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Incredible to see what a year can do— especially, when you’re sitting at the unique-cross section of tech and media!  I can’t help but feel nostalgic—it’s that time of year of course—when we look back at what we’ve accomplished and how far we have come.  The holidays fuel that type of retrospection, however, when you are a company as large as Cisco, it seems like we are always running toward the next thing..The next project, innovation, event.  But for today, I want to take a moment to look back and celebrate how far we have come in one year.

Twelve months ago, many of our customers in media would not have looked upon Cisco as a media focused company.  Sure, a tech company…but not one that understood their end-to-end needs of production, contribution, post, and distribution.  Not one that was focused on how to help them create new monetization offerings or capable of helping them launch agile services. Certainly, not one that could help them navigate the changing landscape of SDI or Satellite to IP….What a difference a year makes!

We officially a launched the Cisco Media Blueprint – our vision for the E2E needs of our content producing customers.  We doubled down on strategic partnerships with media darlings Grass Valley, Riedel, EVS and Imagine Communications to introduce new solutions across remote and studio production and changed the game with our private cloud offerings for post-production and playout.  If we couldn’t figure out how to build it, we bought it!  1Mainstream became part of the Cisco family and augmented our primary video distribution solutions by offering a completely managed (and 100% cloud-based) OTT offering for any device.  We showed our stuff at NAB to incredible reviews, then nailed it again at IBC.  We re-evaluated our Security portfolio and augmented the needs of our studio clients by innovating new ways to prevent account sharing, DRM for OTT, and of course Anti-Piracy.

Then, we enlisted the office of the CTO and Chief Architect to get involved in the fun and fast track the innovation, by introducing All the Cool Stuff.  As we went on, we realized that none of this was any good if it wasn’t open and standards based, so we helped found the AIMS organization.  We worked hard to build an extraordinary team, composed of diversity of idea, industry, experience, and demographic makeup.  And if that wasn’t enough, we launched three more Summits focused on Sports, Studios and doing business in the Media business, by partnering with Intel and Devoncroft to throw the big-daddy of events, the Cisco-Intel Media Summit!

As if all of that wasn’t epic enough, we received the ultimate affirmation—the endorsement and validation of our direction from our customers.  We announced strategic engagements with NBC Sports and Encompass and watched as demand for our IP Fabric for Media and Media Data Center solutions flew off the charts!  While the amount of activity this year has been vast (trust me when I say we are looking forward to the holiday break!) we have already begun the work to ensure 2017 follows suit and is nothing short of amazing.

So, you see, we have so much to be grateful for this year. We took note of the market and tech transition in media and we invested.  We brought the best and brightest together to innovate and co-develop alongside of our customers in this ever-changing environment—because our intent is to not only change the way we work, live, play, and learn—it’s to change the way we produce, distribute, and monetize the content we love! I guess you could call it a miracle on 34th St…

 



Authors

Samira Panah Bakhtiar

Director, Cisco's Media Operation

Global Service Provider Organization

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Customer interaction is getting personal. As a consumer, I want the best possible service I can get. In just the last few years, I have seen service move from being a phone call with a representative to interactive voice response (IVR) systems to email or live online chat. These are great alternatives, but still not very personal.

Video in Contact Centers

The new era points to a concierge customer-service experience via video, allowing much more intimate and rich conversations. Today we see phone calls from mobile devices leading to agent interactions that encompass video, document sharing, and co-browsing.

I’ll be honest: I am a late believer in the power of video. But when my parents from India declared their preferred mode of communication to be FaceTime video, I was converted.

Video experiences are simpler, easier, and far richer than ever before. Different video communications options are now widely available. With the advent of secure video via solutions like Cisco Spark, I expect that the use of video will continue to increase.

Doing Contact Center Video Right

Contact centers have an enduring business requirement to capture and analyze customer interactions for quality, training, satisfaction rates, and such. Businesses need a way to capture video interactions and derive value from deeper analytics.

