anywhere, and at any time.

2012 marks the beginning of an explosion in cloud traffic. Cloud services, combined with the shift towards mobile consumption and bring-your-own-device (BYOD), are driving IP traffic at an unprecedented rate. Just look at these statistics from Cisco’s Global Cloud Index: Read More »

Tags: cloud, cloudverse, Enterprise, Hybrid Cloud, private cloud, Public Cloud, Service Provider

In a previous blog, I posted the first of three pitfalls of  hitching your wagon to the cloud . Today, let’s cover the second pitfall of force fitting cloud into your current security model.

Recently, I had an opportunity to listen to the CIO of a Fortune 100 company talk about top business care-abouts for IT. We have all heard about cloud and virtualization as technology care-abouts, but this CIO boiled it all  down to two things that matter for IT: Productivity and Risk. Read More »

Tags: ASR_1000, CIO, cloud, Hybrid Cloud, ISRG2, IT, risk, security, vpn, WAN

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

This certainly has been a monumental year for Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS), as many service providers such as Verizon and Orange Business Services, embraced the cloud and the potential services that can come with it. In the case of  their business customers, these service providers now offer them a slew of unified communications tools (such as video conferencing and mobility solutions ) through the cloud to allow  their employees to communicate and collaborate wherever they are and on whatever device.

Even our partners are seeing the value that collaboration via the cloud can offer its customers; as one of our channel partners, Neutral Tandem, announced yesterday. As an expert in operating and managing IP networks, Neutral Tandem introduced the first cloud-based collaboration service in the United States specifically developed to be resold by Cisco’s Value-Added Reseller (VAR) community and System Integrators (SIs). The service, based on Cisco’s HCS, will enable VARs/SIs to deliver a full suite of unified communications and collaboration applications.

I guess you can say that cloud collaboration is in full swing as it continues to gain traction steadily in the market. Read More »

Tags: channel partners, ciscochannels, cloud, cloud_computing, collaboration, collaboration summit, HCS, Hosted Collaboration Solution, hosted UC, hosted unified communications, Hybrid Cloud, Neutral Tandem, system integrator, unified communications, Unified Communications Manager, VAR

Defining key terms for understanding the basics of this emerging technology

Cloud computing continues to be a hot trend in technology and is a great option for budget-minded and resource-constrained small businesses. Cloud-based services offer a more cost-effective solution for accessing applications and hardware on demand and provide small businesses with greater flexibility. In fact, many smaller companies are using cloud services without realizing it. And therein lies the challenge—there’s a general lack of understanding when it comes to cloud computing.

In this installment of our Talkin’ Tech series, we define key terms to help you understand the basics of cloud computing. If there’s a term we didn’t include that you’d like defined, please let us know!

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Tags: cloud, Cloud Computing, Hybrid Cloud, paas