Cisco Meeting Server is now available. This new offering brings together all the great scalability and interoperability that we acquired with Acano earlier this year. And it adds more value through integration with the broader Cisco collaboration portfolio.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet with customers to get perspective about what they need from collaboration tools to make their organizations successful. They shared priorities including:
Enjoyable, high-quality meeting experiences that incorporate great video, audio, and content-sharing capabilities
The ability for anyone to join a meeting easily, whether from a room system, desktop system, or mobile device via app or browser.
Scalability so that IT managers can meet existing needs and extend as business needs grow.
Super-simple and predictable licensing that makes it easy to enable services for all users and only pay for those using the solution.
Our focus with Cisco Meeting Server aligns with this wish list. We’ve emphasized making it as easy as possible for anyone to meet and enjoy a great video, audio, and content-sharing experience. We’ve simplified the licensing as much as possible so that you can turn up services for users easily. All this is built on a highly scalable and interoperable platform. We’ve simplified the ability for anyone to join a meeting from video endpoints, and any platform including PC, Mac, iOS, Android and Skype for Business.
Scheduling meetings using Cisco TelePresence Management Suite: Included support for “one-button-to-push” simplifies joining meetings from room or desktop video systems – and extends to Skype for Business. Importantly, the native experience for both Skype for Business and video endpoint users is preserved.
A new high-capacity Cisco UCS-based server: Cisco Meeting Server 1000 offers virtualized software deployment with 96 simultaneous HD calls per server.
Multiparty Licensing: Our all-in-one user-based license model now includes Personal Multiparty Plus, which is part of Cisco Unified Workspace Licensing (CUWL) Meetings, and Shared Multiparty Plus.
To make meetings truly open, whether inside or beyond your organization, users can join a meeting from Cisco Meeting App. The app works natively on smartphones, PCs, or any WebRTC-compatible browser.
And there’s more. We harnessed the great scaling technology that Acano developed to provide optimized geographic distribution. It works by deploying Meeting Servers in different data centers and ensuring that users are connected to their “home/local” Meeting Server when they join a meeting. Then we optimize the bandwidth usage between sites to reduce costs.
All-in-all, it is great to be able to share this announcement and already see positive industry reaction.
It’s an exciting time for video collaboration. As always, we want to thank the engineering teams, partners, and customers who continue to help us to evolve our solutions.
Visit the Cisco Meeting Server product page and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
The software platform that automates outage restoration and optimizes the performance of the distribution grid.
ADMS functions being developed for electric utilities include:
Fault location, isolation, and restoration
Volt/volt-ampere reactive optimization
Conservation through voltage reduction
Peak demand management
Support for microgrids and electric vehicles
The first step for Utilities implementing or considering Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS) is to look at the communication networks that support their smart meters (AMI). Utilities must also look at the ability of smart meters to be edge-of-grid sensors reporting power outage notifications as well as voltage and power quality data in some cases.
The work being done by DoE at the National Labs and the experience of utilities implementing ADMS projects show how crucial high performance, secure, and manageable communications systems are to their success.
The looming challenge is the integration of increasing Distributed Energy Resources (DER), which includes grid-linked roof top solar, electric vehicles, microgrids, and demand management. Even with storage like a Tesla Powerwall, they don’t have stand-alone microgrid capabilities.
Utilities that have distribution feeders with 15% or more of the energy on the feeder linked to rooftop solar have experienced significant voltage swings as PV output fluctuates due to passing cloud shadows – even with smart inverters. This means phase-to-phase imbalances as well because residential service is generally single phase.
Practical advice to utilities deploying ADMS is available in the DoE’s Office of Electricity report: Insights into Advanced Distribution Management Systems. The primary theme of this report is the set of business benefits utilities and their customers can realize through ADMS.
DoE has funded a coordinated set of projects at the National Labs aimed at developing ADMS capabilities specifically targeted at managing voltage, congestion, and phase balancing challenges introduced by DER.
We’ll be presenting the first report on the progress of these projects at the upcoming IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (ISGT) Conference, September 6-9, in Minneapolis.
For more information on how the management of grid stability requires low-latency distributed control capabilities and how Cisco’s Field Area Network and Fog distributed compute platforms can help, view our website:
Okay, let’s be honest, back in my K-12 school days, I generally had one eye trained on the classroom clock. I’d watch as the minute hand made its painfully slow march toward the recess bell and escape. Now, thanks to iSchool Initiative some lucky students and administrators are watching the classroom clock and tracking their own escape. Albeit an escape that is more focused on learning than recess.
iSchool Initiative recently introduced a new “Escape from the Bus” adventure. At select regional events, the iSchool Initiative team parks their bus—fully stocked with Cisco Mobility and Collaboration technologies—onsite. Then students and administrators are “locked” inside and given 40 minutes to decipher the clues that will help them escape.
