We are excited to announce that Cisco will be participating in Wireless Field Day 8 this year! Cisco is bringing together independent bloggers, speakers, and podcasters to share best practices and opinions in a two-hour interactive discussion format. All presentations will be live streamed from the Tech Field Day website October 1, 2015 beginning at 9:30 am PT.
Cisco is focusing on operational simplicity, and will cover the following topics at #WFD8:
802.11ac Wave 2 and Mobility Express: We will be discussing how 802.11ac Wave 2 provides customers new capabilities found in the Cisco Aironet 1830 and 1850 Access Points such as Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) and their advantages. We will also demonstrate how Mobility Express can be deployed in less than 10 minutes, ideal for smaller businesses who want an uncompromised enterprise-class solution without the big IT staff to manage it. Learn more about 802.11ac and Cisco Mobility Express. Continue reading “It’s All About Simplicity: Join Cisco at Wireless Field Day on October 1”
Two weeks ago, in my previous blog, I invited you to consider ways in which you could initiate a “Save to Invest” program for your data center. That is, how can you save money from your current data center spend, in order to re-invest it into currently un- or -under-funded areas of your data center. Thanks to those of you reading who made some comments on Part 1 – good points were raised!
Last time, I discussed my first 3 tips, as follows:
(1) Identify, Turn Off and Remove Idle Servers
(2) Identify Un-used Enterprise Software Applications: Reduce Your Software Costs
(3) Get Rid of Dead Weight – Execute a Server Refresh
Save Some Money for Your Data Center!
Let’s now discuss two additional savings, which in fact can in many cases result in even larger financial savings:
(4) Optimize your Software Licensing, and
(5) Avoid un-budgeted spend – Critical if you have an Unlimited License Agreement (ULA)
Well I told you that we would be back real soon with another update and here you go. As you remember we recently blogged that ACG Research again confirmed that Cisco continues to be the leading provider of Mobile Packet Core and Mobile IP Infrastructure over the past several quarters.
Now another analyst firm, IHS Infonetics Research highlights that Cisco has indeed increased our Mobile Packet Core in Lead to 24.9%, an increase of +4.5% points from Q1 2015 based on EPC / 3G Packet Core data in their report “Mobile Infrastructure Equipment” for Q2 2015. That is three consecutive quarters in a row that IHS Infonetics Data has shown that Cisco has increased our market share for the Mobile Packet Core.
This week’s first state visit to the U.S. by China’s President Xi Jinping comes at an important moment for our countries, and for our industry, as President Xi meets with a number of important U.S. technology companies including Cisco. We have a long history in China spanning over 20 years, and today we continue to strengthen our commitment to our partners and to delivering meaningful innovation to the people of China.
My numerous trips to China over the past few years have reinforced the incredible opportunity ahead for this dynamic society. Over the course of our history in China, Cisco has helped connect millions of Chinese people to the Internet. During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, our teams went in to face the disaster and help those impacted – ultimately leading to a long-standing program that has transformed both healthcare and education in the region. Through our Networking Academy Program, we have trained hundreds of thousands of students in the technical skills needed to help build China’s future.
We’ve always been deeply focused on our customers around the world and this is absolutely the case in China. We believe that next generation partnerships are required to deliver what our customers need to enhance China’s productivity and bring incredible new connected experiences to China’s citizens in the digital world. As we’ve developed long-standing relationships with our Chinese business partners, we have always remained true to our core values at Cisco: we do the right thing and we win together.
Today, as the entire country prepares to digitize, we continue to bring the power of the Internet to new areas – including manufacturing, transportation, education, and healthcare. I’m incredibly optimistic about the long-term prospects of successful partnerships in the country.
Analytics will continue to take center stage as the volume of data generated by embedded systems increases and vast pools of structured and unstructured data within and outside the enterprise are analyzed. — Gartner
Big Data will continue to be important, but it’s critical to first understand how businesses can quickly gather relevant insights from their big data. The value is in unlocking key takeaways from the data because these insights can be used for agile decision-making and faster time-to-market approaches. Discovering better business insights quickly requires the combination of software and hardware that is optimized for speed, scale, and flexibility. And that is exactly what you get when you combine Platfora and Cisco UCS.