Some industries have even stronger requirements, such as financial services and healthcare. For example:

Especially in these cases, successful implementation of a video recording, storage, and retrieval solution to meet compliance requirements (legal, business, trade group) is critical. But you also need easy and effective ways to analyze the data. Storage will be a challenge for video recordings, because it requires more data and doesn’t allow for easy encryption. But new solution architectures with elastic storage are ideal for these growing storage needs.

Solving the Problem

It is exciting to see software solutions solving the problem. Session border controllers now enable video recording. The Session Recording Protocol (SIPREC) IETF specifications define a SIP-based protocol for these solutions. Unified Communications solutions from various companies have solutions now.

Cisco Customer Care solutions enable businesses to easily enable video collaboration and the ability to record and replay these conversations.

The Cisco Remote Expert Mobile solution enables companies to provide mobile video communications between a customer and business,

I look forward to have rich video interactions with businesses in the coming year. (And I know that my interaction could possibly be recorded for training or compliance reasons!)

Cisco Spark Event 1.24.17



Authors

Anil Verma

Product Manager

Contact Center

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The year is about to end, but the hard work of our labor keeps on bearing fruits. From several customer successes at the beginning to Best of Interop mid-year, and now, we’re wrapping up 2016 with two more industry certifications for Cisco Routing platforms: the MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 and Miercom Performance Verified.

One Shall Reap What One Sows

What we sow are our relentless commitment to and delivery of network innovations. In return, we reap the attainments of successes by our customers using our innovations. Throughout the year, we witnessed many business transformations enabled by our products and solutions. Many even co-celebrated their wins with us on stage at Cisco Live. See a few highlights for 2016 below. (For a comprehensive list of innovations in Enterprise Network, see Prashanth Shenoy’s blog Cisco DNA Ushers a New Era.)

Early on, Patrick Drew, Network Infrastructure Manager, shared how Huntington Bank migrated to Bank of the Future with Cisco Intelligent WAN. Results: 66% cost avoidance and high availability up to 100%. Branch manager’s accolade: “Teller application is running great!” View Huntington Bank session video and presentation.

At Cisco Live Las Vegas, Sean Wang, University of British Columbia Network Architect, leveraged network virtualization to deploy virtual firewall and load balancer across a campus of 400 hectares and 200 locations. Sean simplified and scaled the university network up to 10G, automated configurations, and achieved GO GREEN status. View UBC session video and presentation.

Along the way, our innovations were recognized. Also in Las Vegas, we won Best of Interop in several categories:

1. Cisco Enterprise NFV, the first branch virtualization solution for enterprise;
2. Cisco Flexible Radio Assignment, an intelligence-driven, real-time capacity management feature available on Cisco Aironet Wireless Access Points; and
3. Cisco FirePOWER Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), the first threat-focused, fully integrated NGFW with unified policy management.

About two weeks ago, two customers, Under Armour and Adobe, shared how they successfully extended applications to public clouds using Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000V and Transit Virtual Private Cloud solution on AWS. We hit record highs in terms of number of registrations and attendance capacity for this webinar. If you missed the session or wasn’t able to login due to capacity limit, watch it on-demand here and test try CSR1000V for free.

And Now, Two New Certifications

MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0. It is an industry program that certifies compliance with Carrier Ethernet 2.0 standards. Our enterprise and carrier-class routers, the ISR 4000 Series and ASR 1000 Series, got certified among a selected few. Networking Equipment Manufacturer (NEM) goes through an independent lab test of 634 test cases in order to attain such certification. When using an MEF CE 2.0 certified product, customers can rest assure that:

  • A-level of services are provided with certified equipment/software.
  • Test burden for their organization is reduced.
  • Compatibility with other vendors in mixed deployment environment is assured.
  • Certified equipment will operate within the published specs for functionality and accuracy.

Miercom Performance Verified. Miercom independent lab test attests to the reliability of network product’s claimed performance. This is even more important for software product in the cloud than hardware product. In a shared resource environment like a public or private cloud, load-balancing among virtual machines and virtual network services requires not only high availability, but also horizontal scaling. These capabilities ensure businesses can spin up or down services on-demand (agility) and elastically scale as the application needs expand (flexibility). Following the footstep of the ISR 4000 Series, our Cloud Services Router 1000V is now Miercom Performance Verified for public and private cloud environments.

