Cloud Connect is (as you might expect) all about cloud. At VMware Partner Exchange, you’ll learn about virtual desktops, virtual workspaces, and VXI with Cisco and VMware View. But you can also learn about more about Cisco and VMware’s complementary cloud management solutions – to help our customers accelerate their journey to cloud computing.
You may have heard about the Cisco IT internal private cloud (CITEIS – Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services) by now. At VMworld last fall, our IT team gave a presentation on how they deployed Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud together with VMware vSphere and vCloud Director for this successful initiative:
If you’re at VMware Partner Exchange this year, you’ll have an opportunity to learn how we did it, how it works, why it delivered great results, and how you can deploy a similar solution. Just make sure you visit Cisco in booth 308 to see a demo of cloud management with Intelligent Automation – and attend our sessions below.
Next week is Cloud Connect in Santa Clara and Cisco’s Cloud Software group will have a big presence.
While we have plenty to talk about on how Cisco is helping customers build their cloud, we also want to listen to our customers plans and needs. We are bringing some of our engineers and architects so you can engage directly with them. There are three things you can see next week.
CITEIS -- Cisco’s, in production, private cloud.
See how it was built, the results in agility and cost, and best of all see a demo. Not a fake demo but the real thing.
Of course, we will also be showcasing our award winning cloud automation software, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (CIAC) (formerly newScale and Tidal), which provides the self-service catalog and orchestration to our private cloud
Its hard to believe that almost an entire month has gone by since the beginning of the year. The year has been off to a great start for Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) now serving 10,000 customers. Reaching the 10,000-customer milestone is an achievement for relatively new and innovative platform.
Generally asset management implies financial management but this discussion is focused on operational management of the data center components. Typically, in Data Centers, different teams manage servers, networks and storage. These teams have cursory knowledge of each other’s domains. This organizational structure hinders data centers from obtaining higher efficiencies and agility. Data Center Management tools that allow automated workflows with enforcement of policies set by domain experts reduce time needed to effect changes and hence increase agility. Unified server, network and storage infrastructures with proper management capabilities improve overall efficiency, reduce data center complexity and promote better resource utilization. With Unified infrastructures the server management teams can make informed decisions on application workload placement based on their visibility into the network setup and policies set by the Network domain experts. For example, a server administrator could place more sensitive applications on servers that are connected to very secure network segments, or place bandwidth hungry applications on network segments with spare capacity. If network managers need to move network segment capacity around they would need the equivalent of network hypervisors. These decisions which affect multiple domains could be manually executed or orchestrated with systems management tools. The crowning glory would be for the end customer of the IT service to request infrastructure services from a catalog and get access to it instantaneously. A Forrester Research paper that Cisco sponsored even shows a maturity model for service orchestration within a data center. Where do you think your organization is on this maturity model?
Our team is excited and ready for a great week at Cisco Live Europe! We’ve been working on demos, speaking sessions, and social events for the conference – and it’s finally here.
There are several conference sessions on intelligent automation and cloud computing. Follow us at @CiscoIA on Twitter where we’ll post updates and reminders about key sessions.
In fact, you may have to choose between some great breakout sessions being held at the same time. Here are a few of the key sessions that feature Intelligent Automation:
Converged Infrastructure and Orchestration with Vblock and Cisco Intelligent Automation -- BRKSPS-2202 (Tuesday, Jan 31, 14:15 pm)
Cloud Automation -- BRKNMS-2659 (Friday, Feb 3, 9:00 am)
Create “Network Containers” in a Multi-Tenant Data Center -- BRKNMS-3999 (Friday, Feb 3, 9:00 am)
Orchestration of UCS via Cisco Process Orchestrator -- BRKDCT-3105 (Friday, Feb 3, 11:00 am)
At Cisco Live this week, you’ll learn how our Unified Management solutions deliver intelligent automation for intelligent infrastructure solutions in a Unified Data Center approach:
When you’re ready to unwind after the big first day, join the data centre team at 18:30 for a meet-up at the W XYZ bar in the Aloft ExCel Hotel next to the conference. Here’s your personal invitation.
And for even more fun, play the Cisco pinball in the World of Solutions! There are prizes for high scores every day, with a pinball challenge on Wednesday at 16:00 – follow @CiscoPinball on Twitter for details.
We look forward to meeting you – enjoy the conference!
Recently, a customer asked me what was the value of using automation to operate a private cloud? It was a good question. Working in the middle of the reality distorition field of the cloud industry I take it for granted that everyone knows automation’s benefits.
Fundamentally, automation tools help to reduce labor costs, rationalize consumption and increase utilization.
Costs are lower because the labor required to configure and deploy is eliminate. This automation is possible by creating standard infrastructure offerings. Standard infrastructure offering make possible a new operational model: to move from the artesanal approach of delivering infrastructure ,where every system and configuration is uniqe, to the industrialized approach, that ensures repeatability, quality and agility. It’s the difference between custom tailoring and standardized sizes at The Gap. Both have their place, but one costs more.
