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Imagine the price of connecting all of the moving parts within our justice system. Think of the time and money it takes to do so. From pre-trial hearings, attorney conferences and arraignment to administrative proceedings and remote testimony then disposition and even post-trial proceedings, all of these services can be streamlined through Cisco’s Connected Justice solution. Through connectivity of mobile devices, cameras, sensors, transfer vehicles, the Internet of Everything (IoE) allows law enforcement, courts and corrections staff to streamline the justice process. Cisco’s solution provides a unified network platform to automate justice workflow and, therefore, removes barriers between systems, agencies, people and processes as critical information is transferred.

Convergence is at the heart of connecting people, process, data and things anytime, anywhere. For those working within the U.S. justice system the convergence of IoE can streamline processes through faster collaboration. It can benefit inmates by reducing processing times and, simultaneously, improve security for justice workers while providing enhanced public safety to the community.

One simple example can illustrate the principle. Arraignments require defendants to appear before a judge to conduct a formal reading of the criminal charges. This heightens security risks for law enforcement officials and the public, increases administrative costs to safely transfer the defendant to and from the arraignment and slows the entire process should there be multiple court facilities with which the defendant must connect. Through secure, remote video for motions and testimony directly from detainees’ holding facilities, many of these risks can be eliminated.

I will be presenting on the power of a better connected justice system at the National Center for State Court’s upcoming CTC conference in Minneapolis on September 22-24. As a retired Judge, I have been in the trenches and understand the complexities of day-to-day operations within a court system. Cisco’s solution set is designed and operates based upon real needs and experiences of actual law enforcement, courts and corrections users.

This summer I will release a series of blogs to provide an overview of Cisco’s Connected Justice solution. Together, we will explore how public safety is affected, how the solution is expanding and the benefits associated with its growth. We will discuss how judges, attorneys, probation officers, jailers and other key stakeholders in the system can use technology to help increase efficiency while simultaneously reducing costs without compromising the fair and equal access to justice.

To learn more about Cisco’s Connected Justice solution visit us here.

Authors

Judge M. Boyd Patterson, Jr. (ret.)

Business Development Manager

Connected Justice

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ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is being deployed by a large number of customers, and it is saving them massive CAPEX and OPEX, while providing unprecedented scale and high availability.

Here is a 10 minute video that shows step by step ITD deployment.

 

ITD is shipping on Nexus 9k/7700/7k/6k/5k Series of switches. ITD won the Best of Interop 2015 in Data Center category.

Here is more information about ITD: www.cisco.com/go/itd

Please send email to nxos-itd@cisco.com if you have any questions.

 

 

Authors

Samar Sharma

Intelligent Traffic Director for Nexus 9k/7k/6k/5k

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Cisco presents a vision of the future in the Cisco 2015 Midyear Security Report that we expect many—particularly in the security industry—might find a little controversial. We suggest that over the next five years, there will be a continued wave of industry consolidation—driven less by financially motivated M&A and more by the need for capable solutions—that brings together niche innovators and long-standing players for the greater cause of protecting organizations.

And then what? This consolidation will lead to the development of an integrated threat defense architecture that will help to reduce time to detection and remediation of both known and emerging threats. This architecture will bring unprecedented visibility into the threat landscape, and provide control, global intelligence, and context across many solutions.

While disruptive, this change is necessary. Right now, as an industry, we’re just not doing an effective job helping all end users defend themselves from the highly sophisticated and ever-changing tactics of today’s threat actors.

As noted in the Cisco 2015 Midyear Security Report, Continue reading “Change is Coming to the Security Industry – and This is a Good Thing”

Authors

Jason Brvenik

Principal Engineer

CIsco Security Business Group

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Only a few weeks remain for the Fall season to officially set in, and it’s still quite hot in Washington DC. The fast approaching F5 Agility event is further adding a sizzle to the conference scene at the Gaylord National resort and convention center in DC.

