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There’s been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what’s what, what’s required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.

In true Mythbuster fashion, let’s all discover why no myth is safe – through a 5-part series of posts. In this series, we’ll look at some of the most common myths that have been floating around and unveil the truth.

Myth 1: Moving to the Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure.

This is pure fiction. Cisco has always promoted that the network infrastructure should evolve and we understand that different organizations will feel the impact of the Internet of Things, mobility and BYOD at different times and will address them differently. The new Cisco Unified Access solution provides you flexible deployment options, including separate wired and wireless, converged access, cloud-managed, and more. The deployment model chosen will depend upon the lifecycle of the existing infrastructure.

Continue reading “Mythbusters: Unified Access Edition: Part 1”



Authors

Brian Robertson

Product Marketing Manager

CMO EMM Mobility Solutions

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CasinoWheelWe’ve mentioned earlier that Cisco is again a platinum sponsor at this year’s Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas. We’ll showcase UCS, UCS Manager, PowerTool for PowerShell, and many other management solutions and technologies. Two speaking sessions are dedicated to Cisco technology as well – see details below.  So, don’t gamble away your chance to learn from Cisco Product Managers and Engineers on our integration with the Hyper-V Extensible Switch and System Center! Details on our presence can be found at www.cisco.com/go/mms

Virtual Networking Solutions for Microsoft Hyper-V environments
Session ID:
WS-B201
Date: TBD
Time: TBD

Server virtualization and cloud environments provide many benefits to enterprise customers. However, the dynamic nature of these environments and IT operational practices presents additional complexities for virtual machine networking. This session covers how Cisco virtual networking solutions (Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX) can help simplify virtual networking. It shows how they help to enable consistency across physical and virtual networks and provide an advanced networking feature set. The session also details Cisco integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager to provide a non-disruptive operational model to the server team. Attend this session to learn about Cisco Nexus 1000V and Cisco UCS VM-FEX architecture. Also discover the virtual networking services they bring to Hyper-V environments, and how they can simplify network operations.

Automate Your Infrastructure Programmatic Management of Cisco UCS with Microsoft System Center and PowerShell
Session ID: WS-B337
Date: Tuesday, April 9
Time: 10:15 11:30 a.m.

Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Manager improves process automation and policy management. This helps data center managers achieve greater agility and scale in their server operations while reducing complexity and risk. Join our Cisco Systems Management experts as they cover managing Cisco UCS with Microsoft System Center and PowerShell. The session will detail the integration of the Cisco UCS XML API with Microsoft management tools. This provides full views of Cisco UCS hardware inventory, monitoring, alerting, and automation of Cisco UCS using both Microsoft Systems Center and PowerShell. You will also see demonstrations of real-world examples showing programmatic bare-metal deployment and ongoing systems monitoring and management of Cisco UCS using Cisco UCS PowerTool and Microsoft Systems Center.

Learn more on Cisco’s technology and solutions for your Microsoft oriented datacenter at www.cisco.com/go/microsoft



Authors

Rex Backman

Senior Marketing Manager, Big Data Solutions

Data Center and Cloud

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In this blog, let us take a look at how Catalyst access switches enable and enforce context aware access to IT resources.

Many types of devices, including laptops, smartphones, and tablets, are used by end users to connect to the network wired, wirelessly, and remotely through VPN. With bring your own device (BYOD) access, the devices can be personal or corporate owned. Every enterprise has policies that dictate who can access what applications and databases, when and how. Traditionally, IT manages the policy either by introducing appliances at points in the campus where users connect or by manually configuring all the access switches. Appliances incur additional capital and operational expenses, whereas manual configuration of the switches requires maintenance of every switch. Moreover, the network can carry traffic using Ethernet, IPv4, IPv6, or other technologies, so the configuration must keep up with changes in technology, which leads to higher operational complexity and costs.

Continue reading “Demystifying the Catalyst: Cisco Context Aware Secure Access (Security Group Tags – SGT) Technology”



Authors

Shankar Chandrasekaran

Marketing Manager

GMCC Products and Solutions

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Now available for existing customers of Tidal Enterprise scheduler with native support for MapR.

Why is this big news? It means that workloads can now move between existing FTP, S3 buckets, ERP, Business intelligence and Hadoop HDFS to MapR’s version of HDFS.

From Allan’s blog:

A few months ago, Cisco announced the release of Tidal Enterprise Scheduler TES 6.1 and with it integrations for Hadoop software distributions, such as Cloudera and MapR, as well as adapters to support Sqoop, Data Mover HDFS, Hive, and MapReduce jobs. All performed through the same TES interface as their other enterprise workloads.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that with the upcoming 6.1.1 release of Cisco’s Tidal Enterprise Scheduler, Cisco’s MapR integration will deepen further. Leveraging Big Data for competitive advantage and rises in innovative product offerings are changing the storage, management, and analysis of an enterprise’s most critical asset — data.