During this time, the participants must apply teamwork, problem solving, and logic to crack the code. They are given no instructions, just the tools. Each technology yields a clue that, in turn, is used to discover the next. Sound like good skills for education? You bet.
Students and administrators are responding. During the adventure’s last few stops, three days of “Escape” experiences were booked within two hours. When was the last time people worked so hard to be trapped in a bus?
Take a look at this iSchool Initiative Escape the Bus video to see why.
And if you’d like to make your own escape, see when the bus will be in your area or schedule your own tour.
Cisco Guest
Jeff MacTavish (@jeffwmac), Global Sales BDM, Cisco Data Center
Cisco Champion Hosts
Denise Donnahue (@ladynetwkr), Senior Solutions Architect
Eric Perkins (@perk_zilla), Lead Sales Engineer
Bill Carter (@ccie5022), Senior Solutions Analyst
Tim Miller (@broadcaststorm), Senior Network Engineer
Countless new innovations and solutions are launched everyday, and it’s really hard to keep up. How do you cut through the noise and get quality information? One way to do it is by attending Cisco Live, the premier educational event that top industry engineers attend to stay updated with the latest and greatest innovations. But even so, the amount of information may still be too much to digest in a few days. Like one of the customers I met at Cisco Live said, “The amount of innovation is amazing, but it is impossible to check out all of the solutions here by my own. I wish I could clone myself”.
Inspired by this customer’s comment, on the last day of Cisco Live U.S. 2016, I walked around the World of Solutions floor, and randomly picked attendees to ask them “What is your favorite solution?”What a practical way to filter information right?!
Following are some of people’s favorite solutions:
“Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) is a groundbreaking approach to computing. It is designed for IT innovation and business acceleration. The product portfolio includes blade and rack servers, edge scale computing, converged infrastructure, composable infrastructure, and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions. More than 50,000 Cisco UCS customers are experiencing the benefits now.” (Cisco Unified Computing System)
“Extend the benefits of distributed storage technology to more applications and use cases. Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series combine compute, storage, and networking into an easy-to-use system that brings new levels of speed and efficiency to IT. Use our HyperFlex technology to unlock the full potential of hyperconverged infrastructure today.”
“Our new Tetration Analytics platform delivers visibility across everything in your data center in real time. It uses hardware and software sensors to give you behavior-based application insight with deep forensics. Get a highly secure and reliable zero-trust model. Dramatically simplify your operations. Migrate applications faster. Make changes intelligently.” Learn more and ask questions in the comments section here.
The all-new Cisco Nexus Switches that were presented at Cisco Live U.S. 2016 were the Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches. One thing that makes them different, as mentioned by a customer in the video – is the Cisco Cloud Scale ASIC. Read Dave Dhillon’s blog to find out what makes is so unique: link
As attackers are becoming more and more sophisticated, Cisco has put a strong emphasis in security. Many attendees commented that Cisco is the leader in its field, and when it comes to security related issues, they trust in Cisco’s legacy, and rely on Cisco for the best security solutions. Check out Cisco’s complete portfolio of security solutions here.
Group-Based Policy (GBP)
Group-Based Policy (GBP) framework, designed to offer a new set of API extensions to manage OpenStack infrastructure through declarative policy abstractions. GBP is designed on the principle of capturing application requirements directly rather than converting the requirements into a specific set of infrastructure configurations. It introduces a new declarative API for automating OpenStack infrastructure. Learn more here: link
DevNet, DevNet Hackathon
If you are a developer, DevNet is your to-go place to leverage tools, resources, and code you need to build innovative, network-enabled solutions. Visit website here.
Bill Shields
Woolala! Cisco Introduces, the all-new Cisco Bill Shields! Just kidding, but it’s amazing that when I asked people “what is your favorite solution at Cisco Live” and I get “Bill Shields”. This tells you that he is someone worth following to get quality information. Bill is the marketing manager for UCS Mini and UCS M-Series modular servers. He manages the development Cisco’s UCS TCO/ROI tools; provides sales team and partner tool support; in charge of server competitive analysis and positioning. Follow him @HighTechBill
With IWAN, you can deploy branch offices quickly, simplify SD-WAN management, reduce costs and mitigate risks, and deliver a great user experience. Watch this super concise video, and you will be impressed! Link
These are just some of the technologies mentioned by Cisco Live attendees; watch the following video to find out what other attendees say about their favorite technology:
Note: Given the limited time I had on the show floor, and I only picked few attendees randomly. If other technologies and solutions aren’t mentioned in here, it doesn’t mean they weren’t impressive.
