Year: 2017

January 3, 2017 4 Comments
Avatar

Looking Back at 2016, a Year in Cable

As we have just come back from the holidays and spent time with family and loved ones, I wanted to take the opportunity to look back at 2016 and provide you with some of the highlights for Cisco in Cable Access over the year.

In May 2016 we celebrated the first birthday of the cBR-8, our evolved CCAP. Being deployed by customers around the world we now have more than 18 Million subscribers using the cBR-8 as their means to get access to the Internet. The cBR-8 is the first CCAP providing DOCSIS® 3.1 capabilities in the industry, it will be the first CCAP providing Remote Phy DOCSIS® in the industry in 2017. Delivering unprecedented scaling and proven investment protection to our customers.

But that is not the only thing that happened in 2016…

Open-RPD for Remote Phy was announced in February, 2016, the main goal is to drive Remote Phy enablement and to ensure improved interoperability between member vendors. It is the first Open source initiative for DOCSIS® as such and many vendors have become member of the Open-RPD forum and are actively contributing to the software.

VL00507
The Genesis of Infinite Broadband; Enabling Open, Automated, and Virtualized Networks.

Full Duplex DOCSIS® (FDX), a new tool for MSO’s to unleash the full potential of DOCSIS® was also announced early in 2016. FDX builds on top of the foundation laid down by Remote Phy, work is in progress for the FDX specification. Let us look at some of the advantages of FDX;

  • It increases the upstream bandwidth by 10x to 50x, creating a big pipe of bandwidth
  • There is no downstream spectrum reduction when the upstream spectrum expands
  • Aligns HFC bandwidth growth with FTTH
  • OOB (Out of band) at 74 MHz and FM no longer blocks upstream spectrum growth

FDX is the latest tool for the industry to ensure its competitiveness from a technology perspective, allowing MSO’s worldwide to continue to differentiate with their Cable DNA.

That basically sums it up for 2016, I am looking forward to the exciting things happening in Cable in 2017, the first deployments of Remote Phy, the introduction of the first Cloud Native CMTS? Where will Full Duplex DOCSIS® be in one year time? Enough developments and innovations to ensure a very interesting 2017.

I wish you all happy holidays and a great time with the family.

Save

Save

Authors

Avatar

Daniel Etman

Product Marketing Director

Cisco's Cable Access Business

25 Comments
Avatar

2017 Predictions for SD-WAN (#sdwan)

For me, 2016 can be described as “SD-WAN euphoria.” Everyone was talking about SD-WAN. But when listening to analysts, attending tradeshows or presenting to customers, one of the most common questions I asked, or was asked, is “What exactly is SD-WAN?” To highlight just how much opinions differ, IDC and Gartner each predict the size of the SD-WAN market to be $6B and $1.24B respectively by 2020 – That is quite a difference!

Regardless of the size of the SD-WAN market, it was clear that SD-WAN adoption is increasing and will continue to do so in 2017. Why? The branch and WAN are being impacted by three key trends:

  • Devices: More mobile devices consuming rich data and video
  • SaaS: Increased consumption of applications hosted in the cloud
  • Big Data: More IoT devices generating large amounts of information

3629CISENHomeMarqueeLIv1

Jeff Reed, SVP of Cisco’s Enterprise Infrastructure and Solutions Group, recently blogged about Networking Trends for 2017 and the first two relate directly to SD-WAN: WAN Redesign and NFV Comes to the Enterprise. I want to elaborate on this, so here’s what I think is in store for SD-WAN in 2017:

  1. Flexible hosting options: Cloud applications are changing how branches are designed. Branches are becoming like smaller campus networks connecting to public clouds, co-location facilities and the data center. SD-WAN will need to be flexible enough to be hosted in each of these locations in both hardware and software (virtualized) form factors without compromising on performance or management simplicity.
  2. Improved security capabilities: SD-WAN has primarily been about securing connectivity between locations using a secure overlay. However, connecting branches directly to the Internet is critical for improving the performance of applications hosted in the cloud, but it can also expose your branch threats. Expect to see security become more integrated into branch platforms and complemented by cloud-based security and analytics for faster threat detection for web, SaaS and even encrypted traffic.
  3. Virtualizing the branch: SD-WAN, Next Generation Firewall and WAN Optimization might still be required in the branch but enterprises want more flexibility to deploy and consume network functions as needed rather than all at once in a single platform. Expect to see more virtualization of traditional, physical network functions in the branch combined with broader automation capabilities that will reduce deployment time and increase agility.
  4. Increased managed service offerings: The opportunity to provide enterprises with additional services like security, monitoring and application optimization, beyond basic connectivity is a compelling value proposition of SD-WAN for providers. Expect to see more service providers offer SD-WAN as a managed service as well as resellers, systems integrators and IT services companies who are looking to expand their service offerings by giving enterprises more choice.
  5. End-to-end interoperability: Digital transformation will require network infrastructure to seamlessly connect any user to any application with the best user experience. This will require SD-WAN to work across the branch, campus, data center and cloud with open and programmable architectures for vendor interoperability. Expect to see greater interoperability across the enterprise with centralized management and monitoring that will ensure greater agility, uniform security and an overall better quality of experience for all users.

This is my view of the SD-WAN market for 2017. I’d like to hear yours. Comment below or reach out to me on twitter @ghodgaonkar.