The difficulty of managing Hadoop clusters will continue to grow and enterprises need solutions like Hadoop to enable the processing of large amounts of data. Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler enables more efficient management of those environment because it is an intelligent solution for integrating Big Data jobs into an existing data center infrastructure. TES has adapters for a range of enterprise applications including: SAP, Informatica, Oracle, PeopleSoft, MSSQL, JDEdwards, and many others.

via Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler 6.1.1.



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Each year the Schwab Foundation presents Social Entrepreneur of the Year awards to people who apply innovative, practical approaches to resolving social and environmental challenges.

Three of the 24 awardees announced on February 15 lead nonprofit organizations that Cisco partners with to promote education and economic empowerment around the world.

These visionary leaders have leveraged our support to continue investing in innovative solutions that create opportunities for underserved populations. In fact, their organizations are so effective that Cisco has approached them to support several of our own Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs.

Continue reading “Cisco Partners Recognized as Social Entrepreneurs by Schwab Foundation”



Authors

Charu Adesnik

Executive Director, Cisco Foundation; Director, Social Innovation Investments

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What are you doing on April 18 & 19th, 2013? Mark your calendar for a social media event with Cisco! This event is titled Social Media for Savvy Marketers. You can join this event live or connect via our live webcast. Registration is required. Hurry because space is limited for this free event! Some of our featured sessions will include:

Driving Social into Business

Long gone are the days when social was only a marketing practice. Today, social impacts all corners of an organization – legal, customer service, finance, client managers, crisis management and even product development. There are very real business implications in this socially connected world, and it means that companies must learn how to drive social into their business. This requires education, best practices and policies that many do not already possess. Continue reading “Cisco Social Media for Savvy Marketers Event – April 18 & 19, 2013”



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Virtualization on the plant floor

“While IT networks already use virtualization extensively, its benefits are moving into industrial networks. Five diverse viewpoints on its advantages and implementation are offered.”

Great article in the recent Control Engineering magazine on the the topic of virtualization for manufacturing environments. Control Engineering states it is a major discussion, so they are approaching it from a variety of viewpoints. “Below are the stories written from industry professionals and their viewpoints on virtualization.”

The article can be linked to at Control Engineering by clicking on the following links…

Key Concepts Continue reading “Virtualization on the plant floor – Control Engineering Article”



Authors

Peter Granger

Senior Sales Transformation Manager

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When customers look to deploy their Hadoop solutions, one of the first questions they ask is, which distro should we run it on? For many enterprise customers, the answer has been MapR. For those of you not familiar with MapR, they offer an enterprise-grade Hadoop software solution that provides customers with a robust set of tools for running Big Data workloads. A few months ago, Cisco announced the release of Tidal Enterprise Scheduler (TES) 6.1 and with it integrations for Hadoop software distributions, such as Cloudera and MapR, as well as adapters to support Sqoop, Data Mover (HDFS), Hive, and MapReduce jobs. All performed through the same TES interface as their other enterprise workloads.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that with the upcoming 6.1.1 release of Cisco’s Tidal Enterprise Scheduler, Cisco’s MapR integration will deepen further. Leveraging Big Data for competitive advantage and rises in innovative product offerings are changing the storage, management, and analysis of an enterprise’s most critical asset – data. The difficulty of managing Hadoop clusters will continue to grow and enterprises need solutions like Hadoop to enable the processing of large amounts of data. Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler enables more efficient management of those environment because it is an intelligent solution for integrating Big Data jobs into an existing data center infrastructure. TES has adapters for a range of enterprise applications including: SAP, Informatica, Oracle, PeopleSoft, MSSQL, JDEdwards, and many others.

Stay tuned for additional blog posts on Cisco’s Tidal Enterprise Scheduler version 6.



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Many organizations are getting on board with the cloud. But the transition can be tough. There are many aspects to consider before going virtual, including security, possible downtime, application migration, and ease of deployment. So where do you start?

Cisco has the answers and expertise that you are seeking. To learn more about how to prep for a cloud transition, consider attending our event “Transforming Your Data Center with Cisco Domain Ten (SM)”. This live webinar will take place on February 27, 2013, at 10:00 AM PST (1:00 PM EST).

At this event, you will learn why the best path to the cloud is a comprehensive approach. The Cisco Domain Ten is a framework built by industry experts that establishes the ten most important domains of the data center. These areas are considered, prioritized, and mapped out so the transformation of your data center is smooth and simple.

In addition, we will provide common use cases and information regarding new approaches to modernization, and how they can affect data center transformation plans. We will wrap up with a Q&A session with Cisco experts.

If you are one of the many who recognize the benefits of the cloud and are ready to take action, this webinar will help you begin your journey. Learn more by clicking here, or register online now!

 



Authors

Adrian den Hartog

Senior Marketing Manager

Field Marketing US Commercial