There’s an influx of conversation focused on Bring Your Own Device, the consumerization of IT and how organizations can cope in today’s multi-device environment.

IT and business leaders are being asked to securely connect thousands of devices competing for network resources; both wired and wireless while simultaneously supporting greater productivity in the workplace.

With this in mind, how can mobility be addressed at an infrastructure level to tackle challenges and enable opportunities for organizations and employees?

Recently, I participated in a Future of IT podcast episode with Craig Mathias, Principal at the Farpoint Group. We discussed how an IT infrastructure is key to enabling innovation and the role seamless mobility and why organizations should future-proof their mobility strategy through an infrastructure-centric approach.

One central theme from our discussion focused on the need for simple, intelligent, secure IT infrastructure. Read More »

Tags: Chris Spain, Cisco, Fast IT, Future of IT, infrastructure, mobility

The connections between your business success and data center efficiency have never been clearer or stronger. Delivering data center resources quickly to capitalize on new business opportunities or projects is a major factor for business success. The only way to expedite resource delivery is by replacing manual processes with repeatable, best-practice-based automated service consumption and delivery.

So what is getting in the way?

The first problem is inconsistent delivery of standardized infrastructure instances. Many solutions on the market today only manage virtual resources while others just support their proprietary hardware stack. Automation needs to be across all layers – and that includes networks. I believe the only way to achieve the speed and efficiency businesses desire is to manage your entire heterogeneous data center as a unified whole — holistically. Read More »

Tags: automation, FlexPod, infrastructure, nexus, orchestration, Prime Service Catalog, self-service delivery, UCS, ucs director, VACS, Vblock, vcac, vCloud Suite, VMware, vspex

With the growing influx of new mobile devices, connected things, bandwidth intensive applications and more data, the network is more relevant to business success than ever before.  Back in June of 2012, Cisco saw that we needed to move away from multiple network systems loosely linked together to an agile and simple infrastructure, streamlined policy and centralized management would be needed to support new business demands. We called it Cisco Unified Access and we aligned the solution to three pillars: One Network, One Policy and One Management.

For the last few years, we have focused on delivering new products and functionality under this Unified Access model. Below is a timeline of products released as part of the Unified Access framework. Cisco lead the way in delivering gigabit 802.11ac Wi-Fi., converged wireless control in access switches and through the acquisition of Meraki – a complete cloud-managed network solution.

The timeline above doesn’t represent every feature and function we have delivered, but it shows Cisco’s commitment to this Unified Access model, both from a cloud-managed and on-premise solution perspective.

Today, Cisco is announcing a number of new products and new functionality to existing products that will help mobilize the workforce, secure the business and increase IT agility. The announcement includes the following: Read More »

Tags: #80211ac, 11ac, 802.11ac, access, access point, Agile, agility, Aironet, anyconnect, AP, App, application, asr, bandwidth, business, byod, Cisco, compliance, converge, converged, Converged Access, data, device, emm, employee, Enterprise, experience, feature, foundation, function, gigabit, Guest, guest access, HD, HDX, high density, identity, indoor, infrastructure, interop, ISE, ISR, IT, LAN, lifecycle, Manage, management, MDM, meraki, mobile, mobility, model, network, operation, outdoor, policy, portfolio, prime, Prime Infrastructure, product, secure, security, services, simple, simplify, system, System Manager, technology, traffic, unified access, vpn, WAN, wi-fi, wifi, wired, wireless, wlan, workforce

The industry is going beyond BYOD—it’s not just about simply connecting the device anymore: the mobile landscape has grown to include apps, devices and content, all of which require security and management. This is no easy task. Enterprise mobility management (EMM) is no longer a nice-to-have for our customers—it is a necessity. You need a mobile strategy.

We at Cisco have been steadily building out our mobility portfolio across infrastructure, policy and management over the past few years to provide our customers with what they need to get ahead of the mobile trend.

It has always been Cisco’s strategy to use open API’s with ISE to integrate with host of 3^rd party EMM vendors, including Citrix, MobileIron, Airwatch and many more. We are now extending that flexibility to create a cloud-managed EMM offering with our Cisco Meraki solution.  The latest addition to the Cisco mobility portfolio, the Cisco Meraki Systems Manager Enterprise is an evolution of Cisco Meraki’s existing MDM cloud offer, and a natural extension of the Cisco Meraki network management solution (e.g. extending management of wireless access points to the management of devices connecting to the enterprise domain).

Cisco is committed to customer choice, and will continue to offer different options to the market, including ecosystem EMM partner solutions. The addition of the Cisco Meraki Systems Manager broadens that portfolio to strengthen our offering and empower our customers attain the mobility solution best suited for their specific requirements.

For more information on the Cisco Meraki Systems Manager, read the full announcement blog here.

Tags: 3rd party, access point, AirWatch, API, App, application, byod, citrix, connect, content, customer, device, emm, Enterprise, Identity Services Engine, infrastructure, ISE, Manage, management, market, MDM, meraki, mobile, mobile device, MobileIron, mobility, network, partner, policy, portfolio, secure, security, solution, system, systems manager, trend, vendor, wi-fi, wifi, wireless

Many network engineers recall the iOS7 update on September 18, 2013 as one of the most historic download days of their network’s history. All the more reason for us in the wireless world who anxiously anticipated the September 17 release of iOS8.

We asked a few of our customers to monitor the effect of the software release on their networks and the results for the first two days are in. Those in the education and healthcare space in particular are filled with early adopters of WiFi technology and devices, and eager to get their hands on the latest updates.

Joe Rogers, Associate Network Director at the University of South Florida shared this picture with us from 1pm September 17^th, showing 1 Gbps more traffic than he would normally see at this time of day:

Another customer, Greg Sawyer, Manager of Infrastructure Services, shared this picture of the iOS8 effect on his network at the UNSW Australia.

He noted that his experience handling the release this year felt smoother than last year, despite the new peak internet download of 4.65 Gbps and 21Tb downloaded for the day! Not too surprising when considering that there were 27,000 concurrent connections on the wireless network and approximately 60% of those being Apple devices.

How should organizations be considering and handling these network spikes? I sat down with Cisco technical leaders Matt MacPherson and Chris Spain (@Spain_Chris) to get some insight on the effect of big updates like iOS8 on the wireless network. Here are some of the highlights of what we discussed:

The World We Live In

The truth is, more and more services are being moved to the cloud—a cloud that will push updates to millions & in the future billions of users and devices on our networks. Read More »

Tags: #80211ac, 11ac, 8.0, 802.11, 802.11ac, 802.11n, aireOS, Akamai, Android, App, Apple, application, bandwidth, best practice, Burst, business-critical, byod, byte, cache, Cisco, cloud, control, design, device, engineer, fix, Gbps, guide, infrastructure, internet, IOS, ios8, iphone, iphone 6, iphone6, IT admin, IT administration, itunes, mbps, mixpanel, mobile, mobility, network, operation system, OS, patch, peak, pervasive, policy, protocol, protocol pack 11, release, secure, security, services, signal, TB, technology, throughput, unsw, update, USF, visibility, WAN, wi-fi, wide area network, wifi, wireless