Some highlights from the CSR1000V Miercom report.

  • Using just one or two virtual CPUs (vCPUs) per virtual machine (VM), CSR 1000v delivers outstanding throughput performance – up to physical limit of 20 Gbps on x86 Server and up to 5 Gbps on Amazon Web Services.
  • The latest CSR 1000v software we tested delivers up to 40 percent better throughput than the previous version 3.17.
  • Benefits to using CSR 1000v became apparent in all scenarios tested – including quick implementation, flexibility, hypervisor agnostic, and IOS XE’s familiar configuration and diagnostics tools.

Not so shabby for 2016, wouldn’t you say? Stay tuned. In 2017, we have many new innovations and even more customer successes to share. Meanwhile, happy holidays to you and yours.



Authors

Anna Duong

Products & Solutions Marketing

Enterprise Network and Cloud

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Over the last year, more than 4,000 people from our partner community attended a Customer Success Talk webinar and joined us on a journey to create customers for life. In addition to sharing practice-building tips and tools, the series has also served as a way to gauge where we all are on the path to becoming customer success experts.

It is encouraging to see that nearly all who attended a webinar are already building their own customer success practice to improve the customer experience, drive loyalty, and identify growth opportunities. For those of you who are new to the concept, we’ve put together a free eBook with everything you need to get started.

 Download the eBook: Getting Started with Customer Success

Here are three customer success resolutions you can’t afford to break in 2017:

  1. Sell on value rather than cost. It can seem intimidating to completely transform the conversation you have with your customers, but it is absolutely necessary for your continued success. Building a culture of customer success requires a focus on what is important to your customers and rewarding your team’s progress in helping customers achieve their goals. Identify key motivators that deliver value to your customers. Watch: Improving Customer Relevance and Business Outcomes
  1. Drive big results with big data. Data connects your process and automation efforts by providing actionable insights that drive customer engagement in the areas of product usage, upsell/cross sell opportunities and renewal potential. To make your data actionable, it’s crucial that you determine where the data lives and how to get it in the hands of your Customer Success Managers. Define what data your team needs to be successful. Watch: Growing Customer Lifetime Value with Best in Class Data Management Practices
  1. Build loyalty through adoption. Customer Success is about lifecycle management, retention and optimization. The most effective way to retain customers is helping them understand and consume the technology they purchased to achieve their business goals. Develop an adoption journey that creates customer loyalty and increases customer satisfaction. Watch: Design a Winning Customer Adoption Strategy

As we wrap up this year on our journey together, let’s focus our efforts on taking advantage of these opportunities and commit to consistently delivering more value to our customers.

Get Caught Up – Watch All 2016 Customer Success Talk Highlights

Attend Customer Success Talk – Check for Upcoming Sessions in 2017

 



Authors

Nichole Lemieux

Partner Experience Architect

Global Virtual Sales & Customer Success

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Digital learning solutions have the power to transform the K-12 classroom, especially for schools that have lofty education technology goals. A great example of this is Wayne Highlands School District. Like many schools in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Wayne Highlands requires high-performing technology that students may not be able to access at home; however, getting fiber optics to rural areas has historically been a challenge for the school district. It quickly became Wayne Highlands’ mission to redesign its technical infrastructure and bring more technology into the classroom.

By leveraging Category Two E-rate funding for a new, comprehensive wireless environment, the district deployed 320 access points—one in every classroom—to achieve high-density bandwidth wherever learning was taking place. With this strong wireless network, K–12 lessons now include online videos, digital worksheets, and remote access to instructional content.

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Students in Wayne Highlands School District now enjoy access to instruction content online.

The Half Hollow Hills Central School District in Long Island, New York, has also begun to partake in the digital transformation of the classroom. The district implemented a new network infrastructure that offers support for the district’s short and long-term technology goals by improving the strength, reliability, and accessibility of the network. Having a suitable network was paramount to Half Hollow Hills’ mission to be a more progressive and innovative school district. The new environment and enhancement of the network has enabled teachers to manage online testing and allowed students to access video and other media-intensive content.

