Year: 2016

March 2, 2016 Leave a Comment
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Vodafone Germany Completes Trial of Intelligent Access Selection

As I was walking in the neighborhood this past weekend, I had a very frustrating experience between my Wi-Fi and cellular network. I was listening to my favorite radio station, streaming it via an app on my phone. As I walked further and further away from my home, the radio stream halted due to a weaker signal on Wi-Fi. By default, my phone tries to hang onto Wi-Fi for as long as possible before moving its connection to cellular. Usually, this is not an issue, because I have a higher bandwidth on Wi-Fi than I do on cellular inside my home. However, as I walked, my phone continued to try to stay connected to Wi-Fi despite the fact that the connection become poorer and poorer with each step I took. I needed a network that was intelligent enough to recognize which network would give me a better a connection and experience and utilize that. Fortunately, operators today are embracing Intelligent Access Selection to give customers that positive experience that I had hoped for.

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Maywun Wong

Manager, Market Management

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Introducing Cisco Digital Network Architecture (#CiscoDNA)

Part I: Attn: Networking Professionals – It’s Time to Change the World Again.

My fellow networkers, it’s time for the network to take the center stage once again. For a while now, IT professionals have been noticing the growing buzz around networking. Innovative new network developments – Open APIs, Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), etc. – are converging with evolving demands to usher in an exciting new phase of networking. And it shouldn’t surprise any of you that Cisco is playing a central role.

That’s why today marks an especially important day in Cisco’s network journey as we unveil the Cisco Digital Network Architecture, or Cisco DNA (#CiscoDNA), as we fondly call it. With Cisco DNA, we are re-defining networking with an open, extensible and software-driven strategy (See Diagram I below).

Cisco-DNA-Architecture-Principles
Diagram I: Cisco Digital Network Architecture Principles

Watch this video for an overview on Cisco Digital Network Architecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5imhLYRfmIE&index=1&list=PLB54CED506CFECDC3

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Raakhee Mistry

Senior Director

EN & Cloud Marketing

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A Network Architecture for the Digital Era: Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA)

Digitization is disrupting business and organizations on a scale more like a tsunami than a rising tide. IT and business leaders I meet with on a daily basis are telling me that to compete in the face of this disruption, their organizations need to harness the power of digital technologies or risk being left behind. This market transition affects everyone, whether you’re creating new experiences for consumers or your workforce, building operational technology for your business or creating the next generation of services for your citizens.

The very nature of digital business places new demands on the network, and in turn the network is what enables digital business. The key insight is that digital business is now happening at the edge of the enterprise, in the physical world as much as in the cloud and web.  Retailers are using the network for presence and analytics information about their customers.   Manufacturers are using the network to connect factories and supply chains in new ways.   Utilities are using the network to manage production and consumption of electricity in the new grid ecosystem, driven by solar and plug-in EV.

Today at Cisco Partner Summit 2016 we unveiled the Cisco Digital Network Architecture (Cisco DNA), a platform that will give our customers both a roadmap to digitization and a path to recognize immediate benefits of network automation, assurance and security. Wherever you are on the path to digital, with DNA we intend to make Cisco your partner of choice in this exciting journey.

To understand the motivation behind this new architecture, it is important to understand the evolution of network software.   The industry has been in the era of experimentation in networking software, starting with early academic concepts of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow, leading to SDN controllers, Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Model Based Networking and NetConf/YANG and most recently solutions leveraging the cloud and analytics in new ways.

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Rob Soderbery

Former Senior Vice President

No Longer with Cisco

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Digitization Compels a Fresh Approach to Network Security

We know that organizations today must digitize to thrive, with the CIO and IT teams at the helm of the transformational journey.   Why does this matter?  Because businesses must find ways to deliver more modern business operations as well as satisfying customer and workplace experiences or quickly fall behind their digitized competitors.

This digital transformation needs technology platforms made for digital business to bring-out new applications faster, make IT quicker and simpler – and of course do this all securely.

Cisco Digital Network Architecture DNAFor this reason, Cisco used its networking and security experience as the network’s original architect to create the Digital Network Architecture or DNA.  Organizations on the road to digitization will use DNA to spark key technology trends like mobility, IoT, the cloud, and analytics to innovate faster, reduce costs and complexity, lower risk, and increase security.

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Andrew Peters

Senior Manager for Product Marketing

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Join Us for the Women of Impact 2016 Conference on March 10th

The Women of Impact Conference is designed for women in IT, to give us a place to network and motivate one another. We unite women from all over the world to help each other and co-developing our careers. That’s exactly what we are set to do again next week.

