Year: 2016

December 30, 2016 7 Comments
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Cisco Education: A Year in Review

It’s been quite the year for education at Cisco! In 2016, we attended numerous education shows, shared powerful stories of technology on campuses around the world, and launched our Digital Education Platform. Read on for some of this year’s top moments.

In April, our education team traveled to Washington, DC for the CoSN conference, where we learned from some of the country’s best leaders in K-12 education. In June, we teamed up with Meraki and iSchool at ISTE to introduce impactful technologies to educators and administrators. And, in October, we joined thousands of higher education leaders at EDUCAUSE to unveil our new platform.

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This year, we also shared many inspiring stories of schools and universities using technology to personalize the student experience and digitize their campuses. Some of our most shared customer stories included, the University of British Columbia, the University of Nebraska, Howe Public Schools, University of León and the Romanian Ministry of Education.

Beyond larger universities and school districts, our technologies are also making a huge impact on students with illnesses that prohibit them from attending school. Using collaboration technologies, students can now be immersed in their classrooms from home, as evidenced by Peyton’s story, Callie’s story and Niki’s story.

In 2016, our education experts at Cisco also created some truly thought provoking research, papers and blogs. Some of our favorites include how to use technology to bridge the digital inequality gap, how to protect your school from ransomware attacks, how digital technologies are changing K-12 education in Australia and globally, and how to plan a vision for technological change at your school district.

Plus, in October, we launched our Digital Education Platform, a new educational platform that integrates Cisco WebEx and Spark into existing Learning Management Systems (LMSs).

DEP Overview

After such an exciting year full of technological transformation in education, we can’t wait to see what 2017 brings!

 



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Alexia Crossman

Global Healthcare Leader

Cisco Industries Marketing

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The impact on network security through encrypted protocols – HTTP/2

This is the start of a planned series of posts around the impact that new protocols are making on the way many of us deal with network security today.

The protocols we have been using on the internet, mainly TCP with HTTP 1.1, have shown that they cannot deal with today’s requirements for fast and efficient handling of content. As the protocols are changing, we also need to make sure, that our network security strategy is in line with the requirements. This is mainly a concern for gateway security that is targeted to inspect incoming and outgoing traffic. How is this being impacted?

Let’s start to talk about a protocol that is already specified in a RFC and is growing fast: HTTP/2

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7540

The reason for HTTP/2 is mainly that HTTP/1.1 is old and no longer an efficient way to deal with modern requirements. One example where HTTP/1.1 is coming short is the so called “Head-of-Line” blocking. HTTP/1.0 had one connection open for every request. Highly inefficient and slow. HTTP/1.1 introduced a method called pipelining. This means that we can request several objects of content in one request. The problem is that all objects need to be served in the order that they were sent.
Example:
Client: “Please send me a picture of a dog, a cat and a house!”

Server:” Here is a picture of a dog, a cat , and …(searching … searching… waiting…) a house!”

You get the point, right? This is called “Head-of-Line” blocking. Similar to your shopping experience in the supermarket and there are too few registers open. And you have to wait….
Continue reading “The impact on network security through encrypted protocols – HTTP/2”



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Tobias Mayer

Technical Solution Architect

EMEA Security Architecture Team

December 28, 2016 4 Comments
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Howe Public Schools Reimagine Education

Learning is no longer confined to the classroom, the campus or the home. For students in rural southeast Oklahoma, the commute to school on the bus is an active learning space.

Howe Public School students who were once limited by their physical rural location can now access advanced courses and college curriculum. Cisco collaboration tools, in conjunction with the learners’ devices, provide a seamless conduit to real-time instructors via TelePresence and just-in-time avenues for peer and teacher mentoring.

These students can now can access the same resources they use at school while enroute via the Connected Transportation for Education initiative.

Through Connected Transportation for Education, school personnel and parents can locate a bus, know who is on it, and have a live video feed, as the technology brings connected school safety and security to new threshold. And, for bus maintenance leaders, the real-time data around preventative maintenance, malfunctioning components and engine analytics provides a proactive approach to addressing mechanical issues.

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Reimagining education is not about technology or devices, it’s about moving to a truly individualized and differentiated learning experience. Watch the video below to learn how Howe Public Schools is doing just that.



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Dr. Lance Ford

Education Advocate

Customer Experience Center

December 24, 2016 4 Comments
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Happy Holidays!

It is Christmas Eve here, and my family is making cookies. Soon, more family will be coming over. We have a whole list of things that need to be cut, prepared and cooked. And, I cannot wait. My family indeed enjoys this time of year, especially when we will be at Mammoth Mountain next week!

