By Ross Fujii, CTO of Cisco Network Management Technology Group (NMTG)

BYOD – Bring Your Own Device – is a catch-phrase capturing the idea that consumers are bringing more and more devices into the connected home network.  It is no longer just the early adopters who have non-PC devices they want to use while at home.  There has been a literal explosion of electronic devices that consumers want to share content and data across – smartphones, tablets, IPTVs, network-attached storage (NAS), and even game consoles.  Each of these devices generates different types of traffic and consumes content in completely different ways.  The number of new usage scenarios to support is daunting.

BYOD also refers to the idea that people want to be able to bring and use their own devices in other people’s homes.  If you want to look something up on the Internet, for example, you don’t want to have to borrow your friend’s phone to do so.  You want to do it on your own device.  Similarly, today’s Read More »

Tags: byod, Connected Home, device management, early adopters, next-generation, Service Provider, service providers, smarthome, tablet computers, wifi, wireless

Cost always plays a big part in purchase decisions. It’s certainly a factor as I consider buying  a new car. As you’re well aware, purchasing a new car isn’t just about the initial cost. In my case, I’m considering reliability, speed (not that I need to go that fast carpooling my kids to school), mileage, and looks to a certain extent. (I just can’t bring myself to drive a minivan.) But what does buying a car have to do with your customers, or IT spending for that matter?

To put it simply, customers often cite initial cost as a big factor in their network decision-making, too. But if they are looking only at CapEx when purchasing new equipment, it’s the same thing as only looking at the initial cost of a car: They’re not seeing the entire picture.

Total cost of ownership, or TCO, is a better metric to assess network cost, because it considers the full impact on IT spend, including CapEx, services, labor, bandwidth, and energy consumption. And TCO is not just a measure of the initial expense, but of how much equipment will cost over its lifetime.

In June 2011, Cisco commissioned a third-party business consulting firm to analyze the true TCO of the network, comparing the quantitative costs of acquisition, support, labor, bandwidth, energy, and product longevity. The firm also assessed qualitative business benefits like network uptime, user productivity, and security.

The quantitative results alone show that a network built on Cisco’s architectural approach can yield up to a 13% better TCO, building a powerful business case for you to take to your customers about why the choice of networking gear matters.

Here are some facts drawn from the findings, which support Cisco’s firm belief that a strategic next-generation Cisco network architecture delivers superior value and lower TCO: Read More »

Tags: capex, costs, network, next-generation, ROI, tco, UCS

Are you among the one third of smartphone owners who use social media applications from bed?

I’ll admit I was surprised to hear so many people check their phones even before having a morning cup of coffee, mostly because I didn’t realize other people did that, too!

This phenomena probably won’t be as surprising in a few years when there will be one mobile device for every person on Earth, according to the Connected World Report, 2010.

While these stats may sound like drivel, they actually underscore the importance that a reliable network plays (and will play) for an increasingly mobile workforce — not just for those people checking Facebook under the covers.

Let’s face it: a network built on “good enough” equipment isn’t going to deliver the same experience as one using next-generation equipment designed for the loads of today’s demanding applications—including voice, video, and data.

Curious about the importance of the network as it relates to mobile? Head over to Silicon Angle where Mike Rau (Vice President, CTO for the Borderless Network Architecture at Cisco) blogged on myth number one --The Single-Purpose Network Myth.

In the post, Mike explains that a good enough network is not designed to handle the needs of an increasingly mobile population, but is built to serve the single purpose of connecting users to resources in silos of connectivity. As mobility demands on the enterprise increase, he indicates that it becomes critical that an end user is consistently managed as they access the network, whether over a wired, wireless, or VPN connection.

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Tags: Cisco, customer, device, facebook, good enough, mike rau, mobile, network, next-generation, partner, silicon angle, social media

Data center managers consistently juggle two sides of the Higher Ed computing coin: keeping costs under control while meeting an increasing demand for computing resources.  Gerry McCartney, Vice President for IT, CIO and Olga Oesterle England Professor of Information Technology at Purdue University, one of the leading research institutions in the United States, with 40,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff, says, “On the research side, [researchers will] consume all the cycles you can give them.”

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Tags: data centers for education, next-generation, purdue university, RAC, Research and administrative computing

Why it’s important for small businesses to prepare for IPv6 now

You know that nagging feeling when there’s something you need to do but you keep putting it off and putting it off. Well, an e-mail newsletter titled “No IPv6 plan? You’re behind schedule” landed in my inbox this morning. It’s a nudge for companies of all sizes; even small businesses, to prepare for the next-generation Internet.

Why should you care about IPv6 when you’re quite happy with the current Internet?

IPv4 exhaustion

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Tags: internet, internet protocol, ipv4, IPv6, next-generation, providers, service, small business