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Editor’s Note: In this second installment of the blog series on more responsive security, we take a closer look at the circular problems associated with four common security principles in managing “weak link” risks in Information Technology organizations.

Before discussing what constitutes this responsive approach to security, let us first look at a few of the fundamental principles of information security to understand the unique challenges organizations face today in managing security risks.

Continue reading “A Circular Problem in Current Information Security Principles”



Authors

Meng-Chow Kang, PhD, CISSP, CISA

Director and CISO

APJC region, Cisco Systems, Inc

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Cisco Unified Computing System™  is unique among vendors with its comprehensive set of solutions for SAP and SAP HANA workloads—solutions that include servers with two to eight processors. Cisco Cisco UCS® C220 M4 Rack Server delivered 16,025 users and a SAPS score of 87,680: the best two-processor, two-tier result running Microsoft Windows 2012 Datacenter Edition.

Some of the key highlights of this result are:

  • Best Two-Socket Server SAP SD Benchmark Result: The Cisco UCS C240 M4 running Microsoft Windows Server 2012 delivered the best two-tier SAP SD Benchmark result with SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012. The solution supported 16,025 SAP SD Benchmark users while maintaining a consistent application response time of less than one second
  • Scale to meet demand: Cisco UCS C240 M4 Rack Server configured with the Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v3 family can support up to 16,025 concurrent SAP SD Benchmark users in a Microsoft Windows Server 2012 and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 environment.
  • Optimize application throughput: High-performance rack servers, blade servers, and network fabrics enable Cisco UCS to handle many SAP application tasks, with results showing that the system can process 1,753,670 order line items per hour or 5,261,000 dialog steps per hour.
  • Cisco Consistently Improves Two-Processor, Two- Tier SAP SD Benchmark Performance: As illustrated in the graph below, these results show almost a 60 percent improvement over performance delivered by the last generation of Intel Xeon processor E5 product family CPUs.

 

SAP SD Comparison
The SAP SD Benchmark is designed to stress the computing infrastructure and determine whether a consistent response can be delivered as more users consume system resources. Cisco tested a Cisco UCS C240 M4 server equipped with two 2.30-GHz, 18-core Intel Xeon processor E5-2699 v3 CPUs, 256 GB of main memory, and a Cisco UCS Virtual Interface Card (VIC) 1225. The server ran both the SAP software and the 64-bit Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition in a bare-metal configuration. Check out the Performance Brief and the detailed official benchmark disclosure report for additional information on the benchmark configuration.

Let’s see, what does this latest result mean for our customers?

  • This result proves that Cisco UCS servers make an excellent foundation for any standards-based infrastructure solution.
  • Cisco UCS dramatically reduces the number of physical components needed to support demanding SAP landscape applications, enabling IT departments to make effective use of limited space, power, and cooling resources.
  • By deploying SAP on Cisco UCS, IT departments can support more users and accelerate response times. Many users can be supported—up to 16,025 in the benchmark configuration—with little hardware
  • IT departments can choose from a broad range of Cisco UCS blade and rack server models to scale deployments further by using larger servers or by adding servers to create scale-out deployments with small footprints.

It is interesting to note that although all vendors have access to same Intel processors, only Cisco UCS unleashes their power to deliver high performance to applications through the power of unification. The unique, fabric-centric architecture of Cisco UCS integrates the Intel Xeon processors into a system with a better balance of resources that brings processor power to life. For additional information on Cisco UCS and Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure solutions please visit Cisco Unified Computing & Servers web page.

Disclosure

The statement of comparison is based on highest-performing system using two Intel Xeon processors and running SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0 on Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition in a two-tier configuration. Results referenced are available from the SAP website at: http://global.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx and are current as of December 1, 2014.



Authors

Girish Kulkarni

Senior Marketing Manager

Data Center & Virtualization Marketing

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Guest post from Dan Swart

Dan Swart is a Senior Manager in Cisco Technical Services Product Management, leading the team responsible for Enterprise and Data Center Solution Support services. Along with that, Dan has been heavily involved in Data Center Alliance programs and Converged Infrastructures. Dan has Batchelor of Science Degrees in Zoology and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.
Dan Swart is a Senior Manager in Cisco Technical Services Product Management, leading the team responsible for Enterprise and Data Center Solution Support services. Along with that, Dan has been heavily involved in Data Center Alliance programs and Converged Infrastructures. Dan has Bachelor of Science Degrees in Zoology and Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University.

We want what we want when we want it. Never truer than today when we’ve got a global marketplace of technology vendors vying to deliver on now practically required solutions like enterprise cloud.

While it’s really impossible today to deploy an enterprise cloud using products created by a single vendor, would we want it any other way?  Yes, there are major component manufacturers that can sell most of the products needed to build an enterprise cloud, but the restrictions inherent in those offers, and the need for margin stacking to single source all needed hardware and software from a component manufacturer may limit the attractiveness of those options.

Most of the customers we work with want to build their enterprise cloud using products that are “best for my needs” rather than products that are what a single manufacturer offers.  Along with that, enterprise license agreements, volume purchase agreements and other factors make it difficult to purchase a cloud infrastructure from a single source.   For those reasons and others, most enterprise cloud deployments are inherently multivendor.

