Year: 2013

March 19, 2013 Leave a Comment
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Imagine the Possibilities and Realize the Benefits of Organization Innovation in Financial Services

Geoff is the Lead for Cisco’s Business Transformation solutions for the Financial Services Industry in Canada. To read Geoff’s full bio, please click Here.

This is the first in a series of blogs where I will discuss the capabilities that are driving innovation in the design and structure of retail financial services organizations. These capabilities shape where and how work is done, how resources are allocated and positioned, where geographic expansion  is executed, how customer points of presence are designed and staffed and how workplaces are configured. In sum, these capabilities offer new ways to engineer retail financial services organizations, the service delivery models that are critical to superior client experience and highly productive and cost-effective operations. Organizations that embrace and implement these capabilities will have a significant edge.

Imagine for a moment that you and your executive team are working to establish a new upstart financial services firm in a market with established competitors.

  1. How would you shape and structure your organization, operating model and service delivery system so that your retail bank, insurance and wealth management businesses can effectively compete with the established players?
  2. What would you offer that would drive superior, clearly differentiated level of satisfaction to the point where more clients move their assets to your firm?
  3. What factors would influence and guide your organizing model? Also, what capabilities would be essential to win market share, enable cost effective expansion and growth?
  4. What choices would you make in terms of how you allocate and locate your critical knowledge experts to drive the differentiated level of service and simultaneously achieve high productivity and the requisite level of profitability?
  5. What infrastructure assets would you decide to own and operate within your organization, and which would you choose to have outside and provided by others?
  6. Finally, how much time and focus would you and your executive team place on those assets and capabilities that make these advantages possible?

These are a few of the decisions and choices that would be paramount to you and your executive team. Why? Because these decisions and choices will influence the success of your enterprise. Continue reading “Imagine the Possibilities and Realize the Benefits of Organization Innovation in Financial Services”

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Geoffrey King

Business Development Manager

Business Transformation Solutions Group

March 18, 2013 Leave a Comment
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Wasted Lunch Breaks at the Bank are a Thing of the Past for ME Bank’s Customers in Australia

At Cisco Live in Melbourne we had a great line-up of customers talking about how Cisco is supporting more effective collaboration within their businesses. One of our guest speakers was Ian Hendey from ME Bank, the only bank in Australia which is 100% owned by Australia’s leading industry super funds.

ME Bank has a keen focus on innovation and improving the customer experience. And that’s why the bank has rolled out an initiative to provide banking where its customers are located – in their workplace.

ME Bank’s Workplace Banking Kiosks combine Cisco TelePresence with ATM and digital marketing, and allow customers to speak to a service representative remotely. The initiative is part of an AU$57 million technology transformation program that includes deploying mobile bankers and kiosks into the workplaces of its customers to act as a virtual branch that staff can use at any time.

Continue reading “Wasted Lunch Breaks at the Bank are a Thing of the Past for ME Bank’s Customers in Australia”

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Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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Learn How You Can Benefit from Cloud Computing

Cloud computing provides new opportunities to increase capacity and add new capabilities on the fly.  Whether you are an enterprise looking for ways to make your business more agile and responsive to market transitions, a Service Provider exploring new business models, or an executive wondering how your employees can benefit from cloud collaboration services, there’s a lot to learn.

Over the next four weeks Cisco will host a series of webinars highlighting the challenges and opportunities of cloud computing. This is a great chance for you to learn from Cisco experts as well as your industry peers.

Below is info on four webinars in March and April.  I encourage you to save the dates and register to attend!

1/ Building Service Provider Public, Private, and Hybrid Clouds for Enterprise and SMB 

Date: March 19, 2013            Time: 11:00 AM ET / 8:00 AM PT

With half of all IT needs shifting to the cloud, Service Providers have a great opportunity to profit from this business. But how do you build the capabilities needed to offer these IT services as cloud services? What about the cost vs. time-to-market tradeoff? In this webcast, you’ll learn how CIOs plan to move to the SP cloud, how to account for complex tradeoffs, and how Cisco’s SP Cloud Smart Solution can help.

For more information and registration visit here 

2/ Innovate with Cloud Conferencing

Date: March 19, 2013        Time: 12:00pm ET / 9:00am PT

Video capabilities across devices are changing the way we work and communicate, bringing people closer together and increasing productivity levels. As businesses expand the ways they collaborate, Cisco makes the experience consistent regardless of device. Join our video and collaboration leaders on March 19 as we announce new solutions to evolve conferencing. Learn more about Cisco’s collaboration strategy, see the new solutions in action, and have your questions answered live by Cisco experts. Don’t miss out on your opportunity to be on the front lines of the market trends in video, conferencing, and collaboration.

For more information and registration visit here 

3/Cloud 201: Getting Both – Efficiency & Agility with Private and Public Clouds  

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Date: April 9, 2013              Time: 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT

Ready to learn more about the future of cloud computing and how your organization can embrace it? Join our National Cloud 201 Town Hall and discover how to implement, secure, manage, update, and monitor solutions across multiple cloud environments. This webinar will leverage the power of Cisco Telepresence and connect you with an expert panel for advice you can use for running advanced enterprise workloads across multiple cloud environments.

For more information and registration visit here 

4/Simplifying Your Journey to Private Cloud — A Roundtable with Cisco, NetApp, Intel, and Microsoft 

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Date: April 17, 2013        Time: 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT

Cisco, Intel, NetApp, and special guest Microsoft come together for an executive roundtable to help you on your journey to the private cloud. Join this expert panel and learn how to decrease storage costs, reduce time to market, and improve application performance and business agility. Discover an integrated solution to achieve IT-as-a-service model in a fast and simple way through this partner webcast.