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During Aug 4-7, we are going to hear F5’s leaders, customers, and partners share how the latest solutions from F5 are transforming what’s possible for today’s organizations. In about a year’s time Cisco ACI and F5 partnership has demonstrated significant success in our joint solution momentum and customer adoption. I am pleased to invite you all to attend this premier industry event and get insights on how F5 and Cisco are bringing the power of cloud, data centers, converged systems, and as-a-Service together to enable fast, efficient, and secure application delivery in today’s challenging hybrid environments.

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The keynote by F5 CEO Manny Rivelo centers on “Innovate, Expand and Deliver” and lays the foundation for your business to innovate new paths to success, expand through barriers to growth, and deliver the applications your customers need to succeed. Manny will take you on a tour of current market trends, how F5 has grown under John McAdam’s tenure, the evolution of the F5 Platform from simple load balancer to ADC to support Cloud based business models, the growing importance of enterprise security, recent F5 acquisitions, and last but not the least the growing eco-system of Partners. I recommend getting started with Manny’s keynote.

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Following Manny, Dean Darwin, Marketing SVP of F5 will deliver F5’s forward looking vision.  Dean’s session aligns well with Manny’s keynote in that he will address Innovation, thought leadership, expanding business models (like As a Service) and strategies to increase customer satisfaction and financial excellence.

In the afternoon, we have two guest keynotes. Colin L. Powell the well-known statesman and retired General and Chris Tarbell, one of the most successful cyber security law enforcement officials of all time are going to entertain you. Do not miss the opportunity to listen to these legends.

Cisco Exec Shashi Kiran is joining F5 Exec Calvin Rowland and fellow Cisco exec Matt Smorto in a panel session Aug 5. 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. The panellists are seasoned industry experts and I promise it will be a treat to the attendees.

If you somehow missed the panel session, there is room to cheer. Shashi is hosting a breakout session titled “Deliver Application Agility with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure the” next day, Aug 6, 10.30 am EST.  What’s unique about this Breakout Session? Well, you will get to not only hear Shashi eloquently walk you through the role of Cisco ACI in today’s Application-Oriented Economy, but also see customers and partners join him on stage and share their success stories with ACI.  Shashi will discuss how emerging applications are placing huge demands on Data Center Infrastructure and how grossly unprepared they are to meet the same. Shashi will then introduce Cisco ACI, an open, scalable, programmable SDN solution that helps address these infrastructure challenges. Shashi will illustrate how Cisco’s open architecture enables seamless integration of F5 into ACI’s policy framework and how the joint solution brings unprecedented agility and end-end l2-L7 accelerated application delivery.

Shashi’s breakout as I said earlier, also features a unique Partner segment towards the end. Mark Wall, Chief Architect from WWT, will join Shashi on stage to share their ACI experiences. How often do you get this comprehensive experience in a breakout session, one that is devoid of a sales pitch.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?

For the technically oriented among you, we also have a technical breakout session by Ravi Balakrishnan (Cisco) and Payal Singh (F5) Aug 3.30 PM ETA. This session covers the integration architecture, value-props, and openness of the platform that the joint Cisco ACI-F5 solution brings to customers and partners.

That is not all. Cisco ACI brings you additional customer engagement opportunity in the solutions expo hall. We are featuring cool demos showcasing our joint solutions namely, ACI-BIG IP and ACI-BIG IQ on both Aug 5 and 6, during the duration of the expo hours. Stop by the Cisco booth where are product experts are available to engage in white-board sessions and to compliment the demos, we also run short duration presentations in the Cisco theatre at periodic intervals. Should you desire, we are happy to meet you in 1-1 meetings, so let us know how we can enrich your experience at the event

For all the hard work we all do at the event, there is plenty F5 offers to let us relax and enjoy. The evening event on Aug 6 provides entertainment by Vince Neil (Motley Crew fame) allows attendees to step back and enjoy and get a prelude to their farewell tour “All Bad Things Must Come to An End” through December 31, 2015 in Los Angeles.

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Network with your fellow attendees while enjoying tasty food and drink, entertaining music, knowledgeable guides, and more are awaiting you on Aug 6.

I am eager to see you all in Washington DC next week. There are some useful links for you to check out before your visit on how Cisco ACI and F5 work together on the innovation front.