What about you? If you attended Cisco Live U.S. 2016, what was your favorite solution? Please comment below and share.
When Conrad Clemson, senior vice president of strategy for the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group, was
Conrad Clemson, Cisco VP
looking for unique ways to maximize and make his philanthropic dollars go further, he did not have to look far.
The Employee Product Donation Program (EPDP) enables Cisco employees to purchase most Cisco equipment at a 75% discount for donation to qualified nonprofit organizations and schools in the United States.
The program enables individual employees and teams to provide up to $40,000 of Cisco list price equipment annually.
Why the Employee Product Donation Program Worked for Conrad
Conrad came to Cisco from BNI Video, where he led as CEO for three years. BNI Video was acquired by Cisco in October of 2011. Conrad learned about the Employee Product Donation Program (EPDP) and TechSoup through Cisco’s benefits page.
Asked what made him decide to participate in the program, Conrad said: “I am always looking for ways to maximize my philanthropic dollars. Sometimes I give appreciated stock; sometimes I use the dollar matching programs. Cisco’s EPDP is unique in helping charitable organizations maximize their IT objectives in a way that is aligned with Cisco and employee gift giving. It’s quite cool.”
“EPDP is a remarkably flexible program,” Conrad continued. “It allows employees or groups of employees make a huge difference to organizations trying to build world-class IT infrastructure. It triples the net buying power of the recipient organization. It’s very powerful. It’s a wonderful combination of Cisco and employee charity.”
Supporting Knowledge and Lifelong Learning Through Donated Technology
Conrad has given multiple donations to two schools, Phillips Exeter Academy and Bancroft School. Phillips Exeter Academy is a private high school which originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, Exeter offers free education to any admitted student whose family income is $75,000 or less.
Conrad worked with the school’s IT department on improving the school’s core network for the first year. In the second year, he worked with the computer science department to improve its computing infrastructure by 10 times — a huge impact for the school.
Bancroft School’s mission statement is to provide a “comprehensive, caring, and creative curricular and extracurricular program” that fosters an experience of excellence for students pre-kindergarten through high school. The school emphasizes helping students “discover their passion in life” and so that they become lifelong learners and good global community members.
The Bancroft School IT department has Conrad on speed dial, and together they were able to map out a five-year infrastructure plan. At the beginning of the school’s fiscal year, the department was able to send him a shopping list. The school’s infrastructure is now based entirely on Cisco components.
To date, the two schools have received a total retail value of $124,000 in equipment through the EPDP program. Through his donations, Conrad is acting as a global problem solver; preparing students with the technology to learn and thrive in today’s digital economy. And when students from both schools graduate, they’ll have the networking know-how to someday fill the growing IT skills gap.
Times are changing in the telecommunications industry. More people, devices and things are connected than ever before. And because of that, there’s a highly lucrative data boom. Mobile network operators and other service providers have the opportunity to go beyond their traditional roles and make the most of this information. Now’s the time to start dealing in data.
The big data business opportunity
With new technologies such as Low Power, Long Range (LoRa), it’s much more feasible to connect a wider array of things in our world – from vehicles and streetlights to household appliances and buildings themselves. This Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to create a massive amount of data.
And it’s transforming businesses. For example, GE has put censors in its engines to provide near real-time monitoring of the health of their engines, reducing airline spending by 10-40%. In shifting from rules-based maintenance to more predictive driven intervention, GE has fundamentally shifted its business from one of selling jet engines to airlines to providing a comprehensive, engine-as-a-service offering.
As more industries realise this kind of potential with IoT, the value in data will grow. And as data gatekeepers, it means service providers have a unique opportunity to help businesses to realise the promise of the IoT revolution. Because they’re so early in the data flow, they can start making data management data aggregation and data analytics their business.
The even bigger data market
However the opportunity is bigger still. When service providers create their own data management and aggregation platform, that means they can collect data, perform analytics on it at an early stage (which is vital in deciding what should be sent upstream) and then sell it on. The same set of data may be meaningful to different consumers and/or applications: for instance, data gathered from a car might be useful for the vehicle’s manufacturer, to an insurance company or to the driver.
Enabling applications
In order to create the kind of data management environment that enables service providers to take advantage of these emerging opportunities, they need to deploy and develop the right platform for the IoT. And crucially it means shifting to a platform that is programmable with application development capabilities, to enable the creation of multiple vertical applications.