For more information and registration visit here 

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Giuliano Di Vitantonio

Vice President

Data Center and Cloud Marketing

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Summary: How Retail Giant Kingfisher Is Improving Efficiency with a Video-Enabled Supply Chain

It seems every week there is a new use case for Cisco TelePresence, and this week is no different.

Europe’s leading home improvement retailer, Kingfisher is using Cisco TelePresence to help the company adopt more agile ways of working. As a company that makes do-it-yourself projects easier and more affordable, Kingfisher was facing increasingly difficult logistical challenges with key partners and offices spread out across the globe. Not only is Cisco allowing the company to speed time-to-market and increase overall revenue, but it’s also enabling better communication and more productivity.

Read more on this innovative case study and watch their video in the latest Cisco Video blog post “How Retail Giant Kingfisher Is Improving Efficiency with a Video-Enabled Supply Chain.”

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Julie McPherson

Marketing Manager

Enterprise Networks and Mobility

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Aurecon Australia in Melbourne Creates Leading Client Experiences on its Intelligent Network

One of the most engaging customer visits undertaken during Cisco Live in Melbourne was the visit to the brand new, purpose built offices of global engineering and management company, Aurecon Group.

Aurecon’s Melbourne office is based in the growing Docklands area of Melbourne and is a showcase for the use of information technology to enable business innovation, growth and productivity. 

During the visit, Barry Honey, Auercon Group IS Strategy and Architecture Manager outlined the company’s strategic initiative to create innovative new client-facing technology services that will further differentiate its client experiences.  With operational projects taking place all over the world, Aurecon’s vision is grounded in an intelligent network that is entirely scalable and flexible for the future, while nimble enough to respond to immediate business opportunities being working on by the company.

Continue reading “Aurecon Australia in Melbourne Creates Leading Client Experiences on its Intelligent Network”

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Linda Horiuchi

Senior Manager, Australia and New Zealand PR

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Incredible Outcomes in Education from New Technologies

StudentssCisco’s Virtual Forum for Education Leaders is this Tuesday 3/19. It will be an exciting virtual Forum with information about important trends that are happening for both K-12 and Higher Ed. Of particular interest for both Academic and IT leaders is how technology is supporting and increasing learning outcomes.

Great applications like on-line learning, flipped classrooms, BYOD, and lecture capture are all being implemented by our schools and universities and delivering great success. They are helping us execute pedagogical changes that provide for individualized learning, classroom collaboration and helping us reach new markets in Higher Ed. These new technologies are even positively impacting the business and administrative areas at our schools and universities.

Continue reading “Incredible Outcomes in Education from New Technologies”

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Kevin Aspell

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Have you registered for #CiscoEduForum 2013?

Now is the time to seize these opportunities. To expand education beyond classroom walls.  To help teachers and learners collaborate more effectively. To create new teaching experiences that engage learners and improve outcomes. So tomorrow’s students will be prepared to take on the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

But first, schools of all levels must prepare by arming themselves with a solid network, strong policies, and seamless management.

Cisco’s Virtual Forum for Education can link you with educators and innovation leaders from around the world to talk about best practices and practical strategies to overcome the challenges of mobility and technology in the classroom. You will have the opportunity to interact live with education thought leaders and Cisco experts on trends and technologies that are shaping the future of education.

The virtual event is March 19th, 2013 in the Americas & Europe and March 20th for Asia Pacific.

Register before it’s too late!

Read more on the education blog

For more on Cisco Education solutions, visit Cisco K-12 Education BYOD Solutions.

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Vivian Chan

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Answering the Two Most-Asked Questions About the Internet of Everything #IoE

Since Cisco began discussing the Internet of Everything (IoE) last year, two questions have arisen consistently:

1) What is the difference between IoE and the Internet of Things (IoT)?
According to Cisco, IoE brings together people (humans), process (manages the way people, data, and things work together), data (rich information), and things (inanimate objects and devices) to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before—turning information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries.

To better understand this definition, it is helpful to take a quick look at the evolution of the Internet. In the early 1990s, devices connected to the Internet were essentially “fixed.” For example, you went to your desk to use your PC, dumb terminal, or other device. At its peak, this first wave reached about 200 million devices by the late 1990s.

Around the year 2000, devices started to come with you. Remember lugging around your first “brick” mobile phone? As the number of both fixed and mobile devices (including machines) ballooned, the number of things connected to the Internet increased, reaching about 10 billion this year. This wave of Internet growth ushered in IoT, or as I sometimes call it, the “Age of the Device.”

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Cisco believes the third wave of Internet growth has already begun. As the things connected to the Internet are joined by people and more intelligent data (as Cisco’s definition describes), IoE could potentially connect 50 billion people, data, and things by 2020.

So, what is the difference between IoT and IoE? Continue reading “Answering the Two Most-Asked Questions About the Internet of Everything #IoE”

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Dave Evans

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Tools of the Trade: cvrfparse

Prologue

In this article, you will be provided a thorough treatise on an in-house developed tool for parsing and validating CVRF documents aptly named “cvrfparse”. The article is split into two parts. The first part, intended for CVRF document producers and consumers, is a hands-on manual detailing how to use cvrfparse. The second part, intended for burgeoning Python programmers, explores some of the inner workings of the tool.

Introduction

The CVRF parser or “cvrfparse” is a Python-based command line tool that offers simple parsing and validation of CVRF documents. Using it, you can quickly query a CVRF document for any of its contents. For example, let’s say one of your vendors releases a bundle of security advisories encoded in CVRF. There are a dozen individual CVRF documents each with multiple vulnerabilities across hundreds of products. Using cvrfparse, you can quickly ascertain which documents contain vulnerable products you might have installed in your infrastructure. We’ll see how, shortly.

Continue reading “Tools of the Trade: cvrfparse”

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Mike Schiffman