Most of us did not grow up sharing our private feelings with the world. Today we are faced with the challenge of needing to build our brand. This test can help you understand how socially connected you already are.
Be as web savvy as a librarian
When was the last time you visited a library?
Hint: Wikipedia counts.
Learn how future librarian, Elizabeth Lieutenant, is using Twitter to connect with like-minded students, professors and prospective employers.
Once again, Cisco is honored to be on Fortune Magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” List. Fortune tells us that the Most Admired list is the “definitive report card on corporate reputations.” We are also included in the Top 10 “Most Admired Tech Companies” list.
Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers stated, “We are honored to be recognized by our peers as one of the most admired companies in the world. We know we would not be on this prestigious list without our customers, our innovative employees, our partners and our investors. So, on behalf on all of them, we thank Fortune for this honor and will strive to live up this honor each and every day.”
Congratulations to all Cisco employees who develop the best technology in the world and help solve our customers’ most pressing business needs. Congratulations also to our fellow Silicon Valley companies on this list: Apple, Google, Intel, E-Bay and Facebook. The full list is here.
And, as our CEO reminds us, those companies that are on top today can be gone or on the bottom if they miss a market transition. To further prove this point, Fortune also includes a list of companies that were on their FIRST list of companies ranked by reputation from 1983. Seven companies that were on that list, including Kodak, Wang and Rockwell are no longer around. So, if you are a Cisco employee reading this, my advice for you is this: pat yourself on the back, then GET BACK TO WORK*!! : )
The methodology and survey for this list, developed at Hay Group, is as follows:
Continue reading “Cisco on Fortune’s “World’s #MostAdmired Companies” List”
Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate Leadership Awards awarded to Cisco the EPA 2013 Supply Chain Leadership Award for innovation, commitment, leadership, and technical achievements in managing and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout our supply chain.
The award is among several given by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Center for Corporate Climate Leadership, the Association of Climate Change Officers, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, and The Climate Registry.
Winners of the Supply Chain Leadership Award are at the leading edge of managing GHGs in their organizational supply chains.
More and more this novel idea of user classifications and workload profiles is being used to separate VDI user allocations. I’ve worked with many customers who prefer to stack rank their users based on the importance of their role/job function and the typical applications that user needs in their role as a means to (hopefully) gain a more appropriate VDI resource allocation. Again – this is a great idea and a good excuse for organizations to take a long hard look at their users and the applications they use day to day.
In case you are finding this blog for the first time, we have been attempting to defy blog physics and host a series of blogs – this requires the use of a manually updated table of contents:
Most of the time the three main items separating user classes are:
The first sort of pitfall that I see occasionally is too much granularity in the workload profiles. Don’t get me wrong, if you have a good view into your users and applications that you see the need to support and manage 5 different user classifications – that’s great news! But most of the time it comes down to 3 particular types of user classifications:
A good sort of buildup approach to start determining your workload profile requirements must take into consideration the users and compute requirements based on the apps those users will be running. In most cases, the Operating System you choose will be the foundation to start your buildup approach. The aging Windows XP platform is quickly being consumed by Windows 7 in the corporate workspace. There are few folks out there continuing to stand up net new systems for users and using Windows XP. This is for a number of reasons – most new PC’s and their manufacturers (not to mention this little company called Microsoft) are not developing drivers and supporting the workhorse XP operating system. Let’s be honest, Windows XP came out in 2001. Windows XP is older than my twin girls that are in 4th grade! It was a good ride, but it must come to an end. You probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned Windows 8 yet. After all, it is the newest desktop Operating System (OS) that Microsoft has out. There are a couple of reasons for this: Most corporate users don’t jump onto the latest OS because they have to support many users, must test/qualify their applications on a new operating system and as we all know – anything new usually has fixes and enhancements to follow. Plus, as a general rule of thumb, the first Service Pack must come out before anyone will give real consideration to mass deployment in any organization. Beyond the general newness of the Windows 8 OS, it will be interesting to see how “Corporate America” will integrate the new look and feel of Windows 8. With that being said, we have Windows 7 which came out in 2009 and already has Service Pack 1 with a host of subsequent updates. This is the OS that most folks are planning their VDI environments for. Per Microsoft, the requirements for Windows 7 are as follows:
Continue reading “VDI “The Missing Questions” #5: How does 1vCPU scale compared to 2vCPU’s?”
