Year: 2016

July 13, 2016 1 Comment
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Recognizing Opportunity Through Digital Transformation

It’s All about Engaging Differently

Everywhere I turned this week at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, customers were talking about digital transformation. As technology transforms the world, they’re looking for ways to increase their competitive advantage—and success. That might include automating their operating model or introducing new processes. It might mean reaching customers differently. Or perhaps better employee engagement to increase productivity. Whatever their most pressing challenges, we see that it’s no longer just IT looking for new technology solutions. It’s the line-of-business buyers who are watching their competitors and realizing that technology can help them differentiate.

 

Expanding the Partner Ecosystem

At Cisco, we can provide the industry’s broadest foundation of connectivity, security, automation, and analytics from the data center and cloud to every user and device. But we can’t solve customers’ problems alone. And neither can you! Digital solutions are increasingly complex and specialized. Our customers need solutions based on deep expertise, as well as broad capabilities that address unique objectives or help them do things that no one else is doing. Only an expanded ecosystem of partners who can work together can deliver the full range of value that our customers want and might discover they need.

 

That’s why we’re continuing to expand our partner ecosystem to include not just traditional channel and Value-Added Resellers (VARs), but also a growing number of system integrators – independent software and hardware vendors that provide smart devices. This addition brings even more breadth and solutions to the ecosystem, meeting the some of the unique challenges that level of digital transformation presents. Many of these partners already have relationships with your customers’ line-of-business buyers, and they’ve established trust with them. Now we can help you leverage that trust.

 

Empowering Digital Transformation

Cisco can help you develop your own digital niche in digital transformation. As a partner, you have the opportunity to engage in deals earlier and access new buyers. You can increase your relevance to customers. Sell more—and—larger deals. And bring more value to the table for your existing and new customers.

 

Let’s start by understanding customers’ needs—looking at the problems they’re trying to solve from the outside in. We can help you meet partners in our expanded ecosystem to bring together the right solution elements. For example, we built the Solution Showcase, giving you information about how to connect with our Partner Connection series, encouraging you to meet Cisco ISVs and learn about their Cisco Compatible and SIP-Approved solutions.

 

Finally, we’ve developed a framework known as Accelerating Cisco Ecosystem Sales, or ACES. It’s a collection of best practices, tools, and training that make it easier for you to engage, go to market, and succeed in new ecosystem opportunities – to reap more revenue!

 

Time to Transform

In this new digitization world, success—ours and yours—will depend on the people, expertise, and solutions of this expanded ecosystem. We’re excited. Together we can do so much more. Learn more at cisco.com/go/digital. Give me your feedback?

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Denny Trevett

Vice President

Partner Model, Customer Experience

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Cisco Defense Orchestrator: The Security Policy Management “Easy Button”

Staying on top of security is hard, especially for network operations staff. If you’re like most of your peers, you probably have lots of devices, tons of policies and many locations and even cloud deployments to account for. Every time you need to change a policy, the complexity and time involved to do it right is all consuming and stressful. One hasty change can lead to an unwanted chain reaction, exposing your entire company to a potential security threat.

Don’t you wish you had an easy button? Now you do. Cisco Defense Orchestrator cuts through complexity so you can make policy management simpler and your security policy stronger, without having to be a security expert. As the name suggests, it’s a cloud-based solution that allows you, from one simple portal, to orchestrate security policy across your portfolio of Cisco security solutions (Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), Cisco ASA Firewall, ASAv, and OpenDNS) and across your entire network.

Whether you have a dozen or thousands of locations, Cisco Defense Orchestrator gives you comprehensive visibility and control, so that you can easily optimize, configure, and manage policies across these different security devices and services. Defense Orchestrator shows you any policy misconfigurations and inconsistencies so you can make policy changes quickly and know your policies are airtight.

Don’t believe in an easy button? Here are a couple of real-world examples of Cisco Defense Orchestrator at work.

Let’s say you are managing 1,000 stores and need a way to deploy policies across your entire enterprise quickly and easily. Using Cisco Defense Orchestrator, you could discover and analyze the current policy structure and then establish consistent security configurations using standardized policy templates. You can modify templates as needed for certain locations and model and verify changes before deployment to make sure they’re right and don’t introduce unintended risks. Because Cisco Defense Orchestrator is cloud-based, policies and changes are pushed out quickly from a single location. The NetOps team also has enterprise-wide visibility into Internet access to ensure it is being used for business purposes. And as the business grows and new locations open, you can apply the same security policy template with a simple cut and paste.

