In many parts of the world, being able to download information on a smartphone, tablet or laptop in a few seconds is the norm. In Silicon Valley, wireless high-speed Internet connections are more ubiquitous than Starbucks.
Broadband has changed the way we work, shop, watch movies and communicate with loved ones, allowing us to access more robust types of content, services and applications. Yet if we look beyond our own personal use, we can see that broadband Internet access is not merely a convenience: it is a powerful force for social change.
In education, broadband technology can have a huge impact. Educators face a number of challenges, including teacher shortages, limited access in rural areas and gender disparity. For example, the world would need 3.3 million primary teachers and 5.1 million lower secondary teachers in classrooms by 2030 to provide all children with basic education, according to UNESCO’s 2013-2014 Education For All Global Monitoring Report.
In days where smartphone and staying connected have become living necessities, we forget that there are natural resources that are equally important. In times where television, microwave, refrigeration, network connectivity have all become baseline requirement for living, we assume there will be endless supply of natural resources.
Visit us at Cisco Live 2015
We are observing unprecedented droughts running throughout the world while some places are facing floods never seen before. We are waking up to the awareness that we need to take care of earth and leave it better for our children and the upcoming generations. Ask a kid growing up in India, my dad used to mention that fuel might not last another 40 years. Forty years hence we have seen a lot of changes and there is no clear alternative to fossil fuel and our dependence is only increasing.
Fossil fuel is a powerful economic resource that countries are frantically looking for new resources in unexplored areas of the world. It undoubtedly creates economic strength, jobs and ability to make difference in citizen’s lives. The consumption of fuel is steadily increasing with increasing population. Third world countries are bringing in a lot of additional vehicles on the road and in the process also try to move its economy upward.
As the need, dependency of fuel increases with the threat of depleting natural resources, it becomes imperative to improve efficiencies wherever and whenever possible. It should start from exploring all the way to the end users consuming the natural resource. To this effect, productivity and reduced down time directly means competitive edge and increased profitability which is fundamental concern across the board to enterprises.
To enable improved productivity in a process centric environment one looks for tools to enable this. Collaborative Operations Solution from Cisco is one such tool that helps with increased productivity. All one needs to do is see the demo and they can immediately see the value such tools can bring to their process and enable faster decision and reduce flat times.
Come see a demonstration at Cisco Live in the World of Solutions in the Process Industries section. You’ll see the Collaborative Operations Solution in action, and see how partners such as Librestream add value to the solution. In the case of Librestream you’ll see how Mobile collaboration becomes a reality, and how Librestream and Cisco are working together to provide our customers with real business value and positive business outcomes.
CiscoLive! is next week. With more than 23,000 people expected to attend, there’s no event more popular with IT professionals who pride themselves on their networking expertise. As I prepare to travel to San Diego for the occasion, I wanted to share my perspective on how IT organizations can better operate and protect the networks that are the digital backbones of their companies.
Chances are you’re already realizing numerous benefits using either Cisco SMARTnet or Smart Net Total Care (SNTC) Services. We know, because we regularly poll Cisco enterprise customers on how they’re succeeding with each service. We also know that most of us like to have our cake and eat it, too. That’s one reason why we have decided to combine these two services into one powerful and flexible service under the Smart Net Total Care name.
The move to Smart Net Total Care creates more flexibility and more value for you when it comes to supporting your company’s network. “Flexibility” means you can choose to only to use the basic features of the combined solution or take full advantage of SNTC’s extended feature set. Put simply, you can choose only the basic support capabilities traditionally found in SMARTnet or reach higher to access the added value of proactive smart service features in Smart Net Total Care to optimize the full lifecycle of all your Cisco equipment. You can also choose a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) deployment or, if you want a fast boost up the learning curve, we will make available assisted deployment options from Cisco. Flexibility means you choose the approach that is best for you. Continue reading “10 Smart New Ways to Keep Your Network Up and Running: A Preview of What to See at Cisco Live”
Have the chance to meet “Sparky Jeff” LIVE and in person!
