ING Direct is a personal banking and financial institution that has been a Cisco customer for a number of years. We are excited to highlight that ING Direct has today announced overhauling its IT infrastructure and transferred its system into a private cloud dubbed Zero Touch.

ING Direct has always been one of the most innovative banks in Australia and this project will see ING Direct become the only bank in Australia to have transferred its entire IT systems into the cloud.

Cisco applauds ING Direct for continuing to accelerate its innovation with the medium- to long-term aim of delivering new applications and services to its customers even more rapidly.  We’re incredibly pleased to continue to be a part of this along with Dimension Data, NetApp, and  Microsoft.

As well as playing a significant role in the implementation of Zero Touch(ZT), we are thrilled that our most recent project with ING Direct resulted in ZT being delivered at a much faster rate and at a significantly lower cost. That project was “Bank in a Box”, a private cloud innovation designed to act as a test bed for new applications and services.  Based on Cisco UCS, “Bank in a Box” enables staff members to provision copies of the bank representing all the bank’s applications and services – almost five and half terabytes of data – instantly and seamlessly from software they use every day.

With all of ING Direct’s systems now in the cloud, the bank’s IT team can devote their efforts to the continued innovation and delivery of new and improved products and services to customers.

For more information, please see ING Direct’s media release here.

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Tags: Australia, Cisco UCS

Wow, what an amazing week in Melbourne!! With more than 4,600 attendees in person and 36,000 session views online, Cisco Live was the largest event we’ve ever held in the Australia-New Zealand region. It was my fifth Cisco Live overall and third in Melbourne, and what amazes me every year is the sheer passion and enthusiasm of everyone present. Those attending are really there to learn and wanted to hear what we had to say. Read More »

Tags: Australia, Cisco IT, cisco live australia, cisco live melbourne, ciscolive, coc-business-of-it, melbourne

This piece was authored by guest blogger Jasmin Herro, founder and CEO of Outback Global Australia and vice president of Outback Global USA. Outback Global is an Indigenous-owned business certified with Supply Nation, along with Cisco Australia, which is also a member. Supply Nation is an organization dedicated to growing diversity within the supply chain. 

I woke up one morning and suddenly realized I was an entrepreneur!

Those who know me, even for a short time, realize that I am an ideas person, I am constantly thinking, joining the proverbial dots, making connections and never taking myself too seriously. Every day starts at 5:30 a.m. and ends the next morning around 1 a.m., or when I drag myself to bed after falling asleep at my desk.

There are things that constantly go through my mind, random sets of ideas that could at any moment be the next big thing. Was I always like this? I remember, as an 8-year-old child needing money to go to the annual fair and thinking that if I could convince Glen, the man who worked for my dad, to help me pick all the mandarins off the two big trees in our yard, I could sell them in my dad’s petrol station. After some gentle persuasion (begging), Glen harvested all the mandarins off both trees and I convinced him to help me set up a table at the petrol station with a sign that read “Mandarins 10 cents or 6 for 50 cents.” After 2 days I made $23 and with my best puppy dog eyes offered half the money to Glen. He of course declined but offered to make me an extension arm so I could reach the top of the trees and pick the mandarins myself the next year.  This was my first taste of entrepreneurial creativity and from then on I’ve looked for value and opportunity in everything around me.

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Tags: Australia, Cisco CSR, corporate social responsibility, CSR, indigenous, supplier diversity, supply chain

TechEd Australia kicks off today and the Cisco team is on hand to showcase how Cisco and Microsoft are teaming to develop integrated solutions that are enabling new levels of IT innovation in the data centre.

Make sure to come by booth #56/57 to speak with Cisco experts about how the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and Nexus switch family integrate seamlessly with the Microsoft portfolio of enterprise applications and technologies, including:

• Cisco UCS for Microsoft Private Cloud and applications (SQL and Exchange)
• Cisco UCS Manager for Microsoft System Centre
• Cisco UCS PowerTool for Microsoft Windows PowerShell
• Cisco Nexus 1000V Switch for Microsoft Hyper-V

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Tags: Australia, Cisco UCS, data center, Microsoft, TechEd

I just caught up with some colleagues who were present at the Cisco Live 2013 event just held in Melbourne, Australia, 5-8 March, 2013. “It was a great success for both Cisco and the Connected Industries Group”,  said Guy Denis, one of the experts who has just returned from Australia.

You probably saw my earlier blog telling you that  The Cisco Connected Industries Group (CIG) were at Cisco Live!, and I just got word that over 3,000 attended over the four days in Melbourne. There  was strong interest in follow-up meetings by over a hundred folks who were keenly interested in mining and Oil and Gas, in addition to Manufacturing. Not surprising really, as the region has a solid industry in these three areas. Many folks were very interested in the 819 for 4G mobile assets (think earth movers and that kind of thing), and the IE2000 was well received.

The Keynote by  Carlos Dominguez (the opening speech of the event)  featured the Internet of Everything (IoE) and The Internet of Things (IoT)  with industrial use cases  and  the network in mind. Read More »

Tags: #CLUS, Australia, Cisco Industrial Smart Solution, cisco live, ciscolive, Connected Industries, industrial, Internet of Everything, internet of things, IoE, IoT, melbourne