Manage firewall rules at scale through named policy blocks.
Manage firewall rules at scale through named policy blocks.
CDO-APM
Contextualized search is a powerful tool for getting the full picture and taking action on your security posture.
Cisco Defense Orchestrator: Security Policy Management
Customizable reporting dashboard gives you a quick view into your policy effectiveness.

“Cisco Defense Orchestrator has been a tremendous help maintaining consistent security policies across the 24 firewall contexts (and growing) spread across our two data centers,” said Stan Hembrough, Senior Network Analyst, Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC.) “Using Cisco Defense Orchestrator has simplified our firewall rule maintenance and is saving us several hours of work every week.”

Cisco Defense Orchestrator also makes it easy for network administrators to enhance security by adding new solutions without adding complexity. Another customer needed to improve its security posture by upgrading aging infrastructure to next-generation firewalls. It also needed to eliminate policy sprawl stemming from years of multiple admins and consultants. With a lean staff, lots of remote users, and a financial goal of reducing capital expenditures, like hardware costs, as much as possible, they looked for a cloud-based solution. Using Cisco Defense Orchestrator they could take stock quickly of their existing policy structure by doing a simple search for all existing rules and instantly seeing results. Security policy templates made it easy to model a configuration that adheres to an updated corporate policy standard. Any member of the IT team can push new and updated polices across the new Cisco ASA and FirePOWER modules to protect all their users, wherever they are.

With Cisco Defense Orchestrator Network Ops teams can do more and save more – staying on top of security challenges throughout the company with a simple cloud-based console. It’s your easy button, making security effective yet simple.

For more information, check us out at cisco.com/go/cdo.

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Player Pate

Senior Director, Product Marketing

Security

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Collaboration at #CLUS, Day 2: Awe, IoT, and Harvard, Oh My

Tuesday was predictably exhausting. My Fitbit logged more than six miles (which means I did, too) and my brain can’t count how much information I absorbed. (Is there an app for that?) While the keynotes and innovation talks didn’t focus specifically on Collaboration on Tuesday, it was everywhere. Maybe it’s my opinion, but when it comes down to the root of what we do — it all comes back to collaboration. Very little of what we do is as individuals in isolation. Anywhere. On with the day’s highlights…

Jason Silva Brings “Shots of Awe” 
“What do we think about when we think about a future that we can’t quite imagine?” asked futurist Jason Silva at Tuesday morning’s luminary keynote. Silva is, to say the least, energetic. (And he nearly caused me to sprain my fingers attempting to live tweet his session.) We’re obviously surrounded by technology at Cisco Live, but Silva brought in the human component with his perspective, including: “Technology is the embodiment of human creativity.” Silva brings together ideas across disciplines and definitely gets you to start thinking. He acknowledges how the state of technology is overwhelming while reminding you that “technology is the human mind turned inside out.”

https://youtu.be/FN57u7-x75w

Get more videos from Silva’s Shots of Awe series on YouTube.

SVP Rowan Trollope on IoT
Rowan hosted the innovation session on the IoT. IoT is still a mystery for a lot of people – in part because there are so many definitions. But it’s the underpinning of digital transformation. Rowan describes IoT as a third era of IT transforming business. Part of the key is changing focus. “This may sound heretical coming from a Cisco guy,” Rowan says. “but it’s not about the network. It’s about the things.” As examples, he shared details on how IoT ties into beer, sex-starved moths, and fast cars (but not all at once). Cars are a great example. In fact, last quarter, cars surpassed phones in terms of new connections to the Internet.

Get more perspective from Rowan in his blog post
The IoT train is leaving the station. Don’t get left behind.

Next-Generation Higher Education
bharat at boardIn one of my visits to the DevNet Zone, I had a great conversation with Harvard’s Elizabeth Hess about Harvard Business School’s next generation classroom. She shared how HBX Live is a one-of-a-kind digital environment that collapses geography to allow participants worldwide to interact in real time with one another and a discussion leader. The key element is the interaction. It’s not just someone presenting to a dispersed audience on video. It’s about bringing all those people together in a way that they can interact with the presenter – and each other. The platform combines a 30-foot curved LED wall with broadcast IT and a customized web-based interface that enables participants to both view the session and engage in conversation. Behind the scenes, the system leverages Cisco Jabber, Cisco Any Connect, and Call Manager.

Wednesday Highlights
Check out sessions in person or online at ciscolive.com/us.

Visit the WoS and DevNet Zone: Meet the collaboration team, meet our partners, and play with the technology.

Want more? Check the full collaboration catalog.

Catch running commentary by following #CLUS or @ciscokima on Twitter.

