Almost every customer that I speak to is looking at the opportunity that new mobile devices -- smart phones and tablets -- bring to increase collaboration and drive new business capabilities. And consistently, customers are asking these five questions:
How closely will the UC capabilities on my mobile device not just meet, but exceed the experience on my desktop?
Will users be able to make and receive calls on their mobile devices anywhere in the world as if they were using their desk phone?
Is video to the mobile device available at all, and if so is it really “business-ready” or is it more of a poor imitation of the TelePresence experience?
Are Wi-Fi access points evolving to better handle the increased traffic and usage patterns that come from adding mobile devices on the network?
If I choose a cloud provider for UC-as-a-Service, will that in any way limit my ability to deliver UC capabilities to a mobile device?
For Cisco, these questions are easy to answer because mobility and user experience are not an afterthought. Our collaboration development philosophy is people-centric -- that is driven by the user experience. And in the post PC era where tablets and mobile phones are primary work devices for many during each day, that experience must not just be equivalent to the desktop -- but maximize the unique opportunity that these new form factors provide. This is a fundamental change in the user experience model and Cisco is maximizing the potential of this new class of mobile devices. Read More »
At last week’s Microsoft Build event in Anaheim, CA. we presented & demonstrated our Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX technologies running on Windows 8 Server Hyper-V.
Guest Post by Raghunath Nambiar (UCS Performance Architect) and Frank Cicalese (UCS Systems Engineer)
Data’s at the heart of all business applications -- whether it be a real-time transaction processing or an enterprise decision support system – we know that data is driving the show.
Microsoft’s SQL Server is the database platform that many enterprises have adopted as it provides a scalable architecture, attractive price points, and supports a multitude of use cases such as OLTP and Data Warehouse configurations as well as providing attractive extensions for Business Intelligence modules.
Over the past several months we’ve seen the Cisco UCS server family support a range of SQL Server use cases resulting in improved performance and cost savings for our customers. The UCS architecture provides key features that can help improve the quality of the SQL Server services you deliver: Our extended memory feature and virtualization capabilities are two areas that help improve database performance and raise your SQL Server consolidation ratios.
We have couple of upcoming webinar on Cisco UCS and Microsoft SQL Server that you should attend. We’ll cover the topics mentioned here and more such as OLTP and Data Warehouse. It’s happening on Tuesday, June 28th @ 7:00am PDT and 10:00am PDT. Registration is at http://www.cisco.com/go/semreg/urls/44768/1
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This week in Partner Update, Andrew and I cover a variety of topics, from ways to help partners differentiate to huge WebEx deals to B2B social media tips. And a lot more.
This time around, we also test out QR codes, a new way for you to get more information about the topics we cover. QR, short for quick response, is a barcode that you’ll see along with the URLs in our videos. To take advantage of the codes, simply download a QR code reader for your mobile phone (I used i-nigma for the iPhone).
When you see the QR code box appear on the bottom-right side of the video, simply open the app and snap the image using your reader. The reader will then automatically take you to a specified site or resource. We hope you like this new feature. Let us know what you think.
Now, let’s get to some news…
And, if you’re not a fan of QR codes, no problem. Keep reading for a text summary with links and timestamps so you can follow along with what we covered in this newscast. Read More »
As many of you know, a big part of the UCS story revolves around the flexibility we’ve built into the UCS management model. While we hear great feedback from customers about the native UCS management GUI, we know that many of you have already invested lots of time in building automated solutions to repetitive IT tasks. To that end, we want to help you find ways to use the tools and processes that have already been built along side of UCS.
We know that many of our customers are already running Microsoft applications on top of UCS. For many of you, that means that you’re also likely automating repetitive tasks using Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language. PowerShell is an immensely powerful tool in an IT admin’s bag of tricks. Introduced back in 2006, it has matured to become common across not only Microsoft’s business software, but also among their partner community -- including NetApp, Quest Software, and even VMWare.
Shortly after we brought UCS to market, we got a specific request from an early adopter to build out PowerShell support for UCS . Here on the team, nothing moves us faster than feedback directly from our customers, so it got the cogs turning and we’re happy to announce our first public release of the PowerShell Management Toolkit for UCSM. We decided to even take that a step farther -- besides providing PowerShell support, we’ve also made available .NET managed code that can be used to natively build UCS support into a .NET application. For the rest of the post, I’m going to spend some time talking about some of the nifty ways in which UCS PowerShell provider can be used. Fair warning here, folks -- we’re about to get technical
