The following excerpts are from an interview with Bernie Trudel, Asia Pacific Regional Data Center and Cloud CTO, Cisco Systems, Inc.

As someone whose world is dominated by cloud, data center, privacy, and compliance, it was exciting to meet a long-term expert with the same-shared interests. Bernie Trudel has been with Cisco for 17 years, and in addition to his role as Regional CTO, he is Chairman of the Asian Cloud Computing Association, an industry organization dedicated to making cloud computing a reality across Asia Pacific (APAC) by addressing the needs for common platforms. He shared his ideas with me on key regional trends,  security to accelerate cloud adoption, and the future of the data center.

What are the key regional trends?

Increasingly APAC countries are adopting a national broadband policy driven by a combination of the adoption of cloud and the ubiquity of personal computing. There is a strong focus on data sovereignty and privacy in response to emerging data privacy legislative measures in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines and also greater awareness around consumer’s rights to protect private data. International connectivity is also emerging as an issue as smaller countries rely on networks that cross geographic borders.

Many of these trends are measured in the Cloud Readiness Index, which uses 10 parameters that focus on risk, power, sustainability, and other metrics to assess readiness across the region.

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Tags: Asia, asian cloud computing association, cloud, Cloud Security Alliance, data center, privacy, virtualization

Is your network ready to help you transform and be the strategic partner that you can be? Let’s face it… Today’s data centers are challenged with siloed resources and facilities… Limited scalability… Poor resource utilization… Growing complexity…Perhaps the biggest challenge is time.  When 80% of your resources are dedicated to “keeping the lights on” and managing all what you have, there is very little time left for innovation that benefits the business.

And the reality is that the role of IT has to change – from a cost center to a business strategic partner!  Why? Because there are increasing demands on IT to help your business differentiate in order to survive and grow in these rough economic conditions. And let’s not forget that the increasing cost pressures, technology changes, and the advent of game-changers like cloud are forcing IT executives to look at how to deliver IT differently. 

These growing demands put even more pressure on the shoulders of IT especially given the current state of your Data Centers. The data center network sits at the core of IT and is key to how IT can deliver services and provide value back to the business.

So what do you do?  The good news is that …

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Tags: ASA, Cisco, cloud, Cloud Computing, Consolidation, convergence, data center, DCNM, Fabric Path, FCoE, fex, Fibre Channel, it-as-a-service, LISP, MDS, nexus, Nexus 1000v, Nexus1010, NX-OS, OTV, switch, Unified Fabric, virtualization

As part of the comprehensive desktop virtualization portfolio, Cisco is providing a solution for the small and medium business customers, typically up to 500 desktops environment. The Cisco Solution for Citrix VDI-in-a-Box offers a simple and affordable desktop virtualization solution combining the benefits of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack servers with Citrix VDI-in-a-Box software.

SMB businesses account for more than 70% of the PC install base and significant proportion of these are potential candidates for desktop virtualization. Many of the SMB environments have uniform workload, defined workload characteristics and nominal application requirements.

The Cisco Solution for Citrix VDI-in-a-Box integrates connection brokering, load balancing, desktop provisioning, HA, and management functions in a single software appliance that runs on Cisco UCS C260 M2 server – this server is based on Intel Xeon processors and provide expanded memory configurations for the most demanding VDI workloads.

There are 2 defined solutions – Balanced Configuration targeting 60 to 70 users and Performance Configuration targeting 140 to 150 users per server node. Customers can scale either of these solutions by adding servers in a grid or cluster fashion. Cisco provides simplified single SKU ordering process for the Balanced and Performance configurations.

This solution is apt for small service firms, healthcare institutions, educational institutions, state and local government organizations.

For more details on the solution, please refer to the Solutions Brief and for Cisco desktop virtualization offerings please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/vdi

Tags: Cisco UCS, Citrix VDI-in-a-Box, desktop virtualization, smb, UCS, vdi, virtualization

I am pleased to be kicking off this Ask the Data Center Security Expert series at Cisco. This series is aimed at security professionals, partners, data center teams, and IT business decision makers and will address key security issues around virtualization, cloud and anticipated issues associated with trends such as the Software Defined Data Center. The series will take the form of blogs, videos, NetSec chats, and webinar panels. I have an array of expertise lined up ranging from key reseller and technology ecosystem partners, industry leaders and luminaries and internal Cisco experts. Stay tuned for the first in this series coming to you next week out of Singapore.

To get started, a little about me -- I was very excited to commence a data center and security solutions marketing role at Cisco 3 weeks ago.  I have over 12 years experience developing holistic security solutions and have been focused on data center and cloud for the last 3 years.  I currently chair the Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls (CCM), an industry effort dedicated to harmonizing regulatory controls for decreased compliance complexity and also have been bridging efforts with other industry associations such as the Open Data Center Alliance. Read More »

Tags: data center, data centes, hypervisor, private cloud, Public Cloud, security, virtualizarion, virtualization

Enterprise trends driving SDN and Network Programmability are becoming clearer.  The skyrocketing number of virtual/cloud devices is making human configuration infeasible.  A natural result will be that networks will move from being integrated based on physical box boundaries to being integrated based on software boundaries.  Put another way, traditional box based network integration will be overwhelmed by device proliferation.  Therefore businesses must adopt new approaches to device configuration and control.  This will include a new layer of network software which will instantiate, orchestrate, and dismantle virtual networks.

But what does this really mean?  Read More »

Tags: API, Borderless Networks, Cloud Computing, controller, Enterprise, intent, interface, onePK, partner, SDN, software, virtualization