Cisco Blog > DigMediaRev
There comes a time in the evolution of building a technology platform that you have to pause and look back where you’ve come from, before continuing on with the journey. As I think back to the formation of the Cisco Eos platform, it was a time of hard work and rapid growth.
The Cisco Media Solutions Group went from being a business unit with an idea, to truly taking form in 2007 when Cisco made three software acquisitions—Five Across, the assets of Tribe.net and the assets of Click.tv. From that day forward, we were charged with developing an innovative platform that could get media companies online in a simple, manageable way. That long journey started with the single though difficult step of uniting three independent companies and countless independent perspectives into a single team executing against a single vision.
As with any consolidation effort, tough decisions had to be made. One of the most important we faced was what development platform we were going to leverage. Our three teams had experience in just as many languages: Ruby on Rails, PHP, and Java – not to mention Adobe Flex and even a bit of C. After much debate, we chose to use Java for the back end, which includes the core Cisco Eos data and content components like blogs, discussions, and member profiles. And we chose PHP for the front end, the dynamic page-rendering environment that our users can customize for presentation to end consumers. Read More »
Tags: API, architecture, cisco eos, data, platform, social entertainment, technology
March 27, 2011 at 4:04 pm PST
Today’s educators are facing seemingly insurmountable challenges:
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Demands for greater accountabiliy based on high stakes assessments
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Increasing focus on differentiated instruction and student mastery of content knowledge
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Greater awarness of the importance of 21st century skills (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity)
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Requirements to address all of the above in an environment of declining resources
In spite of these daunting challenges, innovative educators are successfully utilizing collaborative solutions in creative ways to improve outcomes for students and provide them with the skills to compete effectively in the 21st century. As a result, it is becoming increasingly clear that professional development that prepares educators to effectively integrate technology into pedagogy and curricula is an essential element of holistic education improvement initiatives.
Tags: collaboration, edtech, technology, TelePresence
By Steven Shepard, Contributing Columnist
This story is a bit more technical that what I’ve previously shared. That said, I’ll link to some definitions for you non-technical readers — I promise, this one is going to be worth the extra effort. However, a bit of technology is required in the telling — so please bear with me.
Let’s step back in time. The first transoceanic cables used copper wire as the conductor that carried signals between continents. Unfortunately, the technology at the time was such that the cables were extremely bandwidth-limited and could therefore support a very small number of simultaneous conversations.
Furthermore, the physics of metallic transmission dictated that the transmitted signals would decay over distance, making it necessary to amplify and/or regenerate the transmitted signal periodically. This was costly, and required additional circuitry to filter electromagnetic interference and increase the signal level every few thousand feet.
Read More »
Tags: fiber, innovation, Optical, science, technology, transoceanic, undersea cable
“There are some brilliant female role models in our sector, and IT is increasingly being recognised as a great career option for women. We’ve also got more legislation in place to protect women in the workplace than ever before, and more and more calls for greater diversity and more women in the boardroom.”
- Maggie Berry, Women in Technology
Read More »
Tags: Flexible Working, Home working, technology, women
March 23, 2011 at 10:33 am PST
Telepresence and videoconferencing services (both hosted and managed) will reach a whopping $1.2 billion(US) worldwide by 2016, according to ABI Research.
Cisco partner Tata Communications is riding that wave and shares insights in a recent FastChat video with MSPmentor Editorial Director Joe Panettieri.
In the video below, Joe interviews Greg Brophy, Director of Product Management at Tata. Greg shares ways that the company is using the cloud to help its customers connect globally using Cisco’s TelePresence technology. He also shares a recent customer win and what he sees are key trends among his customer base.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erszpHxrf8U&
Wondering how can you plug into Tata Communications’ infrastructure? Read More »
Tags: business, channels blog, Cisco, cloud, communications, customer, endpoint, FastChat, infrastructure, MSPMentor, partner, tata, technology, TelePresence, TP, unified communications
