June 2019 Cisco E-Zine

Welcome to Arrowdawns June 2019 Edition of the Cisco Technical E‐Zine.

This is put together by members of the Cisco Technical Community to provide up‐to‐date technical information on Cisco Products, Technology and Services.

We hope you will find this edition useful and if you have any questions on the details included please ask your Arrowdawn Technical Contact for more information or drop an email to connect@arrowdawn.com.

Breaking News…

Cisco Ushers in a New Wireless Era with Wi-Fi 6 

Today Cisco is announcing innovative solutions that help customers embrace a new age of wireless connectivity. Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax), the new standard for Wi-Fi networks, is redefining what’s possible for businesses — powering a new era of immersive wireless experiences and the connecting of billions of things. Cisco is also extending the industry’s most extensive campus networking portfolio by delivering a campus core switch purpose-built for cloud-scale networking. By coupling powerful

automation and analytics software with a complete array of next-generation switches, access points, and controllers for the campus, Cisco enables the industry’s only end-to-end, wireless-first architecture. Built on the same fundamental wireless innovations as 5G, these new standards will reshape how businesses and consumers interact with the world. Beyond being significantly faster than the previous generation, Wi-Fi 6 delivers up to 400 percent greater capacity and is more effective in high-density settings like large lecture halls, stadiums and conference rooms. Latency is vastly improved, allowing for near real-time use cases. Wi-Fi 6 is also easier on connected devices’ batteries and provides an overall more predictable user experience.Today, Cisco is rolling out several products and partnerships so that businesses can deliver a genuinely unplugged and uninterrupted experience.

  • Wi-Fi 6 Access Points: New access points across the Catalyst and Meraki portfolios go beyond providing the new Wi-Fi 6 standard. With custom, programmable chipsets and access to industryleading analytics capabilities.
  • Core Switch for the Campus Network: Cisco raises the bar with the Catalyst 9600 core switch family, which will serve as the foundation central to any network’s successful operation. To deliver the most secure and efficient wireless experience, organizations need a single networking fabric that brings wired and wireless together. 
  • New Developer Resources: Wi-Fi 6 and 5G represent an incredible opportunity for developers. To enable them to create the immersive experiences that these new levels of connectivity promise, Cisco is unveiling the DevNet Wireless Dev Center. 
  • New Ecosystem Partnerships: Prior to the launch of its Wi-Fi 6 access points, Cisco completed interoperability testing with Broadcom, Intel and Samsung to address the inevitable gaps that come with a new standard. Samsung, Boingo, GlobalReach Technology, Presidio and others are expected to join the Cisco OpenRoaming project to solve one of today’s biggest wireless pain points. The Cisco OpenRoaming project aims to make it easier to seamlessly and securely hop between Wi-Fi and LTE networks and onboard public Wi-Fi.

Cisco Ushers in a New Wireless Era with WiFi 6  

Why WiFi 6 and 5G Are Different: Physics, Economics, and Human Behavior  

OpenRoaming: Automatic and Seamless Roaming Across WiFi 6 and 5G   

Autonomous trucks to deliver packages to your doorstep  

5G and WiFi 6Evolution and revolution  

Unplugged and Uninterrupted: What’s Driving Networking Today 

Trend 1: Expanding Number of Devices Connected Everything today is getting connected. From light bulbs to medical diagnostic equipment. For IT to provide uninterrupted connectivity to all these devices, simplicity is the key to scaling up.

Trend 2: Reliability and Security

Ransomware is now used to take down businesses. The

impact can be brutal. The NotPetya attack cost businesses over $10 billion in 2017, and some of the hardest-hit companies were completely compromised in under four minutes. Additionally, the bulk of incremental devices landing on the network are unmanaged, not laptops or phones that are managed by IT. This means classical pieces of the security kill chain – endpoint tools such as antivirus software, MDM (Mobile Device Management), and EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) – don’t come into play. 