For more information, Visit www.cisco.com/go/acif5

https://f5.com/about-us/events/event/f5-agility-conference

Join our Community discussions on ACI and find outWhat is your SDN Spirit Animal?”

Take the quiz and find out! 

 

Authors

Ravi Balakrishnan

Senior Product Marketing Manager

Datacenter Solutions

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Let’s face it. Danger lurks inside every enterprise network, and when it hits, addressing the crisis with manual processes that are inefficient and error-prone can take days – or even weeks – to resolve. If you’ve ever been in a situation like this, minutes can seem like hours. You’re aware that not only is fast problem resolution critical, but that the displaced effort and incremental time incurred by you or your staff in resolving the issue is detrimental as well. Crisis preparation can help. But fire drills often don’t compare to the real thing. To avoid constantly reacting to problems, many enterprises are harnessing automation to gain greater visibility into their network infrastructure to proactively manage and defeat danger before it occurs.

What you don’t know can hurt you

Continue reading “How to Make the Invisible Visible: An Automated Answer for Network Transparency”

Authors

Mala Anand

No Longer with Cisco

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Co-authored with Munish Khetrapal

Big data, what’s the big deal?

With the pressure to innovate faster, the onslaught of rapid urbanization, and heightened citizen expectations, government organizations and leaders are looking to the Internet of Everything.

Of the many technology trends that enable the Internet of Everything, big data and analytics warrant special consideration. The astonishing amount of data traversing today’s networks is growing exponentially each day. A recent IDC research report highlights that from now until 2020, the digital universe will double every two years.

This growth in data represents a remarkable opportunity for global public sector organizations, particularly for government leaders. The automated collection of data – from devices, sensors, and physical objects – and use of the resulting information is providing unprecedented visibility and decision-making capabilities. This is paving the way for faster incident response, safer communities, better operational efficiency, secure access to anytime, anywhere services, and an overall heightened citizen experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnyrUhPwd70

Continue reading “#WednesdayWalkabout Series: Big Data Benefits for the Digital Citizen”

Authors

Anil Menon

President

Smart+Connected Communities and Cisco Deputy Chief Globalisation Officer

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Businesses around the world are moving their focus from Mobile Apps to Mobile Experience. With Wi-Fi extending reliable coverage into public places, your users are going to expect the same service from you—a dependable high-speed user experience. The problem is, user devices are increasingly demanding more bandwidth.

How are you going to meet that demand?

To help increase the bandwidth needed to take wireless networks into support of the next generation of devices, Cisco Wireless Controller’s Control Plane scale has improved tremendously. A comparison between the Cisco’s older 5508 and the newer 5520 wireless controller platforms illustrates this improvement. Due to new hardware capabilities in the forms of CPU, memory and software updates, the user authentication per second rate has jumped from 235 users on the 5508 to 764 users on the 5520, or an increase of 225% of user authentication capacity.

This increased authentication rate matters because the faster a device is authenticated, the quicker it gets to access the network resources and better the user experience becomes. Continue reading “Miercom Verified: The Cisco 5520 Wireless Controller is Ready for Your Next Generation of Wireless Networks!”

Authors

Kshitij Mahant

Technical Marketing Engineer

Enterprise Networking Group

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Digital Hoopla Team Playing PoolThey’re not pool sharks. They’re not hard-core gamers. They’re not Forrest Gump at the ping-pong table. They are, however, out to have fun together in what they call the Digital Halftime Hoopla lunchtime competition. They’re Cisco’s Digital Strategy and Enablement (DSE) Team!

“The Halftime Hoopla is a friendly competition,” says Kate Spring, a program manager for the DSE Team and the brain-child of the Halftime Hoopla. “Well, maybe sometimes it can get kind of heated. We’re a competitive bunch!”

Competitive in a friendly way, with no skills required, rest assured.

“In this competition, you don’t need to be good, you just need to be enthusiastic,” says Jennifer Mitchell, a project manager for the DSE team and Kate’s partner-in-crime for managing the program.