Our booth staff is the most collaborative and our booth has the fewest pillars! (Yes, someone counted!)
We’ll help you get Spark on your phone faster than you can say Chuck Robbins.
Understand the experience from the room, desk, mobile and customer perspective and meet more than 15 of our collaboration partners. Demos focus on Room Experience, Mobile Experience, Desk Experience, and Customer Experience. You can also visit the Endpoint Gallery, Tech Zone, and Collaboration Backstage.
On Tuesday, June 9, be sure to catch theater presentations to learn how customers are achieving measurable business outcomes in case studies.
9:00 – 10:00 a.m. Cisco Mobile Collaboration Solutions
1:00 – 2:00 p.m. Providing a Total Customer Experience
4:00 – 5:00 p.m. How American Century Investments Improved Service without Increasing Contact Center Staff
See you in San Diego! Follow me in the Twittersphere for the latest during the week: @ciscokima
Special thanks to Alexis Doherty, Barnaby Meadows, Jillian Zimmerman, Ross Daniels, Fran Blackburn, Chris Wiborg, Angela Murphy, Kirk McNeil, Jeff Marusak, Lauren Colson, Marcus Gallo, Patty Medberry.
Cisco Live US 2015, Cisco’s premier education and training destination for IT professionals worldwide, kicks off next week at San Diego. More than 25000 customers and partners converge to network and share their experiences, and potentially meet new peers onsite. This year is particularly special as John Chambers introduces new Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins on stage to co-host the keynote.
Like you, I am eagerly awaiting the keynote set for Monday June 8, 3 PM local time. John and Chuck will discuss emerging technology and business trends and their implications for Cisco, its customers, and its solutions. .
There are several other keynotes in addition, such as Industry keynote by Cisco Exec Karen walker, Guest keynote by Mike Rowe, Luminary keynote by Dr. Peter Diamandis, so prepare your agenda in advance to get a broad exposure.
For the remainder of this blog I will focus on Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and the ACI highlights. The logical place to start is with Soni Jiandani’s Innovation Talk on topic “Fast Track to Fast IT: Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure” scheduled for June 10, 9 AM. Soni hosts Symantec CIO Sheila Jordan and both discuss how ACI helps deliver a simple, secure and smart solution that delivers on the promise of Fast IT. Soni will also have new updates about the ACI ecosystem but we cannot give away the surprise here – you will have to attend her session to find out. Soni’s session always sets the tone for the rest of the ACI presence at the show.
Let me now segue into ACI Breakout sessions. ACI breakouts feature prominently among a large collection of 600 plus breakout sessions this year with several experts addressing hot topics in Operations, deployment, and eco-system. I will recommend a few breakouts that I consider relevant to current Data Center trends and ACI deployments. First and foremost, let me talk about Cisco Exec Shashi Kiran’s breakout session on Data Center and Cloud Strategy, slated for June 10, 10 AM. Shashi will provide excerpts of how with acceleration of digital business, CIOs and LOB owners map their DC and cloud strategy to deliver better business outcomes. Shashi is a phenomenal speaker and will cover such exciting topics as SDN, Big Data, IOE and how these come together to create a compelling architectural play. So, mark this as a must-attend session.
Many customers have expressed their interest in hearing how ACI helps operationally from application provisioning and trouble-shooting standpoint. Harry Petty, Director of Marketing, Cisco systems brings you exactly that perspective in his breakout session. Harry will give a detailed view of simplifying Day-0,1,2 operations in Application centric Data centers, and in particular focuses on how Cisco ACI addresses the challenges of service quality, secure and reliable application delivery, agility and simplified operations of cloud infrastructure. Harry’s session also covers policy based automation of tenant on-boarding, application containers, self-service catalogs, application monitoring and trouble-shooting among other things. If you are unable to attend the breakout, Harry also is hosting a panel session on building Data Centers with ACI on June 9, featuring Cisco Subject matter experts Chad, Cesar and Eric and discuss their ACI deployment experiences across industry segments. I also would recommend Craig Huitema’s breakout that brings how businesses can be sped up simplifying Data Center with ACI and Nexus. Craig will discuss the Nexus portfolio and clarify how ACI simplifies these elements resulting in a faster, more flexible and responsive IT that better aligns with the business needs of today’s rapidly shifting environment.