Trend 3: Immersive and Real-time Computing

We are now moving into the era of truly immersive computing, in which users will expect real-time and high definition imagery as part of the interface. This means not just pervasive use of high definition collaboration tools (like Cisco’s own Telepresence products) but also expanded use of augmented reality and virtual reality in a variety of business applications. These applications need both high bandwidth and ultra-low latency for their real-time experiences. The same goes for machines that are making real time decisions.  

We are now moving into the era of truly immersive computing, in which users will expect real-time and high definition imagery as part of the interface. This means not just pervasive use of high definition collaboration tools (like Cisco’s own Telepresence products) but also expanded use of augmented reality and virtual reality in a variety of business applications. These applications need both high bandwidth and ultra-low latency for their real-time experiences. The same goes for machines that are making real time decisions.  

Wireless First

Always-on wireless, treat the network as a one single software-defined fabric segment the network, and make sure that if one device gets infected by malware it cannot easily spread to other devices.

Cloud-Driven

A cloud-driven network infrastructure provides new capabilities to on-prem network equipment, most importantly by giving your the network access to the continuous improvement inherent in cloud services. When we leverage the cloud we can transform how we operate a network, with better support, better IT processes, and by applying data insights.

Data-Optimized

We can use the data and analytics from our networks not just to improve our networks themselves (making them more secure and more efficient), but to serve our business outcomes. This is the most exciting area of growth in networking. It’s ultimately what networks are for: Driving business forward. We start with taking the reactive model of IT support and putting it on a new footing: proactive, based on next-generation analytics.  

Unplugged and Uninterrupted: What’s Driving Networking Today

Uniting Enterprise WiFi and 5G Cellular with Intentbased Networking  OpenRoaming explained

How WiFi 6 will change the way you connect in big venues  

What Cisco is doing with Hybrid IT

Hybrid IT may be a trending term in tech—but what does it mean?

What is Hybrid IT?

The tech industry is full of complex terms that can be difficult to understand. If you’ve ever seen or heard the phrase “Hybrid IT”—here’s a breakdown of what the trending term means.

Hybrid IT is the capacity for organizations to deliver on cloud as well as on-premises data center solutions. Many places can’t rely just on on-location automation, and need the cloud to achieve things like faster deployment, secure connectivity, and better performance monitoring.

Like its name implies, Hybrid IT is a mix of two things that work together, and it is completely necessary in this era of digital transformation.  CIO writes that Hybrid IT is the model to address a growing set of business challenges—like the need to move faster, helping customer experiences in a real-time way, and distributing data efficiently.

What are the advantages of Hybrid IT?

If an organization has Hybrid IT, it means they have the power of both the on-premise and cloud data centers—therefore, they’ll have the right tools for every challenge they meet. On-premises data work well for low-latency and high-data workloads, while cloud helps in scalability and data distribution.

Delivering data is speedier and more agile with Hybrid IT, and businesses can accelerate their pace of innovation because they’ll be able to deploy anywhere. With one environment across cloud and onpremise, it may become easier and quicker to go to market as well.

What does Cisco have to do with Hybrid IT?

Cisco’s Hybrid solution for Kubernetes on Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides organizations the ability to deploy, secure, connect, and monitor Kubernetes-based apps on-premises and in the AWS cloud. With the Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes, users can connect their on-premises investments with public cloud innovation. Users access AWS’s Identity and Access Management integrated with Cisco’s Container Platform to manage their Kubernetes apps.

Cisco believes it has the best of both worlds with Hybrid IT—on-premises and in the cloud. It mixes the consistency of on-premises with the openness of the cloud, the development of apps with cloud deployment, and the security of on-premises with cloud speed.

What Cisco is doing with Hybrid IT  

Cisco Hybrid Solution for Kubernetes on AWS

Cisco Hybrid Cloud Platform for Google Cloud Cisco Container Platform

Cisco Reports Third Quarter FY19 Earnings

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 15, 2019 — Cisco today reported third quarter results for the period ended April 27, 2019. Cisco reported third quarter revenue of $13.0 billion, net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis of $3.0 billion or $0.69 per share, and non-GAAP net income of $3.5 billion or $0.78 per share.

