Year: 2014

February 28, 2014 Leave a Comment
Avatar

Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – February 28, 2014

Partner-Weekly-Rewind-v2Each week, we’ll highlight the most important Cisco partner news and stories, as well as point you to important, Cisco-related partner content you may have missed along the way. Here’s what you might have missed this week:

Kickoff for Partner Summit 2014

This year’s Cisco Partner Summit starts in just a few short weeks in Las Vegas. This past week brought our first Partner Summit 2014 blog post, which included some great information for those of you that will attend this year, and for those who will be attending via Virtual Partner Summit (VPS).

Check out my blog post to get information on:

  • Registering for VPS
  • Using our hashtag (#ciscops14) for this year’s event
  • A tutorial on social media listening and other information to keep in your back pocket for March 24

We will see you there! Continue reading “Cisco Partner Weekly Rewind – February 28, 2014”



Authors

Avatar

David Durham

Content Strategist

Channels

4 Comments
Avatar

No matter how harsh is your work environment, Cisco has you covered

Cisco_IndustrialEthernetSwitches_2 27 14“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” – Popular US Postal Service motto

Many of my US colleagues have told me that they grew up hearing the phrase above and thinking how reliable their mail service is, even under the harshest conditions, they always got their mail. We in Cisco think that your network should be as reliable and resilient, and work under all conditions, particularly now when the Internet of Things (IoT) requires a level of resiliency at a scale never imagined before, and under conditions beyond what the traditional datacenter or wiring closet can offer.

These days, one of the challenges that the Internet of Things has to deal with is that it “…is already connecting the physical world today, but the real world, unlike the digital world, is much more uncertain and variable. We have to connect objects in unpredictable environments, often subject to Mother Nature or just the movement of our earth and its inhabitants…”

In fact Cisco defines the Internet of Things as “the intelligent connectivity of physical devices driving massive gains in efficiency, business growth and quality of life.”

In order to establish intelligent connectivity to physical devices, networking equipment have to be able to coexist in the same environmental in which the physical device are operating.

Very often, these physical devices are operating in harsh environments both from a temperature prospective (like in a smelting furnace or in a mining field located in Siberia), from a dustiness prospective (like in a cement production plant), from a vibrations prospective (like on a train or on a mining truck) etc.

To properly operate in these environments networking devices have to be specifically designed with highly ruggedized casing to protect the device’s internal components, and with specific connectors to avoid any possible water penetration or to get unplugged because of hard vibrations.

We’re excited to announce today an extension of our Industrial Ethernet portfolio adding a new series of IE2000 IP67 switches! Continue reading “No matter how harsh is your work environment, Cisco has you covered”



Authors

Avatar

Massimo Cambiaghi

Senior Marketing Manager

Cisco Internet of Things Products and Solutions Marketing

Leave a Comment
Avatar

Introducing Cisco Cognitive Threat Analytics

“There is no silver bullet.”  That’s one of our favorite sayings at Cisco Security. We use it to convey the point that malware prevention is not 100%. As new attack vectors emerge and the threat landscape evolves, some malware will get through – regardless of which security vendor you choose.

In fact, our recently released 2014 Annual Security Report found that “100 percent of business networks analyzed by Cisco have traffic going to websites that host malware.” Basically, everyone will be compromised to one degree or another.

There are two factors at play. First, as modern networks have expanded and extend beyond the traditional perimeter to include endpoints, mobile devices, virtual desktops, data centers, and the cloud, new attack vectors have emerged. Attackers don’t discriminate and will take advantage of any gap in protection to accomplish their mission.

Second, attackers are focused on understanding security technologies, how they work, where they are deployed, and how to exploit their weaknesses. For example, they outsmart point-in-time defenses – like sandbox technologies that only scan files once – by creating targeted, context-aware malware that can modify its behavior to evade detection and infiltrate the extended network where it is difficult to locate, let alone eradicate.