Most of you by now will be raring to make a beeline to the world of solutions as it is where exhibitors and subject matter experts from various partners and customers of cisco throng to gather insights on what’s new and exciting.
This year, we are showcasing a big collection of solution demos spanning multiple architectures including Data Center, IOE, Security etc. It will take me several blogs to cover them all, so I will stick to ACI my focus area. Solutions from more than 250 cisco partners are on display in the world of solutions. Here’s your opportunity to explore the broader Cisco Partner eco-system, find answers to your specific networking challenges, and hear the unique perspective of cisco engineers and partners.
Our ACI solutions and demo showcase focuses on typical customer care-abouts. The demos include securing and scaling applications with ACI, Cloud orchestration with ACI, Role of policy in automation, Multi-Hypervisor Data center operations, actionable analytics and visibility with ACI among others. Please stop by our Cisco booth for a detailed engagement with one of our subject matter experts. If you happen to have some time, please do plan to have in your agenda the Theater presentations that run every 15 minutes. These short duration presentations give you an overview on key topics such as how ACI’s open API has enabled a broad L4-L& eco-system with Citrix, F5, A10, Radware, et al. The session titled “Broad L4-L7 eco-system with ACI” runs on Tuesday 11.30 am, and I also recommend you attend the session titled “Security with ACI” on Wednesday 4.45 PM. These are very highly sought after topics in most of our customer engagements. There are several others you can choose form the agenda planner.
One of the key pillars that made Cisco ACI phenomenally successful is the Open and Secure eco-system of 35 plus leading partners that have built joint, integrated solutions with ACI. F5 is a leading ACI partner on the L4-L7 integration front.
In fact, I fondly recollect my last week’s experience at F5 Agility, Scotland, where there were numerous high touch activities from Panel sessions to breakouts and demos and customer interactions. The highlight was Cisco Exec Shashi Kiran joining F5 Exec Calvin Rowland and fellow Cisco Exec Patrick Schmidt in a panel session. For those of you not familiar with ACI, this panel session is a great opportunity to learn how Cisco and F5 are expanding their partnership, how their combined thought leadership is advancing the SDN landscape, and customer successes and momentum experienced by Cisco ACI, F5’s BIG IP & BIG IQ in the marketplace. Watch Panel Video.
F5 has exciting demos and videos featuring Cisco ACI- BIG F5 and BIG IQ. Please check them out. F5’s engineer Vincent Ng is doing a breakout on “Real world deployments with Cisco ACI and F5 LTM”, June 9, 4 PM. It is a fantastic session where Vincent will explain how customers moved the solution all the way from POC to Production detailing best practices along the way. Mark it in your agenda if you are looking for customer deployment experiences. Several F5 execs will be present as well in F5 booth, so you can understand the big picture and strategy behind how the two companies are evolving the SDN landscape. F5’s Vladimir is also speaking in the DevNet Zone on the topic of deploying applications with F5 iApps and Cisco ACI. Also, checkout the white-board Video featuring ACI working with BIG IQ and BIG IP in real-world deployment scenarios.
Cisco and F5 are hosting a live Q&A panel session focused on developers on June 16, 1 PM PST. This panel session titled “F5 Synthesis & Cisco ACI – Under the Hood: Ask the Experts” will be hosted by Cisco and F5 subject matter experts based on care-abouts of developers from Cisco DevNet and F5 DevCentral community. This is a live Q&A session — get your questions ready! If you’re interested, please head over to the F5 Event Registration site and register to reserve your space. You’ll also be able to pre-submit your questions for a chance to win a T-shirt from F5.