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Half Hollow Hills School District can now easily participate in online testing.

Employing digital capabilities in the classroom has the ability to transform the way students receive and retain information. These solutions empower teachers to be increasingly innovative in their teaching methods to improve student success and engage them like never before. As more and more school districts begin the move to digital, we will see the true power technology has in the classroom.



Authors

Mary Schlegelmilch

Business Development Manager

Education

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In this blog series, I’ve explored the key role leaders must play to successfully build and nurture an innovative culture throughout an organisation. For many leaders, particularly those running large, well established businesses, it can be a daunting prospect. In an environment where tangible results are everything, the ambiguous and uncertain nature of innovation can feel like a distraction, forcing it into the back seat. And this failure to plan for tomorrow means there won’t be a tomorrow. Innovation isn’t just for startups. Even small investments today can reap significant dividends down the line.

An effective leader doesn’t need to be the expert in every department. Innovation is a collective, team effort and knowing personal limitations is a critical part of team building. Individuals can be recruited to fill any weaknesses, ensuring strong knowledge and skills in every position. Your primary role as a leader is that of the conductor, leading from the front, setting the tempo (and example), ensuring all team members  work together towards common goals.

Effective leadership of innovation also requires essential behaviours that encourage a lasting, innovation-focussed mindset—from the postroom to the boardroom. In this series, I highlighted eight required behaviours to accomplish this:

  • Demonstrate leadership support: “Walk the walk,” clearly communicate organisational innovation goals and provide appropriate training
  • Commit resources: Ring fence budgets for innovation and ensure employees have the time to focus on innovation objectives
  • Create leadership accountability: Report on innovation progress at the board level, build diverse portfolios of innovation projects and assign responsibilities to senior team members
  • Insight and business driven: Talk with customers to understand their problems, give innovation teams access to necessary data and insights, validate new ideas regularly
  • Collaboration: Assemble innovation teams based on unique skills or perspectives they bring to the table, encourage cross-organisational collaboration wherever possible
  • Rewards and recognition: Ensure both successful outcomes and innovative behaviour are recognised and rewarded regularly, encouraging employees to think boldly in everything they do
  • Innovate everywhere: Instill a “passionately dissatisfied” mentality amongst employees, create working environments that encourage the free exchange of ideas and risk taking with new innovation concepts
  • Entrepreneurial behaviour: Encourage an entrepreneurial spirit throughout the organisation, leading from the front without fear of failure

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Remember that innovation begins and ends with effective leadership. It must be a leadership-led activity. Rather than viewing it as a distraction, you must see it as a strategic investment to secure the future. But this doesn’t mean innovation is a leader’s sole responsibility—it’s a team effort.

Exhibiting the essential behaviours above will instill an innovative mindset throughout even the most stubborn and change-resistant organisation, creating a culture of bold thinking, constant learning, collaboration, celebration, and most importantly, innovation.

 



Authors

Harvey Wade

Innovation Program Manager

Cisco Services Innovation Excellence Center (SIEC)

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The development of the digital landscape is accelerating at an unprecedented rate for Cisco, our ecosystem of partners, and our mutual customers.

We’re seeing unprecedented opportunity as our customers – across all vertical markets – are going full speed to quickly becoming digital organizations. Their goal is to disrupt their industry, create new business models, create competitive edge, delight customers and employees, and achieve higher profitability. IT transformation is at heart of this move. And, Cisco and our partners are at the center of this opportunity – orchestrating digital solutions to drive this for our customers.

Our most profitable and productive partners clearly understand that the digital transformation race cannot be won alone. Cisco, Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and Ecosystem Partners need to team up to drive highly relevant digital conversations (often with the Line of Business) that lead to successful business outcomes.

Driving Digital Takes an Ecosystem

Here’s the great news – the powerful combination of Cisco’s well-respected brand and our partner ecosystem is a game changer as we drive digital solutions.

A new category of Cisco partners, our Digital Solutions Integrators (DSIs) – or Consulting Firms -are at the forefront of digital
transformation. It’s all about driving new digital conversations, and DSIs help partners quickly steer those discussions to theEcosyspicValue ‘why’. They define the digital journey in terms of investments and business outcomes.

