According to a 2015 survey from the Global Center for Digital Business Transformation (DBT Center), a joint initiative of Cisco and the Institute of Management Development (IMD), 47 percent of retail executives say digital disruption increases the risk of going out of business. In addition, the survey revealed that four of the top 10 retail incumbents will be displaced by digital disruption over the next five years.
The good news is that a new Cisco analysis shows that digital transformation can help retailers tap into an estimated $506 billion of value globally through 2018. For a $20B retailer, this represents $823 million of annual Digital Value at Stake — new value or value that shifts among retail firms based on their ability to harness digital capabilities. The challenge is that in 2015, retailers realized only 15 percent of their potential Digital Value at Stake.
The Mobile World Congress this week in Barcelona is host to almost 100,000 attendees. That’s a lot of people! Since the mobile industry has such a significant impact on the world and the worldwide economy, no wonder there is so much interest. This is an industry that employed nearly 13 million men and women in 2014, and contributed more than $3 trillion to global GDP.
The Mobile World Congress is sponsored by the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA). GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators around the globe and unites nearly 800 operators with more than 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem — an ecosystem spanning several industries where Cisco has vested interests, especially in the area of security.
Security is high on everyone’s priority list. Contrary to the notion that most security attacks are from the outside, recent cyber events show that the weakest link is from inside threats (through the use of removable media or vendor/contractor laptops, for example). For this reason, IoT cyber security requires a holistic architectural approach.
It is imperative that we think about security differently. While many think of security in terms of protection, digitization and IoT connectivity open the possibilities for broader applications. Security can be an enabler of next-generation business outcomes through insightful analytics, data visibility, and integration. This has particularly exciting implications for regulated industries like utilities. Continue reading “Security Enables Next Generation Business Outcomes”
Security threats are varied and often unpredictable. We are faced with an expanding attack surface. Adversaries abound, spanning organized crime, nation-states and malicious insiders.
It is against this backdrop that the IT solutions lifecycle may appear to be an “unharnessable” security beast: the value chain. Many hypothesize that IT solutions with security “built in” are as rare as the mythological unicorn. I propose quashing such a hypothesis and making security “built in” a reality. And…the very place to do it is across the value chain.
The threat landscape is in constant flux. In many situations, the entire security community must work together to combat some of today’s larger threats. Novetta researched a group of malware families that all appear to be related to the same group of threat actors dubbed “The Lazarus Group” (Group 77).According to Novetta’s analysis, which was released in a report titled “Operation Blockbuster”, these malware families have been behind multiple high profile attacks over the last nine years. By working with Novetta, Talos was able to ensure that our customers were protected against this threat.
Talos examined the various malware families involved in the research through the samples provided to us to verify that we have coverage for all of the malware families.
I have the privilege of being in Barcelona this week for Mobile World Congress. With nearly 100,000 attendees and an impressive conference agenda, it’s a week packed with not only ideas and innovation, but with interactions with leaders, startups, disruptors, and other major players in mobile technology.
The topic of mobility continues to dominate and fuel our industry,, particularly because of the opportunities made possible by my other passion, fog computing. As mobile network traffic continues to explode, traditional cellular, backhaul and packet core architectures will begin to fall short. By deploying the computation, networking, and storage capabilities of fog at the edge of their networks, mobile service providers can substantially improve performance, security, capacity, and reliability—and create significant new revenue opportunities.
One exciting new opportunity for service providers is “Fog as a Service” (FaaS), where a service provider builds out an array of fog nodes across its geographic footprint, and acts as a landlord to many tenants from many vertical markets. Each fog node hosts local computation, networking, and storage capabilities. The nodes can be packaged for outdoor deployment, perhaps in street corner cabinets, on rooftops, or integrated in fiber nodes or cells. The fog software infrastructure might include virtualization, orchestration, sophisticated security, and the application programming interfaces needed to enable many different stakeholders to generate a wide variety of applications that run with a minimum of integration fuss.
Fog computing addresses problems that are common to many verticals.
Once the fog network is deployed, the FaaS provider would lease fog capabilities to many tenants, such as municipalities (managing government operations, sanitation, surveillance, or emergency services); transportation companies (dispatching taxis, logistics tracking of deliveries, fleet management); broadband service and content providers (operating co-located Wi-Fi or microcells, caching, customer relationship management, fault tolerance); or even nearby buildings (hosting energy management or security services), to name a few. If each of these tenants built out its own fog network, the total cost would be astronomical, and the city would be choked with functionally overlapping fog boxes. Continue reading “Huge Opportunities for Service Providers at the Intersection of Fog and Mobility”
#CiscoChampion Radio is a podcast series by Cisco Champions as technologists. Today we’re discussing NPI Wireless with Cisco Subject Matter Expert Brian Levin.