Citrix is another of Cisco’s key ACI eco-system partner and Citrix is lighting up the Partner section with booth demonstrations, speaking opportunities and social media outreach. We are thrilled to be continuing our Strategic Partnership momentum with Citrix after our successful sponsorship at their Synergy event a few weeks back in Orlando! We demonstrated how we are delivering workspace mobility on a software defined network with a wide spectrum of innovative solutions for virtualization, mobility, networking and cloud services to enthusiastic attendees. Along with packed attendance for our booth demos and presentations, we had multiple sessions and customer testimonials to underscore our ability to deliver multi-faceted solutions to our mutual customers.
At the Citrix booth, you can see demonstrations of Citrix thought leadership momentum with Cisco ACI (SDN) and Citrix software defined workplace, and elevated joint Citrix and Cisco solution leadership and momentum. Multiple Cisco breakouts on ACI will feature Citrix NetScaler integrated solution with ACI. Check breakouts TECACI-2009, BRKAPP-2032, BRKVIR-2044 for details. Dave Potter a Cisco Live regular attendee is presenting at the Cisco Theater and a breakout both on topic “Citrix and Cisco Alliance: Delivering the Best in Software Defined Networking and ACI Integration”. There are numerous demos planned in the Citrix booth centered around ACI-NetScaler and I strongly encourage you to take a detailed tour of these.
Be sure to visit Citrix at booth #2023 to discover the breadth and depth of our partnership with its best in class solutions across mobility, cloud, data center and software defined networking.
We also want you to have lots of fun amidst your busy schedule. Excited to see Aerosmith at Cisco Live? Get your free personalized and digitally autographed photo from the band. Cisco customers will be celebrated at our annual Customer Appreciation Event. Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres, will be the setting for this spectacular celebration on Wednesday, June 10, 7:30 p.m.
There are several other ACI partners of cisco showcasing their ACI centric solutions and I will exceed the guidelines for a blog if I were to describe each one of them. I hope you will enjoy the event and for those who are new, do not feel overwhelmed and I have been there. Our Cisco ambassadors will meet and greet you and make you feel at home. Do not hesitate to ask one of Cisco staff what you are looking for. Enjoy the show.
Organizations need to shift their focus from the Mobile App to the Mobile Experience. This means before anyone starts porting applications to mobile devices, businesses and IT must team up to assess their joint goals and list out the most common mobility use cases for their employees, customers and partners. This effort will help the organization prioritize requirements for better results in the near-term.
IT needs to assess their readiness for the full mobile journey end-to-end, and ensure every team – desktop services, application development, business analytics, security operations, network operations – can support the expected user experience and business outcomes. For example, many retailers are building mobile sales associate apps to allow salespeople to freely move around the store and show online catalogs, lookup inventory and transact point-of-sales wherever customers are located. But if the application is slow, they’ll either be abandoned by the roaming salespeople or, worse, they’ll create a painful experience for customers as they and the salesperson are forced to wait for these ‘time saving’ devices to load. Either way, the mobile investments will be a total loss.
Learn from the Experts to Accelerate Your Mobile Journey
If you are attending Cisco Live in San Diego next week, you can meet with experts sharing best practices across every stage of the mobile journey, including how to:
Engage employees and customers with context aware data that delivers more personalized experiences
Protect users, data, and the business through network-enabled security
Accelerate mobile experiences with seamless onboarding and an agile network
Discover business and IT insights through network analytics that allow you to continuously improve upon the experience
With the increasing pace and complexity of today’s market, it’s critical that our leadership team understands our customers, delivers results, brings diverse perspectives and experiences, and builds world-class, highly motivated teams. This is what will differentiate us as a much faster, innovative organization that delivers the best results for our customers.
We have been developing and attracting our next generation of leaders for many years, and I’m confident that this team is ready to lead Cisco’s next chapter. They know how Cisco works, what makes Cisco great, and how we can accelerate our current momentum. Some have been with the company for as long as I have or longer, a third have joined Cisco in the last 3 years, and others are new to Cisco.