A next generation IoT service provider
Achieving this shift is a major transformation full of challenges and opportunities. Currently network operators fall somewhere within three stages of readiness. Stage one is when they are still mostly focussed on IoT connectivity leveraging their access network and enhancing it with new technologies like LoRa. In step two, they’re transitioning towards application enablement but they’re not there yet. And in stage three, they’ve achieved it with the visioned IoT platform. Most of the operators we encounter are around the second stage with a clear strategy focused on IoT but still with some steps to go.
And that’s where Cisco can help. We partner with service providers as they embark on their Internet of Things journey by providing them with a set of solutions and platforms helping them reach their desired destination. Cisco’s experience working with end customers in various industries ensures that the solution and platforms are developed addressing the specific requirements. Our business solution group helps providers to develop the IoT strategy and the business case they need to move forward. And all of this is important for getting to step three and seeing real value from this incredibly valuable modern commodity: data.
Watch Video interview from Cisco Expert in Mobility and IoT here.
What happens when the toughest bicycle race in the world meets Cisco and Internet of Things (IoT) technology? I needed to know for myself, and so a couple of years ago I suggested that the two worlds meet.
I got to explain my idea to the CEO of Cisco UKI in August 2014. Twenty months later, and the Project Kansas team members were on a plane headed to America with three bikes and more bags than you can easily drag through an airport for Race Across America. Which, is exactly what it sounds like, a non-stop 3,000 mile race across the United States.
So what was it like getting all this off the ground?
Working out of the Scotland office, I’d always felt like part of the Cisco family. It’s a very close knit community here that leaves us all spending time together even outside of work. Since coming on in 2007, I’d been part of several madcap ideas or challenges that had helped me to build a network of people with similar interests. It was with this understanding that I thought it might actually be plausible to get a group together who’d be interested in helping me race across America by bike.
Let’s just say that Cisco does not lack people who are willing to put themselves into challenging situations! And their support showed me yet another example of how Cisco comes together and does their best to tackle difficult situations to benefit everyone.
It’s now been a few weeks since the team and I returned from Race Across America. If you want to read more about the journey then its all here. Looking back with some perspective, I believe we achieved our goals.
The “we” in this is important! All I had to do was pedal, eat and occasionally sleep. Being a good rider is one thing, having a great team, however, is crucial for success! This race is about perseverance, determination and a fighting spirit above all else (I believe I only got about 15 hours of sleep in 12 days, and I can’t say the team did much better) and I can’t thank my team enough for being alongside me with each pedal stroke.
There was no better example of this than when the team came together after I developed an incredible pain in my foot due to the relentless time riding without rest. Literally unable to walk, it took one ice bath, a blow torch, and a hacksaw to get me back on the road in just 30 minutes time. Luckily, the blow torch and hacksaw were only used to modify my expensive carbon cycling shoes! I rode the next 2,000 miles in them with a chunk of them removed from the side and put back together with gaffer tape.
The team was on constant high alert as they had to adapt to each new challenge within the race. At one point we were perilously close to being disqualified at the first time cut off. What did we do?
We rode all day and all night. We stopped for just 15 minutes, where I slept in the back of the follow car, and then got going again and rode right into the next day. When the sun came up on that day the team kept me going with pop quizzes, trivia, and discussions about films. Everyone stopped talking, however, when we got to the most visually stunning landscape I’ve ever seen – Monument Valley in Utah. Google it. It’s utterly breath-taking to be there, never mind being there after having ridden all the way through the desert and mountains from the Pacific coast.
By late evening we reached Durango and the first time cut off with 4 hours to spare. My reward was 3 hours of sleep before tackling the Rockies. This was the most sleep in one night that I’d have throughout the entire race.
As we headed over Wolf Creek Pass, to a height of 3200m and into the altitude danger zone, we had our secret weapon ready! The technology we had been developing with Dimension Data was crucial in keeping us on track and in the race.
This race does unique things to a rider. Cycling for up to 22 hours a day for days on end can do that to you, and it’s very common for riders to wind up in the hospital due to a variety of ailments not seen in shorter races. Our technology enabled the crew to keep an eye on me at all times and what I was doing on the bike. What effort was I expending? What were my averages? It kept me in the green zone, so to speak. And it did so in giving relevant, easy to understand data to a team who were all sleep deprived and couldn’t risk manually working it out.
The whole project was developed on the basis that we wanted to show that IoT and analytics can help endurance athletes perform to their maximum, and in time this technology could be used to help patients recover from surgery or illness more rapidly. This technology could also monitor people operating in dangerous environments such as deep sea divers, soldiers, or construction workers.
