Year: 2015

June 23, 2015 1 Comment
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Cisco Live: We Are Ready. Are You Ready, Service Provider?

Igor-DayenGuest Blog by Igor Dayen, SP Product and Solutions Marketing

June 7, 2015 was the day when Cisco Live was officially kicked off in San Diego. 25,000 attendees came together to open the next chapter in Cisco’s history. The convention center and surrounding area was buzzing with excitement, with conversations including and focused on security, service provider, app development and becoming digital, to name a few. An additional 80,000 joined Cisco Live online throughout the week.

Chuck & John

John Chambers, Cisco CEO, emotionally delivered his 20th and final Cisco Live Welcome Keynote address where he shared Cisco’s vision one final time with our customers. The keynote featured a Continue reading “Cisco Live: We Are Ready. Are You Ready, Service Provider?”

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Greg Smith

Sr. Manager, Marketing

Cisco Solutions Marketing

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How Do You Protect Your Business If Your Cloud Service Provider Fails?

By the end of this year, Gartner predicts 1 of 4 cloud service providers (CSPs) will no longer be in business due to consolidation or lack of funding. Based on the explosive growth of cloud use, you are likely using SaaS to support business critical functions and IaaS compute or storage services from the cloud. What happens if that SaaS or IaaS cloud vendor isn’t there tomorrow?

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Continue reading “How Do You Protect Your Business If Your Cloud Service Provider Fails?”

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Robert Dimicco

Senior Director

Advanced Services

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#CiscoChampion Radio S2|Ep 24. CCIE Service Provider Exam Updates

CiscoChampion200PXbadge#CiscoChampion Radio is a podcast series by Cisco Champions as technologists. Today we’ll be talking about CCIE Service Provider Updates with Cisco Technical Leader Lizabete Cacic.

Listen to the Podcast.

Learn about the Cisco Champions Program HERE.
See a list of all #CiscoChampion Radio podcasts HERE.
Ask about the next round of Cisco Champions nominations. EMAIL US.

Cisco SME
Lizabete Cacic, Cisco Technical Leader

Cisco Champion Guest Host
Ryan Booth @that1guy_15, Networking Engineer

Moderator
Rachel Bakker (@rbakkker) Continue reading “#CiscoChampion Radio S2|Ep 24. CCIE Service Provider Exam Updates”

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Rachel Bakker

Social Media Advocacy Manager

Digital and Social

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Should I Use Cisco Spark in my Contact Center?

It has been more than a year since I started using Cisco Spark. And it has been a year of learning and changing how I work with my team…and I’m still learning. My focus and passion at Cisco is customer-care technology. I’m always thinking about how to apply new collaboration technologies to customer interaction:

  • Do new messaging applications like Cisco Spark belong in the contact center?
  • Should businesses be using them to communicate with customers?

On the first question: Absolutely.

Paul Stockford of Saddletree Research and I discussed this recently in, “Hip to Be Squared,” following the announcement of Cisco Spark.

Team collaboration is the fuel of a great contact center operation. Contact centers have always been and always will be about people.  (Note: I’m a huge proponent of self-service as the first/best option for customer care. But as long as there are people, there will be a need for assisted-service contact centers).

Contact center management aims to maximize the productivity of customer care teams. And I confidently say from personal experience that Spark is a great team productivity tool. Continue reading “Should I Use Cisco Spark in my Contact Center?”

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Tod Famous

Senior Director, Product Management

Cisco Customer Contact Business Unit

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Cybersecurity 101: Assessing the Threat & Mitigating Cyber Risks in Higher Education

Cybersecurity threats in the higher education community continue to rise at an alarming rate. Poor security strategies and the need for open learning environments make securing these institutions an even harder problem to solve. It is no longer a matter of whether or not you will be hacked, rather when. Higher education leaders are recognizing the need for a cybersecurity strategy that encompasses responsibility across the institution, from the boardroom to the classroom.

Join The Chertoff Group and Cisco on June 24th with a panel of higher education security experts to learn about:

  • The current higher education threat landscape
  • Trends and observations in higher education cyber threats
  • Methodologies on threat assessment
  • How to identify your unique areas of vulnerability
  • Best practices for enterprise risk management

We have convened an esteemed panel of subject matter experts to discuss the cyber risk confronting higher education today, including:

  • Pat Hogan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, University of VA
  • Brian J. Tillett,  Principal and Director,  Cisco Cybersecurity Practice
  • Michael A. Wertheimer,  Former Director of Research, National Security Agency

Please be sure to attend the webcast where the panel will share their experiences and insights as well as answer questions. Register now and join us on June 24th to understand the current threat landscape your institution is facing and how to build a comprehensive security strategy to mitigate your risk.

