As part of my work at Cisco, I get to talk to customers very often. Through these conversations, I learn what works for them and what concerns them. Lately, I’ve been hearing a common theme from a lot of customers: in many organizations IT staff is small and not growing while they are being asked to do more to meet the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) challenge.

BYOD has drastically changed the technology landscape as users bring many different types of personal devices to the networks of schools and colleges, hospitals, financial agencies, enterprises and other organizations. One university IT team, including their chief technology officer and their IT administrators, recently told me that they had 200% network user growth and 300% endpoint device growth over the last several years. As for their network, they used to have less than 100 wireless access points (APs). Guess how many they have today? Over a thousand. And they are planning to deploy several hundred more APs in the coming months. How about their IT headcount growth? As you might have guessed, it’s not grown at all.

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Tags: access points, Borderless Networks, byod, cisco prime, Hospital wifi, management, unified access, University IT, wireless access points

Have you noticed all those iPads around the factory? All around the production areas, the office areas and the warehouse? These  mobile connected devices and applications are quickly changing business and organizational models.

They are also changing employee habits and the way we work, as more and more users depend on tablets, such as the Apple iPad, for a variety of daily personal and professional tasks.

It’s not  just Apple, though they’re the most common. All those other tablets too.  Some of the others are  capable of a drop or two, or more onto hard concrete!

The most prevalent use case that IT departments need to solve for is the one where an employee brings their own personal device into the company and seeks to gain network access. This is happening a lot these days.  Funny, but companies are finding this is one of the ways they are attracting and keeping talent, especially young talent, so listen up!

Figure 1 illustrates the Cisco solution… Read More »

Tags: access, access point, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, CIO, cisco byod, enterprise mobility, iPad, Manufacturing, mobile devices, network management, security, tablet, VLAN, wi-fi, wireless, wireless access points, wlan

So you think you know what BYOD is? Think again!

Cisco Cius - Not BYOD since it's Corporate provisioned.

If you’re a manufacturer you’ve probably heard of BYOD, or ‘Bring Your Own Device’.  You know that more and more devices are proliferating throughout the organization. You also know that security is a big issue: How do you stop folks accessing sensitive systems, how do you protect Intellectual Property, and how do you prevent a disastrous shutdown caused by a device either intentionally or unintentionally?

Well, these are only some of the issues -- and they’re rarely addressed by a ‘Good-Enough Network’. Cisco’s BYOD is different -- it looks at the whole picture. It’s not just about your wireless network -- although the Cisco offerings are better than most! It’s about an holistic approach to BYOD. That covers the plant, IT, the LAN and fixed wired network and the wireless network too. All aspects.

As my colleague, Katie Taylor, says in her blog: Read More »

Tags: access point, beyond byod, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, CIO, cisco byod, enterprise mobility, Manufacturing, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, network management, vpn, wi-fi, wireless, wireless access points, wireless LAN, wlan

With more than seven billion souls set to tote 10 billion mobile-connected devices by 2016, mobility has not just arrived, it’s taken over our schools, businesses and personal lives.

Just ask Mitch Davis, the CIO of Bowdoin College, a private liberal arts college in Maine. Before BYOD ever became a global IT trend, according to Mitch, the vast majority of college students were already bringing their personal devices into the campus environment.

These co-eds expected Bowdoin to fully embrace personal mobility, and, upon graduation, these same post-grads expect that their employers will do the same (this year’s Connected World Technology Report findings back this up, with more than 40 percent of recent college graduates/Gen Y employees choosing BYOD flexibility over higher pay).

Bottom line, the rules of the game are changing, and companies must move beyond basic BYOD connectivity to meet employee demands today and tomorrow. To help companies meet these demands, we’ve introduced a comprehensive approach that unifies policy, supports a better user experience and simplifies management to deliver an uncompromised user experience in any workspace. After all, Cisco wants to empower IT managers to allow employees to have their devices and use them too. That means delivering:

1. A unified security policy across the whole organization – wired, wireless, VPN and now MDM – helping companies set and enforce policies;
2. An uncompromised user experience over the entire wired/wireless network, across any type of device; and,
3. Simplified operations and network management to understand application performance from a user’s perspective, accelerating troubleshooting and lowering operating costs.

Like Ray-Ban aviators, BYOD is here to stay. And done the right way, BYOD demands a comprehensive approach to allow current and future employees to work how they want, when and where they want, and on the devices they want – while still allowing IT the control and visibility to sleep at night.

Learn more about our announcement and new technologies here.

By the way, whether you’re a college student or have been working for 30 years, you’re eligible to take the BYOD Challenge and win a trip to 2012 London Olympics – good luck!

Tags: access point, beyond byod, bring your own device, Bring your Own Device (BYOD), byod, CIO, enterprise mobility, MDM, Mobile Device Management, mobile devices, network management, vpn, wi-fi, wifi, wireless access points, wireless LAN, wlan

Today, you may be able to walk into in a convention hall, or university classroom, or baseball park and connect your mobile device.  Maybe.  But you’re likely competing for that connection with all the people around you.   Can you join an online conversation while attending  a large class at school?  Can you view a live stream of the keynote address while sitting in a convention hall, or see the homerun hit while in line at the beer stand?

Today, chances are the answer is no.  But that’s changing.

The reason that the answer is no, today, is that you’re sharing a finite cellular or Wi-Fi connection with all your fellow consumers in that train, convention or stadium.  If you’ve got 50,000 fans, and off-the-shelf access points with “floodlight-like” unidirectional coverage areas, you’re likely sharing your one AP with 1000 other people!  And if you simply put more of those APs in, the overlapping airwaves would all be competing for the same limited number of Wi-Fi channels.  And when that happens, performance gets much, much worse.

But luckily, Cisco is announcing a brand new solution that addresses this issue, called Cisco Connected Stadium Wi-Fi, and it’s debuting in the Sporting Kansas City stadium.  We’ve got the new Aironet 3500p access point with a very special antenna with a directional, “spotlight-like” coverage pattern.  This means each AP has minimal interference with the AP next to it, and is shared by fewer fans.  Everyone gets a bigger piece of the pie – and therefore more predictable levels of performance to run cool new video apps.  Translation:  twice as much video-viewing, iPad-carrying  performance for you and me!

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Tags: antenna, stadium, wi-fi, wireless access points