They also help partners sell more software and services, increase deal sizes and access new buyers.

Digital Solutions Integrators Deliver

Cisco’s DSI partners help deliver desired business outcomes for our customers by becoming their trusted advisors. They do this by engaging with customers at the consulting and deep systems integration level, individual customer workshops, assessments, and proof of concept engagements. This helps move the digital conversation to new buyers, including C-Level and relevant Line of Business (LoB) decision makers.

Here’s how a current partnership with a consulting firm is driving partner growth and delivering tangible outcomes for the customer:

Xentaurs, a Cisco Digital Solutions Integrator, partnered with a Cisco VAR to evaluate a network refresh opportunity for a high profile customer.  What could have remained a seemingly ordinary business opportunity instead holistically evolved to focus on the much greater need for automation and microsegmentation required to deliver the overall needs for the customer’s business.

As a result of Xentaurs’ workshop and assessment practices, the VAR + Consulting Firm partnership is now driving DevOps, big data and next generation data center opportunities (delivery services and product sales) in ways that would not have been uncovered without the participation of the Digital Solutions Integrator and the evolution of the collective engagement.

Examples like this one bring home the reality of the type of influence and new perspectives needed to impact the customer’s ability to transform their business at a much higher level.

Cisco’s DSI areas of expertise includes consulting and systems integration practices with a focus on:

  • Security
  • Core
  • IoT
  • Collaboration
  • Big Data & Analytics
  • Cloud & Hybrid Cloud
  • Vertical Expertise (Healthcare, Manufacturing, Finance etc.)
  • DevOps, SAP, Microsoft & more

Another important value DSI Partners bring are their strong working partnerships with Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s). Customers often work with their ISV’s first when creating business outcome solutions and services. DSI Partners orchestrate the joint sales efforts of ISVs, Cisco Sales and VARs using their Digital Transformation expertise, resulting in improved business models, next generation IT platforms, improved customer experience and workforce innovation.

Get Started Today with Cisco’s Digital Solutions Integrators

What can DSI’s bring to your customers? Are there new and expanded deals they can help you deliver?

I encourage you to get to know this new breed of Digital Solutions Integrators and learn how they can help you drive greater profitability, while truly delighting your customers.

Engage with our Digital Solutions Integrators today on our Cisco DSI Hub.



Authors

Rick Snyder

Senior Vice President

Americas Partner Organization

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IEC 60870-5-104 Protocol Detection Rules

Cisco Talos has released 33 Snort rules which are used to analyze/inspect IEC 60870-5-104 network traffic. These rules will help Industrial Control Systems/Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (ICS/SCADA) asset owners to allow the identification of both normal and abnormal traffic in their environments. In order for these rules to be effective they should be selectively turned on/enabled. SIDS 41053-41077 will detect various TypeIDs, if that specific TypeID is not in use then the rule should be enabled. SIDS 41078-41079 will detect IEC 104 traffic entering/exiting the ICS network. If 104 traffic is not supposed to enter/exit the ICS network then these sids should be enabled. The rules will require both Snort $EXTERNAL_NET and $HOME_NET variables to be correctly configured for some of the rules to be effective. If a network does not have IEC 104 traffic these rules should not be enabled as they are only intended to detect IEC 104 traffic and will likely result in false positives (FPs) on non-IEC 104 traffic.

What is IEC 104?

IEC 104 is a network protocol that is commonly used in ICS/SCADA environments. Various ICS/SCADA devices use IEC 104 to communicate with other ICS devices such as, but not limited to, Programmable Logic Controllers, Remote Terminal Unit, etc.
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Read more on the snort blog here



Authors

Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

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Whatever word you choose to describe 2016, boring won’t be one of them. From changes in political arenas across the globe to beloved public figures passing away to the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series and ending 108 straight seasons of losing. The last year has been anything but ordinary.

It’s been an extraordinary year at Cisco too.

The biggest news of 2016 was the March introduction of Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA). Quite simply, Cisco DNA revolutionizes the way you deploy and manage your network for the digital era through a software-driven architecture focused on automation, security, and analytics.