Getting to the finish line wasn’t easy. But through dedicated teamwork, meticulous planning, phenomenal tech, and the team’s “must succeed” attitude – we did it.
What did we achieve during Race Across America?
We showed that Cisco and Dimension Data can work together to create new technology that benefits everyone. This technology was used in the Tour de France just this year!
We showed that a team of rookies can conquer the toughest bike race in the world on their first attempt. Statistically there was more chance of failure than success for us, but we showed that an ambitious goal can be achieved through hard work and determination – together.
The people we met along the journey were truly interested in what we were doing. And completely gobsmacked by how we were doing it!
In Race Across America’s 35 year history just 319 solo riders have completed the race. I’m the first Scotsman to do so and the 9th in the UK!
What I’ll remember daily from this experience is somewhere between the mind blowing views of Utah and knowing that I would be riding through the Rockies within hours of them first appearing on the horizon. All the ups and downs our team weathered together will be with me forever.
I think having had that experience with my team – to know that we’ve stood in the middle of nowhere, miles from the finish of a physical event, dripping wet and numb with the cold, and relying on each other to get to that finish line – really builds strong relationships with mutual respect.
There’s nothing quite like getting to know someone in these challenging circumstances, outside of the normal office environment, to really help you understand how valuable we all are to the success of each work day as well.
I’ve never felt more connected as I do now at Cisco, and it’s great to be part of the largest family I know.
Check out www.projectkansas.org for more information and to meet the amazing team that made this possible.
‘945 ITC Update (12/7): The second ITC case is still ongoing and has been extended due to resource challenges at the Commission. The Initial Determination is now expected on December 9, 2016.
Enforcement Update (8/26): We have now filed an enforcement complaint with the ITC. It notes our testing of allegedly redesigned products and why we believe, “the claim of a workaround is a thin veil to cover Arista’s ongoing infringement and convince its customers, many of whom have strongly supported protection of intellectual property rights, that they are buying a product that is non-infringing.”
Today the U.S. Trade Representative concluded that the International Trade Commission’s import ban and cease and desist order covering all Arista products will go into effect tomorrow. The ITC determined that Arista willfully and intentionally infringed three Cisco patents covering core, Cisco-proprietary network functionality. This is a great victory for the principle that the intentional use of others’ intellectual property should not be allowed.
The ITC ruling documents that Arista set out to use Cisco’s technology, knowing exactly what it was doing. Given Arista’s pledge that it will continue to sell products, despite the ITC’s orders and without having received any approval for workarounds, some may wonder whether the import ban matters. Let me explain.
For Arista’s customers and partners, the cease and desist order blocks the marketing, sale or distribution of all inventory of imported infringing products. It also means that Arista is unable to honor the service and warranty contracts for any infringing products sold after the ITC’s ruling date (June 23, 2016). Arista’s customers must now bear that risk.
For Arista’s suppliers, the ITC orders mean that Arista cannot import parts or components to manufacture infringing products in the United States.
For Arista’s investors, it means factoring in the high cost of trying to circumvent the ITC’s ruling. The penalty for importing or selling infringing product in violation of the cease and desist order is up to the greater of $100,000 per day, or twice the sales value of the infringing product imported or sold by Arista in the United States.
For Arista’s board and company officers, it means needing to offer more than just rhetoric about supposed workarounds. Arista chose not to present its proposed changes to the ITC, where they could have been reviewed in an open process. Based on what Arista has made publicly available to those who have purchased its products, it appears Cisco’s proprietary technology is still being used. Regardless of what either company says, Arista must convince Customs and Border Protection in a detailed review that it no longer infringes. Analyst reports suggest Arista preferred this approach because it lacked an opportunity for other parties to formally present evidence to rebut the workaround claims. This raises questions about Arista’s confidence in the legitimacy of its supposed workaround. Arista appears to be betting that Customs and Border Protection lacks the sophistication to make this assessment.
Arista has also noted in several public forums that it intends to continue selling the affected products. It does this without any ITC or CBP approval. If Arista does not change its course, Cisco will bring an enforcement action in the ITC later this week.
Arista has consistently tried to delay and distract, while avoiding taking responsibility for its actions. This includes falsely claiming the patents cover standards (see pages 58-60 of the ITC ruling which makes mincemeat of Arista’s claim), that the patents cover only minor features (despite their CEO’s claims that the technology was Arista’s “secret sauce”), and that “everyone does it” (there is no evidence to support this assertion).
The complete picture here is one that should raise many questions for Arista’s stakeholders. And there may be more to come. Later this week the ITC will rule on the second case (‘945 investigation) involving other key, core, and proprietary Cisco technologies that Arista is accused of infringing.
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