They have the capabilities, accomplishments, and the values required to lead us into the future. Their combined vision, passion and authenticity, along with a focus on strategy, results, and innovation truly differentiate this team. These unique characteristics reflect the remarkable culture of Cisco that has motivated and energized me for the past 17 years.
Let me explain why each person is the ideal leader to move us forward.
Pankaj Patel, Executive Vice President, Development
Everything we do starts with our innovation. Pankaj leads Cisco’s 25,000 development engineers and the company’s $36 billion technology portfolio.
He joined Cisco through the acquisition of Stratacom and has since overseen Cisco’s innovation in the cloud, mobility, data center, security, collaboration, software and the Internet of Everything markets.
Over the last 2 years, Pankaj has led the transformation of Cisco’s engineering organization to drive focus and accelerate innovation. He is pioneering new ways of driving innovation at Cisco, including a new model of internal start-ups which he launched last year.
Kelly Kramer, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Kelly joined Cisco three years ago after 20 years at GE working across numerous divisions and countries around the world.
She quickly established herself as a business leader capable of partnering across and influencing the entire organization, particularly with her no-nonsense direct style.
She has driven a disciplined focus on our financial model and delivered on our commitments to our shareholders.
Her promotion to CFO 3 quarters ago was seamless, and she is extremely well respected internally and externally.
Rebecca Jacoby, Senior Vice President, Operations
Previously Chief Information Technology Officer (CIO), Rebecca has a strong track record of operational excellence, innovative problem solving, and partnering cross-functionally. Her leadership and talent development skills have resulted in some of the best employee satisfaction scores in the company.
She has elevated the role of IT at Cisco and positioned us as one of the best in the industry. She has exemplified Fast IT, enabling $5.4B of incremental revenue in the last 4+ years with just $400M of incremental expense. She did all of this while driving down costs by over 5% each year.
Her experience in development, operations, supply chain and IT make enable her to drive Cisco’s continued focus on profitability, accountability, and world-class operational excellence.
Her deep relationships with CIOs around the world make her extremely well respected across the industry and she was recently inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame.
Guillermo Diaz has been promoted to CIO reporting directly to Jacoby. Diaz, most recently Cisco senior vice president of IT—Connected IT, has been accountable for the company’s enterprise IT architecture, technology strategy, and IT services/operating model.
Francine Katsoudas, Senior Vice President, Chief People Officer
Fran is the architect of Our People Strategy and Human Resources Organization, focusing on how Cisco wins in the talent marketplace while creating a compelling and unique employee experience.
She accelerates company transformation through leadership, attracting and retaining the best talent and building a culture of passion and innovation.
Fran is committed to ground breaking HR solutions, analytics and new talent models.
Chris Dedicoat, Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales
Chris joined Cisco in 1995 and has served as Senior Vice President of EMEAR for the past four years where he has led the region to solid growth in a very challenging market.
Chris has a keen understanding of technology and market opportunities, an ability to drive transformation while running the business, and an unparalleled ability to lead and motivate teams.
Joe Cozzolino, Senior Vice President, Services
Joe has extensive global General Management experience in all facets of the business including engineering, sales, & services. He has a competitive edge and in his own words: “hates losing more than he loves winning.”
He began his career more than 25 years ago as a Systems Engineer designing video voice on fiber optics. For the last 2 years, Joe led Cisco’s Service Provider Mobility and Video Infrastructure businesses.
Before Cisco, he spent 12 years at Motorola in various executive roles successfully growing new businesses undergoing technology inflection.
Joe has an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and an MBA from Annie Maria College.
Hilton Romanski, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology and Strategy Officer
Hilton has been responsible for the ‘buy’ in Cisco’s “build, buy, partner, integrate” strategy for growth and innovation
He has led over $20 billion in acquisitions in 40 deals, including Sourcefire, Meraki, and Airespace and was named Deal Maker of the Year in 2014 by The Deal.