Authors

Avatar

Kiran Ghodgaonkar

Senior Manager, Enterprise Marketing

Intent-based Networking Group

5 Comments
Avatar

6 Tips for New Year Career Goals

Everyone knows that the New Year means setting new goals, be it saving for that vacation holiday or spending more time with friends and family. Its also a super time to set goals for your career.

New Year

Some simple ways to look at how to achieve your Career Goals include:

1 – Try and Establish a vision for where you want your career to go. Are you an engineer that wants to develop further to become a Senior Engineer, or a Technical Leader? Do you aspire to be Manager? Or are you like me, a talent acquisition specialist that has been working in the role for 10 years that wants to diversify and build different skills.

2 – Determine what actions support your career goals. What do you want to achieve this year? Do you want to increase your sales quota by 50%? Do you want to get a certification in your area of speciality? Write these goals on paper. Evaluate the skills you are good at or would like to improve and set those objectives for the year! By having your goals on paper, it will help you better meet the goals that you want to achieve.

3 – Show your goals to your manager. At Cisco, we use something called MyDevelopment Space to help evaluate our skills and goals. We also then sit down with our manager and work out a personal development plan based on those goals. It would be good for you to talk with YOUR Manager as well, because they may have some ideas on action items to help you achieve your goals.

4 – Set some short-term goals as well. Once you have established what your career goals are and you have worked out your personal development plan , set some short -erm goals. By breaking bigger goals down into small achievable goals, this will motivate you to take on other challenges as you start checking off items.Things to ask yourself include:  What do you you need to do to achieve your larger goals? What plans do you need to put in place? Do you need to learn new skills?Consider as many short-term goals that you can achieve and DO IT! This will help you achieve your ultimate long-term goal.

5 – Set a timeline. By setting clearly defined goals with an “achieve by” date, you can measure your progress and continuously motivate yourself to keep going.

6 – Be realistic. We all want to win the lottery, but that’s not a realistic way to success. Set achieveable goals, so you don’t get frustrated and quit working towards them all together.

Once you have achieved your career goals, build on what you have learned and use your skills! Network with other colleagues and Leaders and share your achievements and goals that you have reached. Be bold and maybe look for that promotion or secondment!

Is your goal to work for Cisco? Check out open positions.

 

Authors

Avatar

Elaine McCarthy

Talent Acquisition Specialist

January 1, 2017 Leave a Comment
Avatar

Voiceworks Changes the Communications Landscape in The Netherlands & Germany with Cisco

Voiceworks delivers telephony solutions from the cloud.

Voiceworks BV, an Almere based company in The Netherlands, is one of the largest and fastest growing VoIP & web technology specialists. They are achieving great success in the Dutch and German telecom world with its corporate Unified Communications (UC) and fixed-mobile-integration services delivered from the cloud both as a Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) and Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). In 2015, Voiceworks expanded by acquiring OnePhone GmbH, a German Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), which was an important step for Voiceworks and ensures local presence in Düsseldorf with a larger range throughout Germany. In 2017, Voiceworks also acquired Xenosite BV, a dutch broadband and telecom supplier in the business market.

Voiceworks is one company that has a full range of disciplines present, including product development, customer support, installation consultancy and commissioning. They develop their communication software completely in-house under the Summa (voice, UC) and Summa Networks (HLR/HSS) brand and is considered leading edge for the telecoms sector. In recent years, the business telecom provider has developed several innovative services using the Agile software development model, and marketed to Dutch clients through its extended resellers channel of approximately 200 partners. For all services, the company uses the cloud, and the far-reaching fixed-mobile-integration is an important principle of the company.

What was Voiceworks’ challenge?

The challenge for Voiceworks was present in their current mobile packet core platform which wasn’t future proofed and was very rigid. It lacked key features on 4G or beyond, as well as lacked support for Private Access Point Name (APN) which was a requirement for their customer base. Also the support of the current vendor did not allow to quickly deploy new functions or fix operational issues. After a review of their vendor options, Voiceworks selected the Cisco Ultra Packet Core (UPC). Voiceworks engaged in a on-premises proof-of-concept (PoC) labtest. Due to the excellent online documentation and professional help of the involved System Engineers Voiceworks was able to quickly install the mobile platform themselves on their own lab COTS hardware. Voicworks reviewed both VMWare ESXi and Ubuntu KVM as hypervisor and ultimately choose a KVM deployment. This new mobile platform will enable Voiceworks to quickly deploy new services in minutes and easily scale operations. Currently deployed into its live network, and the solution has carried customer traffic with complete reliability, scalability, and quality.

The Solution Detail

The new Ultra Services Packet Core (UPC) solution delivered the virtualization needed along with the future proofing required. The platform also helped Voiceworks enable a network capable of:

  • Fast (self) Deployment: UPC is a light weight system which allowed for PoC deployment in a couple of days
  • Open System: UPC supports both KVM and VMware which gives Voiceworks a choice for the hypervisor
  • Cost Effective: UPC is attractively priced for smaller operators which creates a new mobile market
  • Private APN: this creates a complete new service for the Voiceworks resellers
  • Proven technology: UPC runs the same proven software that is deployed in more than 70 operators worldwide.

 

Authors

Avatar

Jim O'Leary

Sr. Manager Mobile Solutions Marketing