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Renee Patton

No Longer at Cisco

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Connected Machines Take Manufacturing to the Next Level of IoT

We’ve all seen how connected products can transform industries in areas like home energy management and personal health, and manufacturing is no exception. When products communicate back to their original makers, the manufacturers can detect production flaws well before customers would need to raise warranty claims. Further, product usage data can become the core of value delivered to the customer. Now that we have Fitbit and Jawbone UP, would you ever consider buying a traditional pedometer whose only method of telling you steps is on an LCD display?  These ideas can be applied to machines on the factory floor too.

In a previous blog post on the Connected Factory, I shared how Cisco’s validated designs combine best practices from operational technology (OT) and IT into robust and secure networks. I also addressed how wireless connectivity can enable a more effective workforce and how digital transformation with real-time production analytics improves quality. Continue reading “Connected Machines Take Manufacturing to the Next Level of IoT”

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Tony Shakib

No Longer with Cisco

June 22, 2015 Leave a Comment
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What happened after the Innovation Grand Challenge Awards?

At Cisco, we have invested significant time, money and resources into igniting innovation around the Internet of Everything (IoE) both inside and outside the company.

Since fostering an innovation ecosystem is so critical to the success of IoE, last year we launched the global Innovation Grand Challenge. The risk-reward ratio was high, but with a lot of hard work – at Cisco and with partners — the Challenge was a resounding success by all accounts: more than 1,000 entries from 171 countries.

The winners were announced at the IoT World Forum in Chicago last October, and they received not only prize money, resources and mentorships – but also valuable publicity. Driven by the success of the initial Challenge, the IoTWF Steering Committee recently decided to launch a second Innovation Grand Challenge, and this year’s winners will be announced in December at the World Forum in Dubai. Continue reading “What happened after the Innovation Grand Challenge Awards?”

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Maciej Kranz

Vice President and General Manager

Corporate Strategic Innovation Group

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Campus Safety National Forum – Leveraging Technology to Increase Campus Safety

This week, Cisco is sponsoring the Campus Safety National Forum in Washington, DC. This two-day conference is the premier National Forum for helping security and law enforcement executives, healthcare and education administrators and other education stakeholders from across the country learn how to better safeguard the lives and property on their campuses.

At Cisco, we feel that events such as the Campus Safety National Forum provide a great platform for leaders to share best practices and learn from one another. We believe that technology can help improve campus safety and are committed to working with our partners and customers to demonstrate its value for higher education institutions.

For example, Cisco recently worked with Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) to implement video and digital signage solutions to increase campus safety communications. While OLLU was revamping their IT capabilities during a renovation, campus police saw their opportunity to improve campus safety through video notification and security alerts. Cisco helped them upgrade their video capabilities from analog video to IP video to improve surveillance. They also helped OLLU implement digital signage for on-campus communications throughout the main building, the cafeteria and residence halls, which can display security notifications all across the campus.

Most recently, OLLU has incorporated both video capabilities and digital signage into interactive kiosks located around campus. These kiosks provide a variety of important information, including campus maps and the option to connect with an OLLU representative for further assistance, which helps students, faculty and visitors stay connected and safe across campus. The solutions deployed at OLLU are just a few examples of the types of security initiatives Cisco can help provide campuses.

Whether or not you’ll be attending the Campus Safety National Forum or not, healthcare and education administrations and leaders across the county should look into how technology solutions can help them prepare for emergency situations and prevent crises on their campuses. Check out these resources for more information on how Cisco can help protect your students, faculty and facilities at both K-12 schools and high-education campuses.

 

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Renee Patton

No Longer at Cisco

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Remembering the small things: IT Security

There are many tasks and responsibilities of the (lone) IT sysadmin, they are sometimes varied, sometimes monotonous.  We know what they are without thinking about them, as if they are unwritten commandments, specific to the IT world.

Security has featured greatly in the world news over the past few years, and even more so within the IT circles. We have the aspects of social responsibility, who is watching the watchers, how should they be held to account (NSA, GCHQ). We have the more particular stories, such as Heartbleed, and the “simplicity” of gaining information from a system.

Sitting down and reading about the recently highlighted issue surrounding a fake Trojan copy of the popular terminal tool, PuTTY, I realized that over all, we spend a great deal thinking about security within IT systems. But sometimes we don’t think about security in the actions we take, or we forget to think about them. Continue reading “Remembering the small things: IT Security”

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Dean Lewis

Infrastructure Engineer