So what can you do about it? Well, at Cisco we advocate for continuous protection across the entire attack continuum – before, during, and after an attack. We believe security strategies that focus solely on perimeter-based defenses and preventive techniques will only leave attackers free to act as they please, once inside your network.
Continue reading “Introducing Cisco Cognitive Threat Analytics”



Authors

Avatar

Andrew Haire

Product Marketing Manager

Content Security

February 27, 2014 5 Comments
Avatar

Join the Challenge: Secure the Internet of Things

We’re connecting more of our world every day through smart, IP-enabled devices ranging from home appliances, healthcare devices, and industrial equipment. These new connected devices are offering new ways to share information and are changing the way we live. This technology transformation is what we call the Internet of Things (IoT) – and it is evolving daily.

Yet, as our connected lives grow and become richer, the need for a new security model becomes even more critical. It requires that we work together as a community to find innovative solutions to make sure that the IoT securely fulfills its potential and preserves the convenience that it represents.

With this in mind, Cisco is launching the Internet of Things Security Grand Challenge. We’re inviting you — the global security community — to propose practical security solutions across the markets being impacted daily by the IoT.

Continue reading “Join the Challenge: Secure the Internet of Things”



Authors

Avatar

Chris Young

Leave a Comment
Avatar

Cisco CMX Analytics & Insights @ #MWC14

mwc3_1Today MWC 2014 came to a close in Barcelona having been another resoundingly successful event.

Mobile operators and Service Providers have displayed ever increasing interest in Monitization of their infrastructure especially via WiFi and Cisco’s CMX solution.

During the week I had many conversations with SP’s from across the world while very different geographies and facing different challenges, a common theme among the meetings was how can Cisco help us find ways to generate new revenue streams and new monetization models.

At MWC we showed various demos that show how this can be achieved and provide many interesting ideas to the customers to help them think about their own businesses and how they may be successfully applied.

One demo was how various components of Cisco’s SP Architecture can improve services and provide montitization opportunities to a fictitious hotel resort chain with wired and wireless small cells, SON &  Analytics all working together. Continue reading “Cisco CMX Analytics & Insights @ #MWC14”



Authors

Avatar

Brendan O'Brien

Director Global Product Marketing

Connected Mobile Experiences

Leave a Comment
Avatar

The New Spectrum Caucus: Bringing Focus to an Unseen, Indispensable Tool

Most Americans don’t know it, but radio spectrum has become an indispensable tool in our daily lives.  Spectrum is the invisible link between our smart phones, tablets, laptops, fitbits, and other mobile devices to the Internet.  It carries the video, voice, text and rich media that has transformed the world around us.

Recognizing this reality, Representatives Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY) have formed a new Spectrum Caucus to focus attention in Congress and around the country about the vital need for more spectrum for broadband.  No doubt about it, radio spectrum is a hot topic on Capitol Hill. Here’s why:

  • The recently released Cisco Mobile Visual Networking Index forecasts  that by 2018, consumers will be sending 2.7 exobytes/month over cellular networks, nearly eight times the data sent over US mobile networks in 2013. That type of traffic growth has a serious impact on networks and the potential for network congestion – unless more spectrum can be found.
  • Just as consumers are loading the licensed airwaves with video and other apps, they are also loading up Wi-Fi networks.  Demand for Wi-Fi networks is rising both for use in the home and enterprise, and to offload mobile traffic. By 2018, consumers, using  devices equipped with both Wi-Fi and mobile capability, will offload 64% of their data  to Wi-Fi.  Wi-Fi is  an essential access technology, and also requires radio spectrum.
  • Why is this all important?  A study for GSM by Deloitte and using Cisco demand forecasts  found that a doubling of mobile data traffic leads to an increase in GDP per capita of 0.5%.   Creating wireless connectivity that enables wireless data usage grows economies.  That’s huge.
  • For Wi-Fi, a Cisco-sponsored study by Plum Consulting  showed that just the value of increasing Wi-Fi spectrum for mobile offloading, along the benefit of de-congesting dense Wi-Fi environments, would can be valued in the billions.

