At Cisco Live in Melbourne last week we hosted a customer showcase panel (see photos here) for attending press and analysts. Alongside St Andrew’s hospital, an Adelaide-based private hospital, and Relationships Australia WA, a not-for-profit which has rolled out Cisco collaboration kit, the IT Operations Manager from Country Fire Authority (CFA), Gary Phillips, discussed the roll-out of a Cisco UCS based data centre platform.
In a country where threat to property and life from bushfires is a major concern every summer, it is important that the men and women tasked to protect us are equipped with the best and most advanced technology available to them. The CFA is the state of Victoria’s dedicated rural fire brigade.
Three Reasons: More Productivity, Revenues, and Savings
How can you control the connections and user experiences—and security—of BYOD and other mobile devices that access your business network? Maybe you or your IT staff have the expertise and time to do-it-yourself (DIY). Or, maybe not.
In my last blog,I outlined the benefits of mobility technologies and the hot bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend that is shaping the future of how business is done. When you consider the amazing things that happen when we connect people, process, data, and things, it’s no surprise to see the demand accelerating from employees, business leaders, and customers for mobile device connectivity.
So, how do you take care of it all—including security? Is DIY really the answer? The devil is in the details.
In this blog, I’ll give you two real-life examples of an alternative to DIY that has a high value proposition: engaging expert IT services for planning, building, and managing mobility—and quickly getting full ROI.
Example #1: Higher productivity, lower OpEx: A small business wanted to trim the large operating expense (OpEx) for its office space in the city by getting employees to work remotely. But the business also wanted to preserve its data security and employees’ feeling of working collaboratively. It decided to engage TekScape, a Cisco Premier Certified Partner, to come up with a solution.
TekScape specializes in “landscape technology”, its term for technology that facilitates more mobile and productive working environments. TekScape delivers and manages advanced IT solutions to help businesses increase employee productivity and reduce operating expenses. Its services include tailored design, implementation, and support of network integration, data center, unified collaboration, and mobility.
TekScape provided the 30-employee business with design and implementation services, as well as an ongoing managed service. The technology solution included Cisco collaboration and security products, and hosted communications services for mobile device apps and Cisco SMARTnet technical support service. To enhance the support, Cisco SMARTnet gives customers direct access to Cisco experts and online resources that can quickly resolve problems, lessen risk by detecting security issues, and keep customers’ IT staff up to date on technology advances and security threats. Solutions like this one position small businesses competitively for current and future mobility opportunities.
Following are the quantitative results:
Over 75 percent of the employees moved out of the office and now work from home or the site of their choice, using BYOD.
Their productivity immediately increased by 10 to 15 percent, due to less commuting, more flexible work hours, and the greater efficiency of participating in meetings in a videoconference format
The annual OpEx for office space shrank by more than $125,000
The business realized full ROI from its mobility products and services in less than a year
Example #2: Revenue and business continuity: A 200-employee business that provides medical records services had an ongoing contract with TekScape to monitor the performance of its network. The network equipment included a Cisco Unified Communications Manager platform and IP phones, and Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX)for client devices.
When Hurricane Sandy hit the business’s building on a Monday, 30 feet of water flooded two floors beneath the business. All power, Internet, and phone services for the building were knocked out.
Early the next morning,TekScape engineers wearing water boots showed up at the customer’s business, ready to help it resume operations. They quickly assessed that the utilities’ restoration of power and communications services to the building would take days (if not weeks), a delay the business could not endure due to client contracts and compliance requirements.
So TekScape devised an interim BYOD communications network solution, using the customers’ existing network equipment. TekScape engineers carried the communications platform to a co-location center, where they configured it for remote contact center agents, softphones, point-to-point video, and Cisco Jabber. The 200 employees quickly resumed work from locations all over the city, using their tablets, laptops, PCs, and smartphones to connect securely via VPNs.
It turned out that full restoration of operations at the site of the business’s building took two months, a delay that would have cost the customer $5 million in lost revenues.
The quantitative results: In less than a day, the customer realized full ROI from TekScape’s mobility services. And without them, the customer said, it would have gone out of business.
How could your business use expert mobility services to increase its productivity, revenues, or savings on operating expenses? The ROI from engaging expert IT services for planning, building, and managing mobility can be big and fast.
So if you are thinking of an alternative to DIY, consider working with a Cisco Partner. Find a partner today.
At NRF 2013, Rajesh Mani, Business Development Manager for Customer Business Transformation within Cisco’s Collaboration Technology Group, demonstrated how MicroStrategy Business Intelligence integrated with Cisco Jabber can transform the retail business process.
MicroStrategy enables retailers to have a 360-degree snapshot of their store operations, including store vitals, employee and customer information, inventory, and current promotions. The addition of Cisco Jabber into the application drives actionable business intelligence to facilitate tight-knit collaboration between the stores, district sales, and corporate business functions – which, in-turn, will result in faster and more insightful decision-making.
Watch the video below to see our demonstration of Cisco Jabber and MicroStrategy Business Intelligence at NRF 2013.
More videos of our NRF 2013 demonstrations, Big Ideas Sessions, and press event are available at www.cisco.com/go/nrf.