Avoid #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)
Feel like you’re missing something? Check out the Cisco Live Daily Highlights page for recordings of the keynotes, access to press releases, and video of photo galleries of the conference thus far.

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Kim Austin

No Longer with Cisco

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Mantl Version 1.2 Released – Kubernetes Fully Integrated

This week we are excited to announce our next release of Mantl that introduces Kubernetes integration with Consul which enables Kubernetes services to automatically get registered in Consul and all the enhanced  networking and security capabilities of Mantl are fully integrated to Kubernetes. The architecture of Mantl’s integrated stack is shown below.

mantlstack

Mantl has become a great container ecosystems and is by far the easiest to get started with cloud native development and installation, designed with DevOps in mind:

  • Runs on any Cloud: No vendor lock-in. Mantl runs equally well on any provider, saving you time and energy.
  • Flexible: A diverse set of technologies and tools allows you to pick the ones that fit your needs.
  • Fully Integrated Data Platform: Integrated tools like Cassandra, Spark & Hadoop make Mantl great for Big Data.
  • Integrated Cloud Services: Service discovery, secret storage, load balancing, logging and more available right out-of-the-box
  • Networking Containers: Run your services efficiently with multi-data center configuration and virtual networking tools.
  • Easy Provisioning: Deploy and manage infrastructure with ease using integrated tools like Terraform & Ansible.

In working with several customers over the past 6 months, we are concentrating on solving business goals:

  • Code Portability: Infrastructure that allows code and apps to be deployed pretty much anywhere. No lock-in to deployment APIs/Services.
  • High Availability: Built-in services support 100% uptime for all your systems and applications. Service affinity and anti-affinity built in.
  • Curated Experience: All components are validated in advance to save you time and reduce project risk
  • Built-In Security: Keep your network secure without having to worry about tricky configuration.

We are looking forward to continuing to grow the open source community and invite you to join with us in this cloud native journey.

In Mantl version 1.2, we have addressed the following bugs:

  • Mesos log rotation has been improved.
  • AWS and GCE providers are more configurable and consistent.
  • The ELK addon has been split into individual roles. You can now choose to install each component separately or all at once.
  • Calico has been upgraded and has better support for Mesos and Kubernetes.
  • Our Vault configuration has been made more secure.
  • The Kafka addon is now more easily configured and can create topics at install time.

Mantl 1.2 includes many more improvements and fixes. Check the changelog for more details.

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Kenneth Owens

Chief Technical Officer, Cloud Infrastructure Services

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545 Miles: From San Francisco to Los Angeles by Bike!

AnjieSchell1

Have you ever thought of taking a scenic road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles? I spent seven days doing so by bicycle – yes, you read that right! And I wasn’t alone.

As part of the AIDS Lifecycle charity ride I was joined by 2,500 other cyclists and over 600 “Roadie” volunteer workers and staff from the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and LA Gay and Lesbian Center. The annual ride is the fourth largest fundraising program in the US, and the # 1 AIDS fundraiser in the world!  This was my 8th ride.

When I first signed up, it was for the challenge and the adventure. Then I met people (including my now wife), heard stories of the havoc HIV/AIDS has reeked on the lives of friends and the challenges still faced today – 35 years after the CDC first changed the name from “gay cancer” to AIDS.

We have come a long way, but there is still so much work to be done!

And that is why I continue to ride…there is more work to be done.

For one week, we are very visible – it’s hard to miss 2,500 cyclists as we ride along city streets, freeways and agricultural farming roads, through big towns and small towns.

AnjieSchell2

In every one, and often in the strangest most remote places, suddenly there appears a cheerleader – a single person or family thanking us for riding and doing what we’re doing, sharing stories of losing loved ones, or the challenges they face because of HIV/AIDS.

Every year, the very small town of Bradley hosts a BBQ fundraiser for us during the 3rd day of the ride for lunch. This year we were able to donate $57,000 to their school – funding scholarships, educational, vocational, musical and sporting activities for the small town of 120 under privileged citizens.

During the 2016 ride, I stopped and spoke with the elderly residents I noticed cheering us as we rode by their homes – 83 year old Gayle, 94 year old spitfire Gladys, and 74 year old Glenn. Each waving and smiling and hugging and chatting with any rider who took the time to stop.

Other riders did the same with the children who lined streets to pass out red vines and give high-fives as we rode by.

And when we roll into Paso Robles each year, we are given hand-written letters from local elementary school students which serve to encourage us and make us smile.   We call this roaming community, this week of non-judgmental acceptance of everyone, the “Love Bubble.”