The DSE team is made up of seven groups, but to round it out to an even number of teams, the eighth team consists of the DSE leadership. Each group chose their game-face moniker. For example, The Digital Experience team competes as U-X Factor. The Digital Services and Platforms Team plays as the Smooth Operators. And the leadership? They’re the Space Invaders. And the team everyone wants to beat. *wink*

Digital Hoopla Team Ping PongEach quarter finds the teams competing in something different in a different part of the San Jose campus. The first quarter was all about trying their skills at video games (Mario Kart!) in the video game room. Next came breaking in the pool table. The current challenge is Ping-Pong.

Teams play each other in a half hour slot during lunch, and team members sign up to play via the internal Jive community. There’s a whole point system, to make it as fair as possible, and an entirely made-up set of rules to keep it light and fun.

Their prize? Glory. Bragging Rights. And, of course, the hand-made trophy, that could be an Emmy for as much as the teams compete for it.

Digital Hoopla Trophy“Everyone wants that trophy,” Kate laughs. “It’s really coveted, and sometimes carried around the office.”

Sound like fun? Their building office mates agree. Other teams linger in the hallways to watch and see who wins, sometimes cheering them on, sometimes consoling them in defeat. You can even tune into the occasional Periscope live-stream of the competition. Sometimes, with the Twitter hashtag #DigitalHoopla, they’ll display their skills (or lack thereof) for the world to watch.

“It makes people play a little differently when they know they’re being watched live,” Jennifer jokes.

Now, the DSE team is taking their game to the streets – of the Cisco San Jose campus that is. They’re trying to find ways to make it fun for other teams as well. Employees, you might want to start thinking of your team name – they’re coming for you!

If you want to have fun where you work, perhaps a job at Cisco would be a good match! See open roles at Cisco Careers.

Authors

Carmen Shirkey Collins

Social Media Manager

Talent Brand and Enablement Team, HR

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Are you an open minded person sales professional? Most of you reading this will say “Yes, I am open minded” without really thinking through the question.  Now more than ever we live in a world that is constantly changing. Keeping an open mind with your customers, prospects and other stakeholders is critical to your ability to survive and even thrive in this evolving and dynamic business environment. Unfortunately there’s no proven test to determine whether you are truly open-minded but the benefits are indisputable.

Here are just a few benefits of being open-minded:

  • Greater credibility as a fair-minded expert: Keeping an open mind allows an opportunity for you to change with the constantly evolving selling landscape. It doesn’t mean you HAVE to change your beliefs but it means you are at least open to evaluating new ideas and views. You may end up believing even more strongly in your existing ideas but being open means you’ve evaluated all sides of an idea or belief which lends to your credibility with customers and stakeholders.
  • Makes yourself vulnerable which opens the door to more authentic relationships: Having an open mind means you have to admit that you don’t know everything. It means being honest when you don’t know something. This can be uncomfortable as many sales people believe they are expected to be the expert and have all the answers. Many sales people unfortunately divert to the tactic of “overselling” where they sell based on what they hope to be true without verifying instead of simply admitting they don’t know. But seeing the world through an open mind is what makes you vulnerable and being vulnerable is the key to more enriching relationships. This vulnerability can be both terrifying and exhilarating but is required for true authenticity.
  • Strengthens your character: Open-mindedness provides a springboard for new ideas and a baseline that you can build upon, piling one idea on top of another. Being open-minded typically allows for new experiences which collectively make you the person you are and strengthen the beliefs that you hold. It’s very hard to build on experiences without an open mind.
  • Helps you to gain confidence. When you live with an open mind, you are continually learning and experiencing which contributes to a strong sense of self. You are not confined by your own beliefs, or the beliefs of others. You are open to evaluating new ideas without judgement. Imagine going into a new prospect’s environment and truly being open to the experience.  Take the time to learn as much as possible about what is going on there without jumping to a quick solution. Then, and only then, can you really understand what is needed and propose an optimal solution. Over time, your confidence will soar because you will no longer be fearful of the unknown. You will welcome it because it will add to your experience as a seasoned sales and business professional.

Continue reading “Open Your Mind to See More Closed Deals”

Authors

Karin Surber

Sr. Global Business Development Manager

Global Partner Strategy and Planning