He has also led Cisco’s M&A and investment entry into the emerging markets by forming and expanding teams and activities in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.
Hilton oversees Cisco’s corporate venture investment portfolio, currently valued at $2 billion, one of the highest performing corporate venture capital funds globally.
In his new role, Hilton will lead CTSO and be chartered to drive strategic development and growth of Cisco by applying important tools to nurture technology disruption, build alliance partnerships, acquire companies, invest in start-ups, and engage the global marketplace of ideas to drive Cisco’s success
Karen Walker, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Karen joined Cisco six years ago from Hewlett-Packard, where she held business and consumer leadership positions including Vice President of Alliances and Marketing for HP Services, and Vice President of Strategy and Marketing.
Her 20-plus years in the IT industry have included senior field and marketing leadership roles in Europe, North America, and the Asia Pacific region.
Karen is a Board member of the I.T. Services Marketing Association and a member of the CMO Council North America Advisory Board, the Marketers that Matter Council, Advancing Executive Women (AWE) in Silicon Valley, and CRN’s 2013 Women of the Channel. She also sponsors multiple initiatives to accelerate female leadership within Cisco.
Mark Chandler, Senior Vice President and General Counsel
Mark joined Cisco’s Legal Department in 1996 when it had 12 employees; today we have a phenomenal team of legal, contract and compliance professionals of more than 400 people that is regularly ranked among the industry’s best.
Before Cisco, Mark was General Counsel at Maxtor, a Fortune 500 disk drive manufacturer, and at StrataCom.
Mark is a strong business leader with a keen ability to innovate, disrupt and provide tremendous input into our strategy. In 2010, The National Law Journal named him one of the 40 Most Influential Lawyers of the Decade and in 2013, American Lawyer numbered Mark among the “Top 50 Big Law Innovators of the Last 50 Years.”
Ruba Borno, VP, Growth Initiatives and Chief of Staff
Ruba will join Cisco from The Boston Consulting Group where she is a Principal and leader in the Technology, Media & Telecommunications, and People & Organization practice groups.
She holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering with honors from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
For the last seven years, Ruba has been advising enterprise and consumer technology executives on organizational change, increasing operational effectiveness, and accelerating business growth.
Ruba has been an Intel Ph.D. fellow at the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems, contributed to multiple peer-reviewed research publications, and is a supporter of Bay Area organizations tackling education and poverty challenges.
I am committed to investing in and developing Cisco’s extended leadership team over time. I plan to also look externally to fill several roles that will lead key growth initiatives in new markets. I am also committed to adding even more diversity of thought and experience over time, constantly strengthening both our bench and our decision making.
There are also a few individuals who have made tremendous contributions to Cisco who will be transitioning over the next few months. I am thankful for the years of partnerships I’ve had with these amazing leaders who will be leaving Cisco:
Wim Elfrink has served as Cisco’s Chief Globalization Officer since 2006 and opened Cisco’s second global headquarters in Bangalore, India. His leadership on smart cities and connected industries has helped define our vision for the next wave of the Internet, the Internet of Everything. Wim will retire from Cisco on July 25th and I want to thank him for his exceptional leadership and his passion for what is possible.
Padmasree Warrior is a highly respected leader who most recently served as Cisco’s Chief Strategy and Technology Officer. She is well known across the industry and the globe, and has been a champion internally for innovation, strategic partnerships, investments and mergers and acquisitions. Padmasree has led the success of many of our strategic partnerships and will remain with us until September to help finalize some of our key partnerships for the future. I am grateful for the impact she’s had on Cisco and her commitment to helping us finalize these important alliances.
Edzard Overbeek in his role as Senior Vice President of Cisco Services has been an incredible partner to me for many years. He has made the decision to leave Cisco after 15 years at the company and leadership roles in every region around the world. Edzard has agreed to stay on through the transition as a strategic advisor on key disruptive strategies that he has shown great passion for while at Cisco. His vision and energy will ensure his success in his next venture, something I hope will be closely connected to Cisco.
