Last week in Dallas I had the opportunity to attend “XChange 2012” an event that brings together a number of industry experts and solutions providers for a dialog around the changes happening in the industry and a great opportunity to network.
Each year at this event UBM Channel presents the ARC Awards, short for Annual Report Card, which gives partners the opportunity to rate their vendors in a number of categories.
I’m proud to say that Cisco took home 16 ARC Awards capped off by five overall awards including Enterprise Networking Infrastructure, Network Security Appliance and SMB Networking Hardware. We won the overall in Unified Communications for the ninth consecutive year and finally, took home the top prize for Midrange Servers, beating IBM and HP in our first year competing in this category.
Not only is this the first time in Cisco’s history we’ve won all of the categories we entered, Cisco is the only vendor to have won this many categories at the event. These awards are thanks to you, our partners, and I had a chance to talk to some of the partners who attended the event. Here’s what they had to say.
According to the recent Cisco Connected World Report, three out of five employees believe they don’t need to be in the office to be productive or efficient at their jobs. Yet 45 percent of IT departments are feeling challenged to provide the mobile, distributed access that workers want. This challenge crosses company sizes, countries and industries, but is especially notable in fields like construction that have traditionally required in-person engagement. Like many IT organizations that must partner with their facilities counterparts, Cisco IT works closely with Cisco Workplace Resources (WPR) and its construction vendors. In our new Texas Data Center 2 (DC2) project, we’re learning that productivity gains for our partners and vendors are gains for us too.
Cisco’s existing production data center in Texas has 1920 batteries protecting IT loads in the event of a utility power failure. Our Texas Data Center 2 (DC2) will have zero. Running at around 3000 rpm to generate 480V (60Hz) of electricity, the dynamic rotary UPS system will provide Texas DC2 with efficient, reliable backup power that’s both planet friendly and a sound investment. And if you read more below, I’ll tell you why.
With the rapid increase in cloud services adoption, many in the industry are asking: Is the current IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service management framework relevant to emerging cloud and IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) providers? In Cisco IT, we think it is. When our new Texas Data Center 2 (DC2) facility is complete, Cisco IT will be delivering private cloud services to our internal customers and transforming into an ITaaS provider. To find out more about how both Texas DC2 and ITIL are integral to this transformation, read more below.