How does DNA make things simpler? Automation is one way. By using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module (APIC-EM) your operations are streamlined through automating tasks and creating consistent workflows and policies across your network.

Keeping your data secure is the most important job you have. Cisco DNA allows for Network as a Sensor (NaaS) and Network as an Enforcer (NaaE) through services such as Cisco Identity Service Engine (ISE) and StealthWatch. Think of it as the network becoming an end-to-end sensor that proactively detects and stops threats across all segments.

Whether it’s sports or the entertainment industry or business or even politics, the reason why people are successful in these industries is because they know the numbers. Cisco DNA provides you with easy-to-understand analytics through solutions such as Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX). This gives you the insights from your network to make faster business decisions based on customer behavior or what your employees are doing.

It’s true that your hardware and software should work well together, but that sort of symbiosis doesn’t always provide the most freedom. With DNA, Cisco has reimagined the network architecture by allowing virtualization to take center stage. Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization (E-NFV) allows you to move fast and start up software instances of network functions wherever you need it. This is a huge time-saver because you don’t have to buy, deploy and test proprietary hardware appliances.

What does that all mean though? Customers that have deployed the Cisco DNA solutions have seen key improvements such as:

  • A five-Year ROI of 402% and a nine-month payback period with an average of $48K annual benefits (per 100 users)
  • 42% faster WAN branch deployments
  • 17% faster delivery of applications
  • 28% more efficient IT networking staff teams

This isn’t just about us tooting our own horn, the industry has embraced Cisco DNA.

“DNA and its focus on software represents a significant realignment of Cisco’s approach to the network and is a nod to the rapid changes businesses are undergoing.”—Jeffrey Burt, eWEEK

“Ultimately, Cisco DNA is a game changer, and one that will likely elicit a response from key infrastructure players and solution providers.” – Rohit Mehra, IDC

Our customers have responded to the overall Cisco message as well. This past year has seen an overabundance of customer success stories that show how DNA is helping our customers accelerate their digital transformation.

Besides DNA, Cisco has released a number of truly revolutionary products – all of which form the infrastructure foundation on which the DNA solutions run on.

Wireless/Mobility:
The year saw the extension of the 802.11ac Wave 2 access point family into a cohesive, all-purpose solution that covers the needs of your organization—no matter the size—and your outdoor network. Read all about the release of the Cisco Aironet 2800 Series and 3800 Series Access Points, the Cisco Aironet 1810 Series Office Extend and Aironet 1810w Series Access Points and the Cisco Aironet 1560 Series Outdoor Access Points.

Included in those access points are cutting edge features such as CMX Virtual Beacon, Flexible Radio Assignment and CMX Cloud.

Switching:
Switching saw a release of products that will future proof your network for the next decade and more. Designed to provide higher performance, better scalability and enhanced hardware-enabled features, these switches are ready to take advantage of the 802.11ac Wave 2 revolution.

If you missed any of these launches, check out Cisco Catalyst Supervisor 6T for Catalyst 6K Series, Catalyst Supervisor 8L-E for Catalyst 4K Series, Cisco Catalyst 3650-Mini or the Cisco Catalyst 2960L.

Routing:
It was a big year for enterprise routers as a multitude of new products, including branch virtualization and OS container innovation made their way to the field. From a price- and performance-optimized branch router to DC-class WAN aggregator, each platform offers a digital-ready and application-centric foundation for your enterprise network.

Here’s a year worth of new products distilled into a few links: ISR 4221, Multi-carrier LTE 2.5, WAAS 6.2R, UCS-E 6-core blade server, ASR 1000 RP3, ASR 1001-X, ASR 1001-HX, ASR 1002-HX, ASR 1006-X and ASR 1009-X. On the virtualization front, we introduced industry’s first Enterprise NFV solution for the branch followed by App Hosting on IOS XE for Cisco, homegrown, or 3rd party lightweight applications.

What’s in store for 2017? I can’t say anything right now, but I invite you all to stay tuned and see what surprises we have in store for you in the next 12 months.

 



Authors

Prashanth Shenoy

Vice President of Marketing

Enterprise Networking and Mobility