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But before all of that, I thought it would be nice to reflect on the past year. It has been another good one with new products launched, new avenues opening and new strategic plans developed and started. We all look forward to what comes next year. Hopefully, with 2017 come new opportunities, new friends and new partners. We can always improve, be more efficient, and have an open mind, in short continue to evolve. Striving to be our best, so our products are the best they can be, proving their worth every day.

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From our Team to you all around the world, have the Happiest of Holidays and Happy New Year’s!

Marc and the Cisco Business Team

 



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Marc Nagao

Product Manager

Small Business RV Series Routers

December 23, 2016 2 Comments
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What happens in a “Data Center Day”? (A Data Center Geek’s Version of the “Internet Minute”)

Inspired by Excelacom’s excellent and popular “What happens in an Internet minute” infographic, we’ve put together a nerdier version pertaining to data centers using data from our recent Global Cloud Index along with a few other figures. It’s just as impressive in our view, if a little more obscure.

For the two figures in the infographic that come from the Cisco Global Cloud Index, we have projections for what this graphic might look like by 2020:

  • Instead of 200 million gigabytes of new data saved each day, we expect there to be 600 million gigabytes of new data saved each day by 2020, 200 million gigabytes of which will be in big data deployments. In other words, the volume of big data by 2020 will be as much as all of the stored data in all of the world’s data centers today.
  • Instead of 14 billion gigabytes of traffic within data centers, there will be 32 billion gigabytes transported. Traffic within the data center is significantly higher than the amount of data exiting data centers and will continue to be through 2020. See our whitepaper for more details.

The scale and complexity of data center operations is mind-bending, and only continues to grow. High growth is compelling data center operators to seek means of streamlining and automating the management of traffic, workloads, and data, and is accelerating the adoption of software-defined networking and storage. By 2020, we expect two-thirds of all data center traffic to be handled by SDN/NFV infrastructures.

Rapid evolution and growth should make for an exciting 2017! Learn how Cisco ASAP (Analyze. Simplify. Automate. Protect.) data center solutions can transform your cloud infrastructure.

 

 



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Arielle Sumits

Senior Analyst

Service Provider Marketing

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The We’re Listening Blog Series: ‘Tis the Season for Social Media Monitoring

It’s cyber Monday. Youblog pic dec’re online cart’s full, ready to check out. And then…screen freeze. Refresh, refresh. Nothing. Close the page, open it again – buffering. Is it the site? Internet provider? A quick sweep of Twitter shows outage complaints  popping up. As your annoyance level grows, you tweet, too, but is anyone listening?

This scenario illustrates the power of social media. With one tweet, a topic, product or issue can go from unknown to thousands of followers in a matter of minutes. From a customer service perspective, monitoring these social media spikes is critical because they could be an early warning sign for a big problem.

It’s especially true during the holidays, when web traffic is heavy and many retailers and other businesses rely on their websites running smoothly. Outages could have a devastating impact so teams keep a close watch on systems, networks, and social media chatter.

For Cisco, active listening across various social media channels is instrumental to proactive customer support. Social media monitoring helps us track and respond to sentiment about our products, services, and customer experiences.

And, since Cisco’s Contact Center is already monitoring social media 24/7, several years ago we expanded our scope to also watch for areas of concern on behalf of our customers. The team looks for crowdsourcing related to outages, service disruptions or other events that could impact business operations of our customers and partners.

Alerts are raised based on trending topics in tweets or posts from customers, vendors, mainstream news channels, or end user complaints. The team assesses to determine if the issue is current and valid, and widespread enough to cause significant effects.

For a Cisco-related issue, we assemble the right resources for proactive resolution. For non-Cisco issues, we’ll notify the impacted customer so they can engage and manage the issue. But, our end goal is to support our customers and ensure their success, so we’ll proactively offer assistance whether it’s a Cisco issue or not.

Additionally, we watch for activity related to wide-spread disasters as an early alert for Cisco’s emergency response team. Any action suggesting a security or data breach also warrants notification to our Customer Data Protection and Information Security teams to ensure Cisco is actively engaged to help stop the breach and secure customer data.

At Cisco, we’re committed to finding new ways to deliver an exceptional customer experience and deepen our relationship with customers and partners. Our proactive social media monitoring approach has helped our customers in many cases by making them aware of a potential problem that their own monitoring had missed, or that hadn’t yet reached critical mass.

How has social media monitoring helped your business? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.



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Curt Hill

Senior Vice President

Customer Assurance

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Amid ACA Uncertainty, One Surefire Strategy for Healthcare Organizations

A few years ago, I spent a week in the hospital after having surgery. As I recovered, the days fell into a predictable routine:

  • Wake up, find the phone and flimsy, stained menu.
  • Call the number. Wait on hold. Give my order for breakfast.
  • Wait an hour and a half for it to be delivered.
  • Switch on the TV while I wait. (Ugh, basic cable. Why can’t I fast forward through the commercials?)
  • Wish my doctor would stop by. (I have questions!)