When Platfora runs on Cisco UCS, business analysts can find these patterns in minutes or hours rather than months. For example, our joint customer was able to identify exactly what factors impacted their customer experience using the Platfora solution which was deployed in 1/10th the time and cost of traditional approaches.
Platfora enables users to analyze petabytes of data at scale and leverages the latest cutting-edge technologies such as Spark and YARN (MapReduce 2.0).The Platfora end-to-end platform replaces the need for ETL, Data Warehousing, and BI tools. And the combination of Platfora and UCS ensures that there are no performance, scalability, or TCO tradeoffs as we add new data discovery joint use cases. This joint solution is truly designed for enterprise-scale analytics.
Here we are, now in the digital age. Blah blah, you know that already. But while we all sit around with our smart phones, shopping, socializing, working, and living in the digital world; the reality is that we’ve really only started to scratch the surface. And even though technology has seemingly permeated everything in our lives, it is only beginning to touch how we manage health and wellness.
Yes, it’s fun and trendy to track your steps or your heart rate with wearables. But this is just a small glimpse into the possibilities of how we collect and share health data to improve patient care at greater speed and scale. Movements like the Internet of Everything have been kick-starting the advancement of digital health. However, there’s still disconnect between technology and the delivery of innovative healthcare. And the reality is, the majority of those in the health industry haven’t quite caught up. So the question remains, how do health and wellness dive in to the deep end of the digital movement?
Health, Wellness, and Rock & Roll
In today’s post, our digital citizen is also a rock star and heart patient.
The alarm sounds at 8 am and it’s time to wake up. But it’s not the alarm clock that’s going off; it’s the notification of an issue in our citizen’s implantable cardioverter-defribillator (ICD). A device implantable inside the body capable of correcting most life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. Without fully understanding whether to panic or accept it as a normal part of life with this new accessory, the answers were working themselves out behind the scenes, streaming real-time information on the patient’s well being. First, a notice was sent to the device manufacturer. This then triggered an alert to the health provider and prompted a call to the patient. Within an hour of being awakened by the unnerving sound coming from our citizen’s own chest, the cause had been identified, shared with the care provider, and a next-day appointment had been scheduled for follow up.
Healthcare professionals normally rely on patients to confess how they’re feeling. However, with the possibilities enabled by crossing into the digital health realm, doctors will soon know how their patients are feeling, and possibly even why, before patients can walk into the exam room. In this case, proactively monitoring and solving for problems has allowed our citizen to return to normal life. Our citizen is as active as ever and still rocking on strong.
What if a specialist is needed, what then? More often than not, vast distances separate physicians, specialists, and patients in all corners of the globe. If our citizen had lived in Ontario, Canada, where telemedicine initiatives have helped patients save almost 200 million miles of travel per year, access to a specialist would have been a few keystrokes away. By providing tools that allow healthcare providers to easily communicate with one another and with their patients, caregivers can use the network to deliver wellness through video conferencing with patients, share data amongst one another, and support educational events or meetings over a distance.
And what about access to the remote areas of the world? There are renowned programs like the UVA Center for Telehealth. As well as serving patients throughout Virginia, it has expanded its programs to the medically underserved in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and other international destinations providing basic medical care and specialty services from psychiatry, to pediatric neurology, and genetics.
But why stop there? Technology is becoming more and more accessible. We should be planning for the day when all patients receive and all professionals provide the right care, at the right time, in whatever location is most convenient; the move to truly patient-centric care.
Next Stop
Stay tuned for next Wednesday’s post to discover more information about learning without limits. And be sure to check back each week as we explore new themes, challenges, and observations.
Additionally, you can click here and register now to get your questions answered on how to become the next digital community.