So great, you get exactly what you want and need. What could go wrong? Famous last words. Continue reading “Complexity AND Control in the Cloud”



Authors

Krishna Parab

Product Marketing Lead - Cloud

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There’s a lot at stake—$19 trillion in fact—as companies transform into digital businesses to capture value from the Internet of Everything (IoE). More than 42 percent of this value, or $8 trillion, will come from one of IoE’s chief enablers, the Internet of Things (IoT). While IoE is the networked connection of people, process, data, and things, IoT is the intelligent connectivity of physical devices that is driving massive gains in efficiency, business growth, and quality of life. So why worry about IoT when we have IoE? Simple, IoT often represents the quickest path to IoE and the $19 trillion that’s there for the taking.

Cisco Consulting Services recently conducted a blind global survey to Continue reading “IoT: Moving from Connecting Devices to Capturing Insights”



Authors

Joseph M. Bradley

Global Vice President

Digital & IoT Advanced Services

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It’s been two weeks since the launch of Project Squared and the Cisco Collaboration Cloud. We’ve received fantastic feedback and great uptake. And we’re really happy that so many people are using Project Squared – and liking the experience.

I’d like to take you on a little behind-the-scenes tour and shed some light on the Cisco Collaboration Cloud and how it works. Here is a 10,000 foot view of the architecture:

Jdrosen blog image 12_15_14

The core architecture is built on OpenStack. We use it for compute, networking, and storage services. OpenStack supports both the functional components of the architecture as well as the operational services, such as: logging, metrics, events, health and even VPN services (for inter-DC messaging and replication). Continue reading “Under the Hood: Cisco Collaboration Cloud”



Authors

Jonathan Rosenberg

Cisco Fellow and Vice President

CTO for Cisco's Collaboration Business

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This post was authored by Alex Chiu and Shaun Hurley.

Last month, Microsoft released a security bulletin to patch CVE-2014-6332, a vulnerability within Windows Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) that could result in remote code execution if a user views a maliciously crafted web page with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Since then, there have been several documented examples of attackers leveraging this vulnerability and attempting to compromise users. On November 26th, Talos began observing and blocking an attack disguised as a hidden iframe on a compromised domain to leverage this vulnerability and compromise Internet Explorer users.

Continue reading “Ancient Mac Site Harbors Botnet that Exploits IE Vulnerability”



Authors

Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

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Ten large oil refineries produce about 10 terabytes of data each day, which equates to the entire printed collection of the U.S. Library of Congress.

One modernized city the size of Singapore can generate about 2.5 petabytes of data every day, which translates to all U.S. academic research libraries combined.

And with more than 14 billion, data-transmitting devices connected to the Internet today, growing to 50 billion by 2020, it is little wonder that most of us are overwhelmed by this mind-boggling explosion of data.

Wim 1

Turning this flood of raw data into useful information and even wisdom for better business decisions and quality of life experiences is what the Internet of Everything (IoE) is all about. This is a daunting task. According to IDC Research, just .5% of all data is used or analyzed, and online data volumes are doubling every two years from a combination of mobile devices, videos, sensors, M2M, social media, applications and much more.

Connected Analytics Portfolio

Last Thursday, however, Cisco unveiled our Connected Analytics portfolio for the Internet of Everything, a unique approach that includes software packages to bring analytics to the data, regardless of its location or whether it is in motion or at rest. This new generation of analytics tools for IoE can convert more and more data into valuable intelligence — from the inter cloud, to the data center to the network’s edge.

Continue reading “Connected Analytics: Capturing the Value of the Internet of Everything”



Authors

Wim Elfrink

Executive Vice President, Industry Solutions & Chief

Globalisation Officer

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Forward-thinking faculty members and staff at San Jose State University are using Internet of Everything technologies in innovative ways to transform education:

Project Assistant Quyen Grant is using Cisco collaboration technologies to expand learning across international borders, working with students and universities in Vietnam through the Social Work Education Enhancement Program (SWEEP); Advertising Professor John Delacruz is using Cisco TelePresence for his students to deliver final presentations to potential advertising clients who may be in remote locations. Julia Curry-Rodriguez, associate professor of Mexican American Studies, uses Cisco Lecture Capture to help non-native English speaking students improve their language skills.

These are just a few of the examples we learned about on December 10, 2014 at San Jose State University as they hosted global media, analysts, social media influencers, and Cisco for a series of roundtables that addressed how the Internet of Everything is impacting industries including education and the public and private sectors. Continue reading “Transforming Education with the Internet of Everything at San Jose State”



Authors

Renee Patton

Former Global Director of Education and Healthcare

Global Industry Solutions Group

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The workplace is forever evolving.

With the widespread use of collaboration technology and the addition of Gen Y and Gen X employees, it’s knowledge workers who are driving changes in the workplace.

The emerging mantra is: Work is something you do, it is no longer someplace you go. (And if you do go to a traditional office, culture is a determining factor keeping employees happy and engaged!)

As such the definition of a workday is more flexible than ever before and employees are seeking work/life integration instead of work/life balance.

As these dynamics shift and the proliferations of new technology becomes more pervasive, creating a successful environment for the future of work will depend on a strong relationship between IT and HR at the executive level.

This creates an opportunity for HR and IT leaders along with the CIO to evolve from technology administrators to strategic business partners.

Recently, I had the chance to participate in a new Future of IT podcast with SAP’s Brigette McInnis-Day to discuss how IT and HR leaders could work together in this Future of Work landscape.

Continue reading “The Future of Work: The Partnership Between HR and IT”



Authors

Lance Perry

Vice President

Customer Strategy & Success