We are so fortunate that these leaders are able to remain with us in the near-term to finish key projects and ensure a smooth transition. I believe this is a testament to the Cisco culture as well as their commitment, service, and leadership.
Going forward, my new team will define and build the next chapter for Cisco together. I’m extremely confident we will move even faster, innovate like never before, and pull away from the competition. This is an incredible team with a diverse set of experiences, expertise and backgrounds to accelerate our innovation and execution, simplify how we do business, drive operational rigor in all we do, and inspire our amazing employees to be the best they can be.
This new leadership team, along with the deep talent and passion of all of Cisco, gives me absolute confidence that we will lead, and our customers will win. I’ve never been more excited to build our future together.
In a recent post, we discussed Dimension Data’s 6th Network Barometer Report and its recommendations. Detailed in this exhaustive report, Dimension Data has found that 32% – about 1/3 – of all Service incidents are related to Human Error*. (* 6% Configuration Errors and 26% Other human errors)
We’re all human and we all make mistakes – that’s the way we learn. However, in this era of constant connectivity, with mobility and the Internet of Everything growing rapidly, there is an ever-increasing demand on your network to perform, be available and stay secure. Incidents of IT failure are becoming more and more costly, not only from an operational aspect, but even more so from the loss of uptime, data and customer satisfaction. What if you could have 33% less service incidents, while using 32% less resources, keeping your network as stable as ever? That’s where Cisco Active Advisor can help you!
It’s no secret that Cisco Active Advisor is a huge time saver – Cisco Active Advisor is a free cloud-based service that automatically discovers Cisco Enterprise Networking products with no hardware or software installation, and can not only keep you up-to-date on important lifecycle milestones, but also analyze your network health and offer recommendations for improvement.
Following the Hortonworks Blog, we are lucky to have James Gold from SAP as next blogger in the Why I love Big Data guest partner series. James explains how customers experience is greatly improved via predictive maintenance in a connected factory.
James Gold, Director, Global Technology Partner Marketing, SAP SE
Jim is an enterprise software veteran who’s held a number of senior marketing and business development positions at large, mid-size and startup technology companies. In his current position as Director of Global Technology Partner Marketing for SAP, he’s responsible for co-marketing, business development and co-innovation of key SAP strategic alliances, including Cisco Systems, Inc. Previously, he held product marketing positions in support of SAP HANA Cloud Platform and SAP virtualization technologies.
Prior to SAP, Jim worked in a variety of senior roles in partner and product marketing, business development and channel enablement. He began his software career at IBM, and has worked at Intuit, LivePerson and Lithium Technologies, among others.Jim graduated cum laude from the University of Vermont, and has done graduate work in business and political science.
If you’ve spent much of your career in customer facing roles as I have, you know it from experience: whatever your business, there’s simply no substitute for a true customer advocate. It’s been said more than once that “the most important person selling what you’re offering is…your customer.” And with no shortage of vehicles to share product and service experiences, we all know that your customer’s opinion — positive or negative — can impact business like never before.
So what does this have to do with Big Data, Analytics, and Internet of Everything (IoE) – along with SAP, Hortonworks and Cisco? I hope you’ll stop by World of Solutions (1733) Connected Factory at Cisco Live to find out for yourself! You’ll see a powerful example of a Predictive Maintenance application that combines real-time and historical data about asset performance and repair to proactively prevent disruptions, increase manufacturing yield, reduce costs – and ultimately improve customer service.
expected to attend, there’s no event more popular with IT professionals who pride themselves on their networking expertise. As I prepare to travel to San Diego for the occasion, I wanted to share my perspective on how IT organizations can better operate and protect the networks that are the digital backbones of their companies.
Be sure to check out these sessions to learn how Cisco solutions can help mobilize your business, including our newest 