Did you just accept your Cisco Internship offer? Congratulations – we’re excited to have you on board! Earlier this year, Jackie Shuler, University Relations Lead – East, provided us with The 5 Things You Can Do Right Now To Land an Internship and it looks like many of you took her advice. Excited about our incoming interns, Jackie and I continued our conversation and she shared another 5 tips on what you can do after you’ve accepted your offer to put you on the right track for success during your Cisco Internship! This is what she shared with me:
Reach out to your Recruiter. Your recruiter can likely tell you who you’ll be working with, and help to put you in touch with your hiring manager. Once you find out who your hiring manager is, you’ll be able to prepare for your role better by asking them questions directly. Ask them about what tools you might need to excel in your position, or what advice they could offer to help you get started more efficiently.
Network! Get together with other Cisco interns that may be at your school – whether they be past or present. Be sure to ask your peers questions, gain crucial information, and build a network of friends who will join you throughout this process. See what they might be expecting in their first few days or weeks at Cisco. This is a great way to connect over and dispel any nerves you may have. Plus, you’ll have a new friend to make getting started even easier! Remember that everyone may not stay at Cisco forever, so these will be great connections to take with you throughout your career.
Don’t forget to follow @CiscoUniversity and @WeAreCisco throughout social media or join the conversation by using #WeAreCisco!
Be Flexible. Have an open mindset to the experience, and know that things can change at any moment as business needs change. Do whatever it takes to be successful, and know that team players who can adapt and adjust to any situation are an invaluable asset to every company – but especially Cisco!
Ask Questions. Don’t be afraid to ask all the questions you have, and don’t find yourself caught off guard because you didn’t ask questions! This is a great way to find out how your performance will be evaluated, how you might better yourself for future roles, and learn about the team you’ll be joining. What will be expected of you? What should you be hoping to take from your role? No question is out of question here at Cisco.
Follow Through. Remember when we said to reach out to your hiring manager and ask questions? If your hiring manager recommends a book to read or a site to look into — follow through and make sure you complete those tasks when you say you will. Trying to establish yourself is great, taking initiative and setting the bar high is even better – but if you don’t follow through it will be even worse if you had never asked in the first place. Following through on the initiatives you inquire about will truly help you shine.
Do you have any tips or pointers for our upcoming Cisco Interns? Leave them in the comments section below!
This week, we are showing how we’re delivering on our strategy of helping service providers drive profitable business outcomes in today’s digital world and keep pace with an industry undergoing unprecedented change:
Customer momentum— Multiple customer wins with several top-tier service providers and mobile operators, including DT, SK Telecom, Orange, AT&T, Verizon, Telstra, Vodafone Germany, Vodafone Portugal, Telefonica, and Vodacom South Africa.
The cloud is no longer the disruptive technology of tomorrow. Today, it plays an essential role in day-to-day business operations of an increasing number of organizations worldwide. With the expanding number of services available, cloud represents an important opportunity for cloud providers. However, with this expansion also comes greater competition.
In the early days of cloud, Cisco recognized the need for businesses to identify cloud providers who offer enterprise-class services. By creating the Cisco Powered designation, Cisco helps customers more easily find providers offering the performance, reliability, and security they require. And when these organizations select a Cisco Powered service, they know their service will match or exceed what they could deploy from their own data centers.
With the increasing availability of best-effort cloud services, Cisco Powered continues to play an important role in helping businesses connect with the right cloud providers. And, just as cloud technology has evolved over the years, so has Cisco Powered.
You can offer both Cisco Powered cloud and managed services, allowing your customers to collaborate and work the way they want.
Cisco Powered Cloud Services: Your customers can run their applications – even mission-critical operations – in enterprise-class data centers around the world. As a provider, you manage their services so they don’t have to. Several of these cloud services are now available on the Cisco Powered Architecture for Microsoft Cloud Platform. This simplifies, optimizes, and accelerates the entire application deployment lifecycle.
The extensive Cisco Powered portfolio enables you to deliver a wide range of services to meet the varied requirements of your customers.
11 cloud services in the areas of infrastructure, collaboration and security, including those based on the Cisco Powered Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform
10 managed services in the areas of collaboration, connectivity, and security
As a member of the Cisco partner ecosystem, you are part of an elite group of cloud providers, resellers, cloud builders, and aggregators.
Partners within the ecosystem work together to deliver application-specific cloud solutions and jointly help customers realize the greatest value from the Internet of Everything.
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