If you are involved in designing, supporting or managing a data center, you will undoubtedly rely on technical support services from one or more vendors.  Running your data center, there is always the risk of a hardware failure or being impacted by a software defect.  While relatively rare, hardware does occasionally fail unfortunately.  However you undoubtedly have technical support in place to deal with such problems.  You may have invested in a few extra switches as backup, you may also have failover mechanisms in place.  Almost certainly you will have a support contract in place with your Cisco partner or with Cisco, so you have break/fix expertise on tap for when something goes wrong.   This is critical support for your business, no debate from me.

Engineer Under Stress!

Now, arguably the most important resource you have in your data center is not so much individual switches, routers or servers.  It’s your engineers, those who design and support your data center.  If they have a problem, where and how do they get help?  Who helps them when they are stretched?  When business pressures are telling?  Of course, their colleagues and managers can and will help.  Where, however, can they tap into additional sources of expertise so that they can become even more productive for you?  This is where Cisco Optimization Services come in – including our award-winning Cisco Network Optimization Service (or “NOS” for short), Collaboration Optimization Service, and the one I’m involved with, Cisco Data Center Optimization Services.

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Tags: ACI, architecture, Cisco Nexus, Cisco UCS, cisco_services, data_center, OpenStack, optimization, SDN

Project Illustrates How Software Defined Network (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Work in Concert to Enhance How Networks are Designed, Operated, and Monetized

Last week, I blogged about some joint research with Cox Communications related to our Evolved Services Platform (ESP) and NFV efforts. Another collaborative took place at the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) at their Cable-Tec Expo 14 event in Denver.

Loukas Paraschis, a Technology Solutions Architect at Cisco, co-wrote a paper (entitled SDN and NFV in Business Services) with Mazen Khaddam, Principal Lead Network Architect at Cox Atlanta.

The paper provides a comprehensive summary of Cisco’s SDN, NFV, and open source vision with the Cisco Evolved Services Platform (ESP). It specifically validates the service provider’s need for solutions that provide desired business outcomes for applications running across multiple domains (such as WAN and data center), and provides detailed use cases for the WAN Automation Engine (WAE).

The paper Read More »

Tags: cable-tec, cox communications, monetization, network functions virtualization, NFV, optimization, scte, SDN, softweare defined network, wae, WAN Automation Engine

CIOs face a scary reality. They only know about 5-10% of the cloud applications that are being used within their organization. This shadow IT is ripping holes in their security strategies. In fact, a recent Forrester study cited that 43% of respondents said they believed shadow IT practices were major threats to their respective organizations. And, as the fallout from recent high-profile attacks have shown, both IT and business leaders will face the consequences if a security breach occurs. 

To help leaders uncover shadow IT, we launched Cloud Consumption Assessment Service in January. But discovering shadow IT is only the first step that organizations need to take to manage cost and risks. Moving to cloud compels customers to build in-house clouds and learn to broker services from public cloud providers.

In my last blog, I outlined the need for customers to implement a new lifecycle approach for managing cloud—one that implements the processes and tools to govern cloud services from end-to-end across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Many organizations are beginning to set up dedicated organizations to manage and govern cloud adoption. Recently, the BBC set up a group composed of IT delivery team, security architects, lawyers, infrastructure experts and user communities to manage the purchase and use of cloud computing in their organization.

Establishing a new approach to managing clouds requires a big change. In my conversations with CIOs and IT leaders, many share that they lack the know-how, processes, and tools to effectively manage public, private, and hybrid cloud services.

To help customers deal with these challenges, we are introducing Cisco Cloud Consumption Optimization Service. This annual subscription service helps customers govern their cloud adoption from end-to-end and continually monitor cloud use.

Our cloud experts will help customers establish policies, processes, and tools to govern cloud services based on Cisco IT’s experience of managing more than 1,000 cloud providers. Throughout the year, we will help organizations implement policies to manage cloud providers and enforce security and compliance, develop their hybrid cloud service strategy including a technology and budgetary roadmap, set up a cloud program office, establish a approved vendor list, and more.

With this service, IT can rapidly evolve into a broker of cloud services internally. By doing so, organizations can launch cloud service faster and meet the needs of business groups. Additionally, the service can help organizations reduce cloud costs more than 10-15 percent, manage business risks and ensure regulatory compliance, and continually monitor cloud services and spot trends over time.

You can learn more about Cloud Consumption Optimization Service at: www.cisco.com/go/cloudconsumption

Tags: Cisco, Cisco Services, cloud, Cloud Consumption, Hybrid Cloud, optimization

Food for thought

The other day, I went to the café to grab my lunch and notice something that got me thinking of an IT problem we’re going to see more and more.

I’m not a soccer sport fan but of course I am aware of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ event that is happening.

Anyways, I saw a guy watching a live stream of the game between Iran and Nigeria on his mobile device and it got me thinking “I wonder how much bandwidth this thing is taking?”

All major sports event like the Superbowl, World Cup, NBA Finals, PGA tour, Olympics, etc. are streaming LIVE games and many people around the globe are watching the World Cup during business hours as its always 9 to 5 somewhere. Read More »

Tags: application experience, AVC, bandwidth, IWAN, mpls, online streaming, optimization, PfR, video, world cup

Everybody’s talking about 802.11ac, but we’ve sensed some confusion for next steps as far as how CIO’s and IT organizations should be approaching the new standard.

Should I move to 802.11ac?

You’re probably thinking: Chris, you’re a leader at Cisco, of course you want me to migrate to 802.11ac. That, my friends, is where you are wrong. There is no simple answer to the question of whether you should move your network to 802.11ac. Here’s my simple rule of thumb:

There is no premium for 802.11ac from Cisco. If you are deploying new Access Points’s today, you should be buying 802.11ac. If you’re not buying, you are probably satisfied with your network and how it will handle the growth of more and more clients associating with your network and the bandwidth demands that come with that client demand. If you feel you have a plan to handle this demand, then you are one of the few that can pass on 802.11ac.

That said, there is a strong ramp up for Cisco 802.11ac products in the market, the AP3700 is the fastest ramping access point in our history and we have yet to see if the AP2700 will claim that crown in the coming months. ABI Research estimates that currently 50% of new device introductions are 802.11ac enabled, a statistic expected to increase to 75% by the end of 2015.  This is enough proof of the overwhelming interest in adding the benefits of 11ac to networks. Let’s take a step back and consider the basics of why people are moving to the new standard.

Why .11ac?

Today, everything is about getting what we want, when we want it. Instant gratification. It’s not just the millennials—we’ve all been conditioned to expect things within seconds. Could you imagine the days pre-Internet if you had the capability for on-demand movies? Read More »

Tags: 11ac, 11n, 802.11, 802.11ac, 802.11n, access point, AP, bandwidth, battery life, CIO, Cisco, client, consumer, dell'oro, deployment, device, education, End User, GHz, gigabit, HD, HDX, high density, IEEE, IT, laptop, macbook, mbps, Mhz, migrate, migration, network, networking, optimization, performance, retail, rf, Scalability, scalable, smartphone, spectral optimization, spectrum, standard, technology, university, visibility, wi-fi, wifi, wireless, wlan