By Uwe Lambrette, Director, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group

Amsterdam may be the one place on earth where it rains more than it does in London. So, it was no surprise that I encountered stormy weather on my flight to Broadband World Forum (BBWF) 2012. As things turned out, the conference theme and the weather were clearly aligned, since the BBWF is fiercely embracing evolution to cloud. Here are some core themes that emerged as I shared some of Cisco IBSG’s findings at the conference:

Cloud 2.0: Most service providers (SPs) have already launched an initial cloud offering and are now beginning to measure scaling and growth. The initial offering is often a stand-alone cloud solution, typically focused on infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Once their original implementation goes live, SPs often need to focus on the following improvements: Read More »

Tags: BBWF, broadband, Broadband World Forum, Cisco, cloud, cloud 2.0, cloud economics, cloud go-to-market strategy, cloud service brokers, Hybrid Cloud, IaaS, IBSG, infrastructure as a service, network and cloud integration, SaaS, SDN, SDNs, Service Provider, software as a service, software defined networking

I get asked this question a lot.  Cisco has multiple exciting Converged Infrastructure solutions with partners.   There are actually two different software product “categories” covering the Infrastructure (or POD) Manager and the Cloud Management Solution.  Let dig a bit deeper in what the differences are.

OR

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Tags: Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, FlexPod, infrastructure as a service, intelligent automation, orchestration, private cloud, Vblock, vspex

By Wouter Belmans and Uwe Lambrette, Directors, Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group

As cloud computing matures and hype becomes reality, uptake among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises is increasing. And although the cloud is still in its infancy, the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) believes it is an appropriate time to ask: “How is the cloud value chain taking shape, and where are the battlefields I need to be concerned about?”

Cisco IBSG has found that major disruptions are taking place on six battlefields across the value chain:

1. SaaS Will Further Disrupt the Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Landscape Read More »

Tags: Cisco, cloud, cloud brokers, commercial, Computing, IaaS, IBSG, infrastructure as a service, ISVs, network service providers, NSPs, paas, platform as a service, Professional Services, SaaS, service providers, software as a service, SPs, Value Chain

We are proud of our customers and their success in the marketplace. They are changing the way business is done by providing scalable, enterprise-grade, secure, and affordable cloud solutions. By tying together the Unified Data Center with the Cloud Intelligent Network and applying Applications and Services on top as end-to-end solutions, these cloud providers are delivering differentiated services with high-level SLAs necessary for end-users’ strategic applications. That’s what US Signal is doing for their customers.

But for some more background, last week at Structure, the conversations swirled around how to handle Big Data, the future of software-defined networking, data center compute technology, database and programming types, and open versus proprietary. Two of our CloudVerse customers, Terremark and SunGard both had strong booth presence and Terremark also had a packed presentation delivered by Jim Anthony, VP, Tier II Solution Architecture Team. Compared to last year, there was a stronger agreement that cloud providers are fully capable of providing public or virtual private cloud services with trust, scalability, and affordability, instead of companies taking on cloud internally by themselves. There are many needs for cloud services out there and that means there are opportunities to provide a differentiated service.

As such, with data usage increasing exponentially, it’s clear how important the network is for connecting the many clouds out there. Let me explain how US Signal is leveraging their expertise with an end-to-end delivery network to success in cloud. Read More »

Tags: 100GB, cloud, Cloud Intelligent Network, cloud provider, customer, customer stories, data center, DWDM, IaaS, infrastructure as a service, nexus, UCS, unified computing system, us signal

What I Dream Of When I Dream of the Cloud

  What I dream of when I dream of the Cloud… a memo from the secret files of a Retail CIO:

 To:                   Retail Technology Sales Types

From:              Me

Re:                  Cloud

Dear Retail Tech Sales Types (especially you hardware guys):

OK. I get it. I’ve been reading about Cloud in InfoWeek for years. It’s a topic in every conference.

But now Cloud is your next big thing, and you have new slide decks to show me. Fine. But let me tell you something.

Read More »

Tags: Cloud Computing, cloud computing for retail, e-commerce, infrastructure as a service, Jon Stine, network-centric architecture, retail technology, software-as-service, thin-client computing