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It may be sunny where you live, but the forecast calls for clouds today as Cisco and Xerox Corporation announced a strategic alliance to deliver cloud-based IT services. The partnership between Cisco and Xerox brings technology solutions that combine network and print cloud services for customers, along with a host of opportunities for partners.
Today’s announcement means that customers can add managed print services to their networks, leverage cloud server infrastructure to scale their application hosting, monitor print devices, manage everything in one cloud environment — and lower IT expenses, too.
What’s not to like? Today’s announcement delivers solutions in the following major areas:
XeroxCorporationManaged Print Services over Cisco Borderless Networks:
This consolidates IT and print management using the network’s embedded security, WAN optimization, and print aware intelligence to monitor print technology and operating costs, to protect confidential data from any location, and to improve employee productivity with advanced mobile and cloud printing applications.
XeroxCloud ITO Services via Cisco UCS and Vblock Infrastructure:
This accelerates the rollout of new IT services to adapt to changing needs of the workforce and reduce IT costs through a private cloud, the public cloud or through a combination in a hybrid cloud environment.
XeroxMobile Print Solution on Virtual Desktops and Cisco Cius:
Means (almost) no more worrying. Mobile workers can securely print documents from any email-enabled device – including virtual desktops and Cisco Cius tablet – to any enabled printer using the Cisco Borderless Networks and Wireless LAN solutions.
While traditional brick and mortar data centers meet the requirements of many IT organizations, there are some customers that require a different solution.
As the Senior Vice President, Global Government Solutions Group, I am happy to announce today the Cisco Containerized Data Center offering for government and commercial customers.
“Containerized,” or modular data centers, offer a flexible option for organizations that need to quickly deploy new data capacity. Built into weatherized ISO containers, these solutions consist of a complete Cisco unified data center, built as a self-contained, pre-integrated environment. In response to changing, mission-critical operations, the entire container can be transported wherever it is needed.
On Tuesday, March 15, 10:00 AM PT, be sure to attendTalk2Cisco, a live, real-time, social, interactive, online video broadcast featuring Cisco leaders Carlos Dominguez, SVP, Office of the Chairman of the Board and CEO and Lance Perry, VP of Cisco IT Customer Strategy & Success talking about how they managed the Web 2.0 learning curve, adopted a new mindset, and redesigned the way they work—for the better.
Since this event will be broadcast live via Ustream.tv, Talk2Cisco will put you, the viewer, directly in touch with Carlos and Lance so they can answer questions submitted by you.
Be sure to attend this event on March 15, at 10:00 AM PT by going here. I encourage you to comment on the Ustream.tv event via this blog post.
As Cloud Computing gains more attention from government customers, it presents new challenges and demands a different set of skills to become successful. Having a clear understanding of the business’ challenges and the benefits that may be obtained from the cloud becomes even more important.
In my conversations with different government organizations about Cloud Computing, three distinct challenges keep coming up.
#1: Reducing Costs. More than ever, agencies have the pressure to reduce costs at all levels. Dealing with shrinking budgets and demands for newer services has forced agencies to carefully look for areas that may be optimized or simplified. While many agencies struggle to keep the lights on, they are forced to look at alternate ways to provide services. Cloud services has become an attractive way to address those demands and provide new services to its citizens.
The pressure to reduce costs has also forced agencies with common needs to work together and find ways to collaborate and simplify operations. This is different from the past, where agencies could not justify or were not interested in combining computing resources with other agencies.
#2: Agility and Scalability. At the same time they are forced to reduce costs, agencies are also forced to achieve new levels of agility and innovation. The constant demand for new services and deployment of new technologies have forced agencies to consider services in the cloud in order to simplify and reduce their infrastructure footprint. While agencies may be solely focused on reducing costs, cloud applications can not only reduce the costs, but also give agencies a new level of agility and scalability.
The cloud allows agencies to pool resources to serve multiple customers using a multi-tenant model. These shared resources give agencies a sense of independence and elasticity, since resources may be dynamically assigned according to demand.
So I go traveling for a few weeks and suddenly, it seems, everyone’s talking about moving “beyond silos”. This is a subject near and dear to my heart, but I’m also a pragmatist. Many prescient sages have been warning for years of impending organizational shifts in IT—“Be prepared, or be doomed! Conquer your fear!” is the executive summary of many an article. This is easier said than done, of course. What’s often left out is the “how” of leading an organization through such a transition, perhaps because until recently there were few case studies from which the prognosticators could glean best practices.
So here are a few considerations, and some examples of how to address them.
