Cisco Blog > Mobility
As our team prepares to attend Hotel Technology Next Generation’s (HTNG) North American Conference next week in Atlanta, we are excited to have one of our very own as the keynote to really highlight Cisco’s leadership in the hospitality industry. Cisco’s Bob Friday, CTO, Wireless Networking Group, will be joined by our partner John Bollen, MGM resorts VP of IT to discuss key trends in the industry and specifically at MGM. They will discuss guest needs and demands, how to turn the mobile opportunity into revenue, and the vision of the industry and where it is going.
The keynote will hit on all the imperatives that Cisco Hospitality is driving citing Cisco’s recent Wi-Fi installation at MGM Resorts as a key example. Together, the pair will discuss how certain trends are impacting both Cisco and MGM solutions developments, investments and more. With Bob Friday’s experience in mobility, he will also address what he is seeing in other industries and how it can be applied to hospitality.
Read More »
Tags: Bob Friday, Cisco, cto, hospitality, hotel, hotel technology next generation, HTNG, HTNG North American, IT, John Bollen, location, location analytics, MGM, mobility, network, networking, platform, technology, wi-fi, wifi, wireless, wireless networking
There’s been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what’s what, what’s required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.
In true Mythbuster fashion, let’s all discover why no myth is safe – through a 5-part series of posts. Part 1 debunked the myth that a move to Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure. Yesterday in Part 2, we showed that the Cisco Unified Access Solution will NOT negatively impact network and application performance.
Myth 3: The Cisco Unified Access solution is complex and expensive to adopt.
False. The Cisco UnifiedAccess solution is rooted in delivering One Policy, One Management, One Network to simplify the network infrastructure, how it is managed and how policies are defined and enforced.
Read More »
Tags: Cisco, controller, LAN, network, networking, solution, switch, technology, unified access, WAN, wi-fi, wifi, wireless, wlan
There’s been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what’s what, what’s required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.
In true Mythbuster fashion, let’s all discover why no myth is safe – through a 5-part series of posts. Yesterday in Part 1, we debunked the myth that a move to Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure.
Myth 2: The Cisco Unified Access Solution will negatively impact network and application performance.
False. The release of the Cisco Catalyst 3850 delivers industry-leading performance with up to 40Gbps. wireless throughput per switch for industry leading 160Gbps in a four member stack. For wireless-only deployments the Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN controller delivers the industry’s highest performance in a 1RU controller with 60Gbps. throughput.
Read More »
Tags: Cisco, controller, LAN, network, networking, solution, switch, technology, unified access, WAN, wi-fi, wifi, wireless, wlan
There’s been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what’s what, what’s required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.
In true Mythbuster fashion, let’s all discover why no myth is safe – through a 5-part series of posts. In this series, we’ll look at some of the most common myths that have been floating around and unveil the truth.
Myth 1: Moving to the Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure.
This is pure fiction. Cisco has always promoted that the network infrastructure should evolve and we understand that different organizations will feel the impact of the Internet of Things, mobility and BYOD at different times and will address them differently. The new Cisco Unified Access solution provides you flexible deployment options, including separate wired and wireless, converged access, cloud-managed, and more. The deployment model chosen will depend upon the lifecycle of the existing infrastructure.
Read More »
Tags: Cisco, controller, LAN, network, networking, solution, switch, technology, unified access, WAN, wi-fi, wifi, wireless, wlan
February 15, 2013 at 4:30 am PST
Fabric-Based Infrastructure and Cisco UCS
A good segue to Fabric-Based Infrastructure is Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Blade Servers (March 2012), by Andrew Butler and George Weiss. To fully understand the tie in with Fabric-Based Infrastructure I suggest reading the section on Cisco UCS. Their observations are important because they tie directly to the subject of this blog. You will also get a better feel for why Cisco UCS is having such rapid customer adoption worldwide.
The emphasis for Fabric-Based Infrastructure is delivering value-add functionality that enables data centers to operate more efficiently and cost effectively. A good place to start is by looking at this Gartner report by George Weiss and Donna Scott -- Fabric-Based Infrastructure Enablers and Inhibitors Through the Lens of User Experiences (April 2012). In this short research note, George and Donna go into the key drivers and reasons for the FBI architecture and the benefits that their clients have seen. My take away for the key benefits of Fabric-Based Infrastructure are:
- OpEx and CapEx savings
- Increased VM density
- Time-To-Deploy reduced from months to hours via automation and standards implementation;
- Reduce cost and complexity and improve agility;
- Improved resiliency by recreating servers and connectivity in minutes using profiles and templates
While reading about a technology innovation is helpful, actually listening to experts discuss the architecture and give their individual perspectives can be more so.
I suggest that you make time to listen to this 34 minute video with featured guest Donna Scott (a VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner) and Paul Perez (VP and CTO for the Data Center Business Group at Cisco Systems) -- Fabric-Based Infrastructure (FBI) in Today’s Data Center. Donna looks at the motivations and impact of customers moving to a Fabric Based Infrastructure with an eye toward what is important to adopters. Then Paul discusses Cisco UCS innovations and how they let FBI adopters achieve their goals. If you would like, you can download a podcast of the video from theCisco Analyst Reports page.
From my perspective the truly compelling part of this story is the extent to which Cisco UCS makes the promise of Fabric-Based Infrastructure a reality, while emphasizing safety, security and the risk reduction. These are critical considerations in today’s IT environment. Cisco continues to be a key innovator in data center technology and is continuing to grow from strength to strength, delivering value and benefit for your long term application solution needs.
Below is how I think a Fabric-Based Infrastructure should look. Of course I am predisposed. Cisco UCS architecture provides the ability to define and manage over 120 different server identity parameters via service profile templates, using a native tool with Roles Based Access Controls and across geographies. UCS enables you to have a distributed environment that is centrally managed. Your admins can also use CLI, custom designed tools / scripts, or third party tools as they choose to meet the needs of their current management structure. 
Read More »
Tags: Cisco UCS, data center, data center management, Fabric computing, Fabric-Based Infrastructure, intelligent automation, network, Server Management, UCS, virtualization