And underlying all of this, a growing anxiety: “What is this going to cost? Sure, I have insurance, but what’s my deductible? What about co-insurance?”

Sound familiar?HAG56083

If it feels like you’re paying more out of pocket for healthcare than ever before, it’s not your imagination. Deductibles alone have risen 67 percent since 2010, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

This probably won’t change anytime soon. Because… well, for one, there’s that pesky issue of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). What is going to happen to it? No one knows for sure, but most agree there will be changes to at least some parts of the law.

Likely, the direction of any new regulation will be toward even greater patient responsibility. Perhaps there will be increased use of HSAs. Employers may be relieved of some of their responsibility. There could be increased competition among health facilities and health plans. Cost transparency might increase.

The bottom line? Healthcare consumerism just got a turbo boost.

If we as patients are paying more and taking more initiative, that means we expect more. We have choices (in most areas, at least). And we have a platform (social media) for airing our praises and grievances.

What does this mean for healthcare organizations?   

It means you need to differentiate. You must give patients a reason (or two) to choose your facility and doctors above the competition. And a great place to start is by focusing on your technology.

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Here are some suggestions:

  1. Ensure secure internet access is available throughout the building, and that patients can bring and use their own devices. Today, this is no longer a nice-to-have – it’s table stakes.
  2. Help make the treatment experience more comfortable. There’s a lot of waiting around in the care experience. But what if you had a platform like Cisco Patient Connect? It offers features like patient entertainment, education, and provider interaction – all in one place. As a patient, how great would it be to order your meals digitally? Watch movies without interruption? Even better, get a quick answer to a question about your condition?
  3. Give patients more control over their care. For instance, offer appointment scheduling online. One portal for viewing health data. The ability to digitally report metrics tracked at home. If that sounds appealling, you’ll want to check out Cisco and UCSF’s Connected Health Interoperability Platform.

And those are just a few examples.

As we roll into 2017, the patient is rising as the hero of the story. So let’s give patients the attention they deserve. Even if you’re not worried about competition, there’s another compelling reason to focus on the patient: better treatment outcomes. Engaged patients take their medications. They make lifestyle changes. They’re proactive about their health.

I know that as a patient, it would make a difference for me.

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Amy Young

Marketing Manager

Healthcare

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A Year of Change Pays Off

“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”

That was the quote I used by W. Edwards Deming, a 20th century engineer and physicist, to open up my collaboration breakout session at Partner Summit back in March. Obviously, it’s tongue-in-cheek, but the point is clear.

We’ve spent the last year together at partner events around the world putting our heads together to work through change. We are on a course to move to cloud and recurring revenue, and there have certainly been a few challenges and learning experiences along the way. Together, we have been through leaps of faith, painful realities, setbacks, and even brief episodes of denial.

But we have also experienced breakthrough innovation, overcome obstacles, and seen many of our risks pay off. As a result, we can look forward to the new calendar year with great optimism, knowing that together we’ve built a strong foundation in technology and go-to-market on which we can accelerate our business.

As 2016 comes to a close, I am thankful for our ongoing relationship and the continued trust and mutual investment it rests upon. We have taken the time to meet, share, listen, and propel our partnership forward. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we have so much more to anticipate in 2017, starting with a monumental collaboration launch on January 24. We’ve all been waiting for this, and it’s going to be another big step forward for on this shared journey! Please register for the Partner Regional Launchcast to get a preview of everything we’ll be announcing. You’ll also want to register to attend the virtual event where you can see the live stream of Rowan Trollope’s and Chuck Robbins’s keynote.

Cisco is way ahead of the curve on strategy and vision for enterprise collaboration. We know you believe in this portfolio. Every day, you choose to sell Cisco collaboration, and as a result, we had our best year ever in 2016. More than 90 percent of that record-setting business was booked by you! You are such a tremendous part of our past, present, and future.

The best is yet to come. More change for sure, but we are going to do more than survive. We are going to soar in 2017! Happy holidays!



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Gary Wolfson

Director, Global Partner Software Sales

December 22, 2016 1 Comment
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New Cisco Video Product Short – RV320 and RV325 with Web Filtering

Hello and Happy Holidays to you around the world. As we get closer to the end of 2016, we thought it would be fun to highlight a new medium for you that we have been working on. We are lucky to have an incredible group of interns at the University of Santa Cruz, led by Gabriel Rulon.

We have come out with our first Product Video Short. It is not a full Video Datasheet, it is a short, 60-90 second Video designed to provide a quick glimpse on our products. We will be doing more of these next year for all of lines of products.

We hope you like it.

From our team to all of you Happy Holidays.



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Marc Nagao

Product Manager

Small Business RV Series Routers