Almost every day of the ride has a theme, and each year, I make a point to work one of my Cisco jerseys into the themes. This year I chose to wear an older jersey during Day 2: Safety.  I chose the jersey for its orange color, another theme of the day, but given Cisco’s recent commitment to “safety and security,” I thought it would be even more fitting.

As a 17 year veteran working in Product Operations, I always enjoy meeting co-workers on this crazy ride, be they riders or Roadies, Cisco always has a presence.

I wasn’t certain how many miles I would actually be able to finish this year. In 2014, I beat breast cancer and endured double mastectomy surgeries but still don’t feel quite 100% this year. There wasn’t much time to time to train, either. However, I set realistic expectations, and blew them out of the water!

Our route takes us over 25,000 feet of climbing, and while I may have stopped along the way to rest, I’m proud to say that I did make it up every hill! I finished all but about 75miles of this year’s route, which included 25+ miles of 115 degree road temps, and my first rainy ride down the southern California coast into LA.

This ride is challenging – it takes everything out of you emotionally and physically, and then refills you with love and encouragement each night in camp (yes, we camp out every night!) and every morning at ride-out. With every difficult moment, there is someone beside you cheering you on, and on a good day, you become the cheerleader for someone else having a hard time with that hill or that mile ahead.

This is the very definition of the “Love Bubble.”

For me, our Cisco Family is akin to the Love Bubble. Nearly half of my donations came from co-workers – friends who I truly think of as family. And the “Time 2 Give” option Cisco has given to employees this year also meant that I could save my PTO for my honeymoon later this year.

One of the best parts of the AIDS Lifecycle Love Bubble (as well as the Cisco “love bubble”), is that we are given the opportunity to do something great, for someone else, just because we can…and we get so much more in return.

If you would like to learn more about the AIDS Lifecycle ride, please go here. If you would like to watch this year’s ALC video, please go here.

 

Looking to join a company that rides together? We’re hiring!

 

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Anjie Schell

Program Manager

Engineering Change Management GPO

July 12, 2016 Leave a Comment
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Top Tweets from Cisco Champions at #CLUS Day 2 #ciscochampion

Cisco Champions are in Las Vegas at Cisco Live this week! Following are Tweets from Champions during Day 2 of the event.

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Brandon Prebynski

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Innovation Is Thriving at Cisco

In an earlier blog, I shared my excitement around the opportunity for Cisco to transform ourselves and our customers. This enthusiasm was based on our ability to unleash digital capabilities and innovation across the company.

After meeting with hundreds of customers over the past year to help them reimagine how to create new value and different routes to market in this new digital era, I am more energized than ever to share all of the many innovations we’re bringing to market at Cisco Live 2016 in Las Vegas this week.  Cisco is rapidly becoming the enabler of how companies of every size around the globe are digitally transforming their businesses.

There are a couple of reasons for this key pole position. First, the network is truly the underpinning of today’s most powerful business models. Today’s most digitally enabled companies are all driven from the network. The network is like the central nervous system of the body. It lets businesses “feel” and “interact” with literally everything that is important in a digital era.

The network also functions as the foundation for innovation and growth.  The power of innovation is thriving at Cisco! We have created a cycle of continuous innovation in core enabling technologies that are now critical for any company reengineering their business. In addition to the multiple booths, sessions and forums that showcase our role in driving digital transformation, there are three sessions in particular I encouraged customers to attend as they are the technologies that must be front and center for any company undergoing a digital transformation.

Led by Zorawar Biri Singh, Cisco’s CTO and SVP of Cloud Services and Platforms, this session will share Cisco’s cloud strategy, and provide details on how customers and partners can most effectively build, consume, and deliver cloud based solutions.

Rowan Trollope, SVP & General Manager of Cisco’s Internet of Things (IoT) and Collaboration Technology Group will showcase the latest in collaboration technology and demonstrate how Cisco continues to lead the industry with innovations and advanced applications technology.

David Goeckeler, Senior Vice President and General Manager Security and Networking, will discuss the future of the digital network and how security will bridge the gap between complexity and capability.

These information filled sessions are just a small sample of the depth and breadth of what we’ll be sharing at Cisco Live! Stop me at the show if you see me in the hallways or come join my Executive Symposium and IT Management sessions.  Let me know if you feel the same energy I experience every day as I see the cohesiveness of Cisco’s innovation coming together to drive digital transformation from the network out.