Finally, we invite you to be a part of the conversation by using the hashtag #WednesdayWalkabout and by following @CiscoGovt on Twitter. For more information and additional examples, visit our Smart+Connected Communities page and our Government page on Cisco.com. Enjoy the Wednesday walkabout!
Whether it’s to customers, resellers or industry leaders, there are some perceptions about Cisco that may make organizations with small to medium deployment feel having a high-quality Cisco solution is out of reach. With the recent release of Cisco Mobility Express, we can dispel some of these misconceptions or myths.
Here’s a smattering of what we’ve heard:
The process of installing Cisco solutions takes way too long!
The transition to the Internet of Everything represents one of the greatest disruptions the world has ever seen. It is expected to be the one of the most influential catalysts for industrial change. We are seeing entire industries evolve, mature ecosystems break apart, and competition rising to entirely new dimensions.
These exciting changes are just the beginning. For Cisco, IoE is a new way of doing business, a new way of reaching customers and a new way of using technology to build value. For any industry going through the process of digitization, the ability to successfully navigate our IoE-enabled world will ultimately determine its future.
The story “Sea Change” is a great example of what Cisco is doing differently to help our customers control their destinies. We identified a real and significant problem. Then we solved it with an end-to-end solution to deliver a business outcome that will have a lasting effect on our customer’s core business value.
In the “Sea Change” yacht-racing story, Mobile Asset Management is illustrated through a vivid maritime example. A team of Cisco employees visited the customer site to install and connect onboard sensors and begin extracting data from the yacht. We created a dashboard so the crew could see the data visually. The sailing team utilized analytics to optimize the ship’s equipment and shave seconds off their race time, which is their key measure of success.
To connect sensors to onboard computers at sea, we used technologies and products from the recently launched Cisco Internet of Things (IoT) System. This broad portfolio enables our customers to monitor, manage, and control previously unconnected devices.
All of this was done while securing the data communications path and providing access controls. Yeah, it was a pretty cool venue, but it was also rewarding and provided valuable insight that we have since applied to other mobile segments. In fact, we are using the same solutions approach, and many of the same solutions elements, to deliver new value for utility trucks, trains, buses, logistics vehicles and first responders today.
https://youtu.be/cFLK6JEkxpM
I’m sure each of you can think of ways that information from your mobile assets could help you optimize your operations. Do you have other ideas on how mobile assets can be used to achieve remarkable outcomes for your customers? Comment and share below.
Today, we released the last Cisco IOS & XE Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication of 2015. As a reminder, Cisco discloses IOS vulnerabilities on a predictable schedule (the fourth Wednesday of March and September each calendar year). Last cycle, we began including Cisco Security Advisories addressing vulnerabilities in Cisco IOS XE Software in this publication. This change was a direct result of your feedback, and we hope the timeline and additional “bundling” continues to allow organizations to plan and ensure resources are available to analyze, test, and remediate vulnerabilities in their environments.
Today’s edition of the Cisco IOS & XE Software Security Advisory Bundled Publication includes three advisories that affect the following technologies:
participating in Wireless Field Day 8 this year! Cisco is bringing together independent bloggers, speakers, and podcasters to share best practices and opinions in a two-hour interactive discussion format. All presentations will be live streamed from the Tech Field Day website October 1, 2015 beginning at 9:30 am PT.
The alarm sounds at 8 am and it’s time to wake up. But it’s not the alarm clock that’s going off; it’s the notification of an issue in our citizen’s implantable cardioverter-defribillator (ICD). A device implantable inside the body capable of correcting most life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. Without fully understanding whether to panic or accept it as a normal part of life with this new accessory, the answers were working themselves out behind the scenes, streaming real-time information on the patient’s well being. First, a notice was sent to the device manufacturer. This then triggered an alert to the health provider and prompted a call to the patient. Within an hour of being awakened by the unnerving sound coming from our citizen’s own chest, the cause had been identified, shared with the care provider, and a next-day appointment had been scheduled for follow up.
![Government_blog[2]](https://blogs.cisco.com/gcs/ciscoblogs/1/Government_blog2-550x275.jpg)