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Silvia Karina Spiva

No Longer at Cisco

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Digitizing in the Real World

We hear terms like digitalization, digital business or digital transformation all over the place. But they are more than just buzz words. At Cisco, we are on a mission to help our customers transform their business so they can lead their industries.

As Gartner defines it, “Digital business is the creation of new business designs that not only connect people and business, but also connect people and business with things to drive revenue and efficiency.”

To better explain the process of going digital and the benefits, it helps to take a look at an industry that is not traditionally digital, such as manufacturing. Manufacturers invest in machines worth millions of dollars. Keeping factory equipment running optimally is an essential part of running a successful facility and can be a big – and costly – challenge.

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Mike Flannagan

No Longer with Cisco

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Exaprobe (Econocom) Offers New STARC Cloud Security Services from Cisco

Exaprobe, subsidiary of respected digital technology integrator and cloud service provider Econocom in France, rolled-out new Cloud Security Services as part of their Security Threat Assessment and Response Center (STARC) offering. The STARC services provide Exaprobe customers industry-leading protection from today’s most advanced cyber threats and reduces operating expenses such as staffing and equipping an internal security team.

Exaprobe’s news follows publication of test results from independent test lab EANTC that validate Cisco’s threat-centric security solutions for service providers. Light Reading, commissioned the study to examine just how emerging network topologies can be secured, defended and recovered before, during and after attacks of various kinds. The details are published here. This result is the industry’s first, third party validation of physical and virtual security solutions for SP cloud and NFV. EANTC found Cisco’s suite of capabilities more than capable of meeting the needs of today’s service providers, whether in a virtualized environment or when a hardware-based solution is needed to deliver certain levels of performance and scale. This testing illustrates how Service Providers can move confidently and quickly to embrace NFV and new innovative services to increase revenue, deliver greater business agility, lower costs, and minimize risk.

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Sam Rastogi

Senior Product & Solutions Marketing Manager

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Low Power Wide Area: LoRa – Emerging IoT Technology Accelerating Service Provider and Smart City Services

The Internet of Things (IoT) is accelerating the Digital World. All Connected things however, don’t have the same characteristics in terms of connectivity, bandwidth capacity and deployment. Until recently, the range of wide area connectivity technologies for M2M and IoT applications were largely limited to powered devices over cellular and WiFi. As cities become digital, billions of sensors placed in everyday objects and assets require cost effective, low power, low throughput, and long range access network. Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) is one such emerging and promising wireless technology for both private and public IoT infrastructure and is especially useful for securely connecting every corner of cities.

As one of the technologies inside LPWA landscape, running on unlicensed spectrum, LoRa is an enabler for new services related to IoT and Smart City and is disruptive. It’s distinguished advantages makes it suitable to address a massive IoT market segment, which existing cellular and Wi-Fi technologies have challenges to conquer. It is a new technology for battery powered sensors connectivity, and is relatively simple on backend infrastructure. For example, it can be deployed in a wide variety of situations such as environment monitoring, smart parking, water and gas metering, and asset tracking.

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In June 2015, Cisco, a founder of LoRa Alliance, rolled out the first-generation of Cisco LoRa gateway. Cisco continues to work with diverse partners to build a full-fledged LoRa system for Service Provider (SP), Smart City, and vertical customers. Continue reading “Low Power Wide Area: LoRa – Emerging IoT Technology Accelerating Service Provider and Smart City Services”

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Vikas Butaney

SVP | GM, Secure Routing and Industrial IoT

Secure WAN and Industrial IoT

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Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Leaba Semiconductor

Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire Leaba Semiconductor, a venture-backed fabless semiconductor company based in Israel. Leaba is a team with a strong and successful track record of designing leading edge networking semiconductors that provide innovative solutions to address significant infrastructure challenges.

This acquisition advances our innovation strategy, supports continued differentiation of Cisco products and delivers on our goal to provide best-in-class solutions for our customers. By combining Leaba’s semiconductor expertise with the Cisco engineering team, we will accelerate our plans for Cisco’s next generation product portfolio and bring new capabilities to the market faster.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay $320M in cash and assumed equity awards, plus additional retention based incentives.

The Leaba team will report into Cisco’s Core Hardware Group, led by Senior Vice President, Ravi Cherukuri.

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Rob Salvagno

Vice President

Corporate Development and Cisco Investments