Mobility and application access capabilities have encouraged many of today’s work patterns. Some work behaviors were recently noted in a Cisco-commissioned research report on mobility and BYOD comparing IT and end user viewpoints. Striking about the findings is that day-to-day business activities were relatively balanced on wired and wireless connections—so while mobility is here and growing, usage is no more than wired. Core to the findings were end users’ view that mobile devices are 37% less effective than their corporate laptop for conducting business activities. From an IT perspective, managing devices and multiple policies in a wired and wireless environment was a key challenge. Mobile device usage behaviors surveyed suggested a personal and social flair. The predominant applications used on mobile devices are not specific business applications (22%) but collaborative applications (56%). The report also indicates that mobile devices are used for personal use more frequently than IT estimates. Continue reading “Consider Mobile Work Patterns and Security Impact”
A few weeks ago we launched new Cisco Unified Access solutions at Cisco Live. These included the new Catalyst 3850 switch and the new Cisco 5760 Wireless LAN Controller, both built on the new Unified Access Data Plane ASIC. These will be key for Cisco partners and their customers as they implement BYOD policies and add more wireless access in branch offices, stores, and other remote locations. It’s a great opportunity for you to help your customers deploy these technologies with a converged approach.
To capitalize on this opportunity, of course, you’ll need to learn something about Cisco Unified Access and I’ve got some ideas for you on that. Continue reading “Take the Unified Access Partner Challenge for a Chance to Win an iPad”
Financial markets today have become so dependent on well-designed technology architecture in support of growing automated trading business. I was recently part of a webinar centered on discovering how optimized latency performance, mitigation of microbursts, traffic filtering and analysis, and precise timing and synchronization are beneficial to all participants in the trading value chain.
The webinar was hosted by Wall Street & Technology, entitled, “Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance.” If you weren’t able to make it, register here to view a recording.
During the discussion, I was joined by some great minds in the financial services sector including Alex Tabb, Partner, TABB Group and Paul Jameson, Senior Director, Financial Services, Cisco. We discussed how high-performance trading fabric architecture and innovations like Cisco Algo Boost and the Cisco Nexus 3548 can help financial firms address challenges and capture opportunities in today’s financial markets. Here are a few key take-aways from the webinar I would like to highlight. Continue reading “Post-WEBINAR: Enabling High-Performance Trading Alpha: Beyond Low-Latency to Sustained Performance”
By Henky Agusleo, Vertical Manager, and Neeraj Arora, Director, IBSG Service Provider – 
Singapore
A rapidly expanding, tech-savvy middle class is driving an explosion of connected mobile devices, with close to a billion smartphones and tablets in the world today. These users are looking for new cloud-based “Connected Life” experiences from their mobile devices, creating tremendous opportunities for service providers (SPs). The key is in mobile cloud. The Cisco® Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) projects a direct worldwide mobile-cloud service opportunity of more than $60 billion by 2016, with an additional cloud pull-through market of $335 billion.
But so far, service providers have not taken the lead in offering cloud-based Connected Life services. That claim belongs to over-the-top (OTT) application developers, content providers, and device manufacturers, such as Google and Apple, who have moved quickly to take the high ground in this market.
OTTs Have First-Mover Advantage
This first-mover advantage has Continue reading “Reclaiming Mobile Cloud Services from OTTs: Seven Actions Service Providers Can Take to Capture a $60 Billion Opportunit …”
1. Define Your Voice
Writing for social media is its own discipline and different from traditional writing: it is more like writing a story, a story that you want people to share with their friends and so on and so on. Defining your voice is the combination of knowing what you want to say and how you want to say it. Your knowledge, interests, and personality will only add value to the story. Plus, telling a story in your own way is what will create a unique and authentic connection with readers. One way to define your voice is to stop writing the way you think you should–you know, the way your English teacher told you to write–and start writing the way you think and speak. The words should fit you and be easy to read aloud.
2. Hook Your Audience from the Start
In addition to easy to read aloud, social media writing should be tighter and simpler than traditional writing: the beginning of your story should hook readers fast and hard, the way a song’s hook does. Whether you love or hate Queen, you know what comes after “we are the champions” (at least if you’re older than 25). That’s right, “no time for losers.” In essence, a hook is a memorable phrase that summarizes what a song is about. Think of a title and an opening line as your story’s hook. And don’t worry that you’re giving away the best part. Knowing what to expect won’t ruin your story for readers. It will prime them for what’s next and introduce your main point.
3. Construct Clear, Compelling Copy
Speaking of your main point, get to it quickly and clearly. While using a string of straightforward, declarative sentences is too abrupt for traditional writing, it is perfect for social media. Because unlike traditional writing, readers won’t go back to re-read or stop to think about difficult sections. Your writing has to be clear and direct the first time around: don’t be coy and promise to get to the interesting stuff later. Think of your story as a first date: put on your fancy pants and put forward your most compelling, date-worthy self. It’ll make your readers want to read your story and get to know you better. At the very least, it won’t make them regret saying yes.