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Kevin Bandy

No Longer with Cisco

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Microsoft Patch Tuesday – July 2016

This post was authored by William Largent

Today, Microsoft has released their monthly set of security bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities within their products. This month’s release is has 11 bulletins addressing 49 vulnerabilities. 6 of these bulletins are rated critical and address vulnerabilities in Edge, Internet Explorer, JScript/VBScript, Print Spooler, Office and Adobe Flash Player.  The remaining bulletins are rated important and address vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel, Office, Kernel-Mode Drivers, .NET Framework, and Secure Boot.

Bulletins Rated Critical

Microsoft bulletins MS16-084 through MS16-088, and MS16-093 are rated as critical in this month’s release.

MS16-084 and MS16-085 are this month’s Internet Explorer and Edge security bulletins respectively.  The IE security bulletin addresses vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer versions 9, 10, & 11. The IE bulletin covers 15 vulnerabilities in total and resolves 9 memory corruption bugs, 1 security feature bypass bug, 3 information disclosure, and 2 spoofing bugs. The Edge bulletin addresses 13 vulnerabilities in total and resolves 7 memory corruption bugs, 1 security feature bypass, 3 information disclosure and 2 spoofing bugs. The IE bugs are rated critical on affected Windows clients but only Moderate on affected Windows Servers.

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Talos Group

Talos Security Intelligence & Research Group

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There’s Never Been a Better Time to (Digitally) Transform Your Business

One of the most important devices in my life is my PC – maybe even more important than my coffee machine.  I take it with me to hair dresser appointments, long car rides, holidays; practically everywhere I would have some time to use it. It’s hard to believe that the very first personal computer was launched more than 50 years ago. This innovation laid the foundation for the first digital revolution. The invention of Ethernet followed by the Internet and, eventually, smart phones took personal computing to a whole new level.  We take for granted our ability to easily communicate, find and share information around the world. Now, we are at another inflection point, as today’s digital transformation is set to once again revolutionize how we work, live, play, and learn. Instead of the PC, the center of today’s transformation is any connected device – smart phones, tablets, cars, machines, sensors – the list grows each day.

I’m at Cisco Live this week in Las Vegas, celebrating today’s digital transformation era with more than 28,000 others. The buzz and excitement emanating throughout the event is energizing! I’ve spoken with many customers about how they are using mobile, cloud, security, and Internet of Things (IoT) to drive new innovations in their businesses. Digital transformation is already happening across every industry and will create a $24.6 billion opportunity by 2020, according to Accenture. IDC estimates that by 2018, 67% of the CEOs of Global 2000 enterprises will have digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategy.

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When I first heard the term digital transformation – or digitization or digital revolution, pick your favorite term – I thought to myself, what an odd phrase. Isn’t everything already digital? What is so different now? Today, I hosted a panel featuring three executives who are leading digital initiatives, and they shared their perspectives. The digital transformation we are experiencing today is driven by fundamentally new technologies that are changing at a rapid pace and creating significant new opportunities. The business results come down to dramatic changes in three key areas:

  • Delivering New Customer Experiences. Panera Bread is creating an end-to-end digital pathway for customers – from self-service kiosks to rapid order pick up and mobile payments – coupled with operational integrity for improved processes, accuracy, and quality. The results so far are shorter lines for all customers, decreased production times, and same store sales growth.
  • Transforming Processes & Business Models. Mazak Corporation, a leader in manufacturing machine tools, is creating connected factories and capturing real-time sensor data and analytics from across the factory floor. With new levels of insights, Mazak is transforming production, creating worry-free manufacturing with less downtime.
  • Empowering Workforce Innovation: The New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police is driving new levels of communication between local and county public safety teams using video and mobile devices. It started in Denville Township New Jersey Police Department. By digitizing the workforce and enabling face-to-face, real-time communication from anywhere, they are able to greatly improve security, emergency response times and training while also reducing administration costs.

One thing was common across all of these great innovation stories – they each had a strong relationship with Cisco, which provided a strong technology foundation to transform their businesses in the new digital era. Digital transformation projects are very complex and have many moving parts that need to be connected. You need a foundation that leverages a strong technology portfolio from the cloud to the data center and all the way to the end device. A foundation that is simple, automated, and secure across the board. One that connects people and devices in meaningful and secure ways. So IT can move fast to respond to the business. Only Cisco provides the network, security, analytics, automation, and collaboration needed to achieve higher operational efficiency, greater competitive advantage, and increased profits.  I believe that we are just scratching the surface on what we can do to accelerate digital progress.

So far our customers were pretty incredible with their innovative projects – serving their customers better, empowering their employees, reducing their costs. I wonder what innovation will be next. What is next for your business? Check why Cisco is your foundation for digital transformation at http://ww.cisco.com/go/digital

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Inbar Lasser-Raab

No Longer with Cisco