A dominant theme for the mobile networking industry at this year’s Mobile World Congress was how to cope with exploding demand for mobile data. Part of the answer is new technology but part is better spectrum policy.
Network operators today are facing a stiff challenge to expand infrastructure to keep pace with data traffic growth as more consumers stream HD video on their mobile devices and businesses employ collaboration tools to increase productivity. As a result, service providers are working harder than ever to manage their networks and scarce spectrum by deploying high quality small cell Wi-Fi in combination with traditional macro cell base stations. This is the “heterogenous network” or Het Net.
As a frequent attendee of the US RSA Conference in the past, this year I had the opportunity to work in the Cisco booth on the exhibition floor. This year’s RSA event was very busy, it seemed like there was a continuous flow of people and energy across the show floor. I had the pleasure of staffing Cisco’s Compliance Solution demonstration where we test people’s knowledge of PCI compliance. This is one of my favorite demos/stations to operate because it rewards people for their hard learned knowledge and skill on the topic with a prize instead of the normal random drawing (if you get the highest score in the shortest amount of time, you’re the winner!). I was surprised by the number of attendees that did not want to take our quiz. Was it a fear of being put on the spot? Or were they just not very knowledgeable about PCI? I consider the RSA conference as a security minded conference and thought a solid business driver like PCI Compliance would be front and center for many security professionals that often have to justify security purchases. Further, given the proliferation of data breaches across all industry segments, this should be a top of mind topic. Many industries outside of retail accept credit cards for payment of services and products (e.g., hospital co-pays, DMV fees, city permits, Insurance payments, hotels, transit stations) so when all three days of the quiz were won by retailers I was a bit surprised. I would have expected a few security vendors or professionals to have won at least one day! Continue reading “PCI-related Observations from RSA 2013”
Internet of Things is a hot topic this year, and the HANNOVER MESSE 2013 show is no exception. This year’s theme, “Integrated Industry” focuses on the growing integration of all areas of industry: “Machines, industrial equipment, work pieces and system components will soon be capable of exchanging data in real-time.”
Join Cisco at Hannover Messe 2013 !! Our booth is located in Hall 8, Stand D14. At last year’s Hannover Show Cisco launched The Connected Industry Group (CIG) and this year we will showcase how our Cisco Industrial Smart Solution’send-to end architecture, and ruggedized product portfolio enables the “Integrated Industry” by delivering value throughout the entire manufacturing value chain.
Our industrial hardware will be on static display allowing customers to “touch and feel” all models of the Industrial Ethernet portfolio: IE3000, IE2000, IE3010, C819, AIR1552, ESR5915, ESR5940, 819 M2M router. We will showcase how Power over Ethernet (PoE) for our IE 2k/3k switches and Network Address Translation for our IE2K switch will help drive the Internet of Things (IoT) in industrial applications.
Australian mobile data traffic will increase sixfold between 2012 and 2017, reaching 0.075 exabytes. Meanwhile, New Zealand mobile data traffic will increase eightfold in the same period.
These were the key findings from our latest Global Mobile Visual Networking Index (VNI), an ongoing initiative to predict global traffic growth, which were presented last week at Cisco Live in Melbourne by Dr. Robert Pepper, Cisco’s vice president for global technology policy (see slide presentation here).
Dr. Pepper identified four trends driving this data consumption growth: more users, more devices per user, faster network speeds and more media-rich content.
Anyone who has been involved with compliance knows that simplifying complexity is the key to maintaining a secure and compliant organization. It’s become quite apparent that sustaining compliance is a marathon, and the journey must be travelled with vigilance. This is not something that is an endpoint or a task, that once accomplished, can be shelved and forgotten; therefore, it is very helpful for merchants, who wish to become compliant or maintain compliance, to purchase solutions that are “certified.”
The fact that you are purchasing a product that’s already been validated as secure and “capable” of being compliant reduces the complexity and uncertainty associated with big-ticket items. Adding new credit card readers or a payment application in your stores is expensive, and knowing that these products are validated by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Council gives merchants confidence that they’re making a wise and secure decision. Continue reading “Becoming PCI certified…is this within reach?”
In this week’s episode of Engineers Unplugged, WWT’s Dave Kinsman (@virtualizethis) and Chris Gebhardt (@chrisgeb) take on the current buzz in the end-user computing space. Listen in on all things VDI, from storage to flash:
Welcome to Engineers Unplugged, where technologists talk to each other the way they know best, with a whiteboard. The rules are simple:
Episodes will publish weekly (or as close to it as we can manage)
Submit ideas for episodes or volunteer to appear by Tweeting to @CommsNinja
Practice drawing unicorns
This week features our very first duck-i-corn. Wow. Groundbreaking collaboration.
Dave Kinsman (WWT) and Chris Gebhardt (NetApp) with the world’s first duck-i-corn.
For more on the EUC conversation, follow @ciscoDC. Check out the Engineers Unplugged Facebook page for behind the scenes pictures, updates, and more.
Stay tuned next week for an incredible double header: Nick Weaver and Jay Cuthrell talk Automation and Andy Banta and Andy Sholomon practice the KISS method.