By no means does this represent the universe of spectrum issues.  Growth in Machine to Machine uses and the Internet of Everything represent an emerging category of spectrum uses.  The recently released Department of Defense Spectrum Strategy  demonstrates that our Defense spectrum needs are growing and changing also.

Every member of Congress uses radio spectrum every day, whenever they reach for a smartphone or use Wi-Fi.  As do all their constituents.  Everyone needs to think about how we can be better stewards of our radio spectrum.  So let me thank Representatives Matsui and Guthrie for forming this new Caucus and bringing focus to this critical matter.



Authors

Avatar

Mary Brown

Cisco

1 Comment
Avatar

Cisco and the Evolution of the Service Provider Network

On February 18, Cisco announced the evolution of service provider (SP) networks. It is probably a good idea to step back, just a little, and explain how Cisco sees the challenges ahead and how we intend to continue to provide our mobile service provider customers with the strongest portfolio of solutions in the industry. That’s the reason I am writing this blog post. In it, I hope to share with you some of our learnings from the past year and also, explain a little bit about the rationale for our announcement.

We are virtualizing our entire SP portfolio. The year 2013 is one where the concept of “Network Function Virtualization” (NfV) caught the industry by storm. In NfV, virtualized network functions are software appliances executing on virtual machines delivered in a telco cloud environment. In a nutshell, NfV is attractive to our customers because it allows them to clearly delineate the respective values of software, hardware and professional services for total solution integration. Practices based on data center techniques promise to reduce the cost of operating the network and simplify work processes through the agility we are seeing today in the cloud environment. And none of this evolution will compromise the ability of service providers to deploy multi-vendor solutions though it is fair to state, procurement practices will need to re-align to this brave new world. For example, rather than procure integrated network functions to be assembled into a network, service providers may have to separate out  layers Continue reading “Cisco and the Evolution of the Service Provider Network”



Authors

Avatar

Scott Yow

Vice President

Software and Applications Group

Leave a Comment
Avatar

How a Snowboarding ‘Wipeout’ Can Guide You On SDN Deployment

 

As I was thinking about how best to advise you on how to “experiment” with SDN technologies, and more specifically why you should run a formal pilot to evaluate SDN technology options (a topic I covered in my previous blog), I was reminded of this “wipeout” picture I took last year at a “freeride” competition – the “Coe Cup”  – at my local ski mountain, Glencoe Moutain Resort, here in the UK.   Let me tell you why!

Why you may want to "pilot" new technology adoption!
Why you may want to “pilot” new technology adoption!


Authors

Avatar

Stephen Speirs

SP Product Management

Cisco Customer Experience (CX)

3 Comments
Avatar

Managing Your Business Intelligence: Microsoft SQL Server on Integrated Infrastructures

1000x150Banner

 

 

 

Business intelligence begets better, more informed decision making—and, ultimately, success. But how do you get effective business intelligence? It starts with your tools and infrastructure…

With the proliferation of database and virtualization sprawl and the growing requirement for business insight that has increased I/O performance demand and complexity in the datacenter, enterprises are asking for a simplified approach. Cisco UCS offers industry-leading performance along with the flexible infrastructure you need to deploy, manage, move to the cloud and scale your bare metal or virtual SQL Server workloads

On March 18, join Industry thought leaders from Cisco, Microsoft, NetApp, EMC, and DesignMind to explore how Microsoft SQL Server and integrated infrastructures such as FlexPod and VSPEX enable you to more effectively turn data into a valuable strategic asset for business decision makers.

Make plans today to join us and learn how these infrastructures can help you:

  • Make sure optimal access to mission-critical data is available
  • Enable greater business agility
  • Increase cost-efficiency and lower TCO for business intelligence initiatives

Continue reading “Managing Your Business Intelligence: Microsoft SQL Server on Integrated Infrastructures”



Authors

Avatar

Rex Backman

Senior Marketing Manager, Big Data Solutions

Data Center and Cloud