“Our strong performance in the quarter was across the business, reflecting our customers’ confidence in our strategy, business model and market-leading portfolio,” said Chuck Robbins, chairman and CEO of Cisco. “Technology is at the heart of our customers’ strategies and we are building the technology to help them achieve their business objectives.”

Reconciliations between net income, EPS, and other measures on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis are provided in the tables located in the section entitled “Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP Measures.”

“We executed well in Q3, delivering revenue growth of 6%, non-GAAP EPS growth of 18%, as well as strong margins and cash flow,” said Kelly Kramer, CFO of Cisco. “We continue to invest in our innovation pipeline to drive long-term profitable growth, while successfully evolving our business model through software offerings and subscriptions and delivering value for shareholders.”

Cisco Reports Third Quarter FY19 Earnings  

Q3 Fiscal Year 2019 Earning Slides

Training Events or Summits/Webcasts 2019

Cisco on Cisco Webinars

Take a look inside Cisco IT and join us for technical sessions, panel discussions and global webinars.  Our IT experts share their insight, technical acumen and first-hand experiences deploying and using Cisco products that yield tangible business benefits.  You can also find Cisco IT subject matter experts at

industry trade shows, conferences, and Cisco events worldwide.

Why not take a look inside Cisco IT?  Find out how Cisco addresses many of the same IT challenges you face every day:

Cisco DNA Center & Software Defined Access Webinars

Cisco DNA Center offers customers a low-risk, lower-cost, incremental approach to adopting network technologies in their branch, campus, and wireless environments. It will simplify and automate the way we communicate with the network and reduce the complexity of day-to-day changes through automated workflows. DNA Center also provides insights into your end-user device (client) onboarding and connected experience, network devices, and policies. 

The webinar demonstrates the following DNA Center capabilities and applications from both the Automation and Assurance perspective:

  • DNA Center overview
  • Design and settings
  • Software image management
  • Wireless non-fabric deployment automation
  • Application policy
  • Network and client health
  • Client troubleshooting
  • Proactive troubleshooting using sensor management

Register Now

DevNet Workshop: A Taste Of Programmability

Read More and Register for Upcoming DevNet Events!

What is a DevNet Workshop?

It’s an interactive, hands-on opportunity to learn about specific API-related concepts and applications, with plenty of help at-hand.

This one’s for Network Engineers to help them develop the software co-creation skills they need, and to inspire the start of projects that leverage programmability to deliver meaningful business outcomes. The aim is to provide attendees with a baseline of skills that will help them get started, and to work with peers to develop new solutions.

Why is it needed?

Having a developer mind-set is going to be a critical success factor in our business going forward as we shift further towards software. This workshop will arm you with the skills you will need, including an understanding of software programming basics, REST APIs, and how they can be applied.

Who is it for?

Cisco Partners and Cisco Customers

Note: Please refer to the registration site for accurate event times

When and Where

  • June 18 – 19, 2019 and June 25-26
  • Location: London, UK

For full list of upcoming events and venues visit – https://developer.cisco.com/events

Exclusive online user group program for Cisco customers

Are you a Cisco customer? This program is for you! Connect directly with Cisco product teams and thousands of peer experts. You’ll have opportunities to influence product direction, get advice and share your expertise in private community forums. There are tracks for Cisco Collaboration, Enterprise Networks, Security and Data Center technologies. 

Private Communities to Engage with Peers and Cisco Interact and share your knowledge with other user group members and Cisco experts. Participate in exclusive user group programs, product trials, and events.

        •    Monthly Technical and Roadmap Briefings

Monthly briefings covering Cisco Collaboration,

Enterprise Networks, and Security solutions, product roadmaps, and technical topics requested by members. These Cisco WebEx virtual meetings enable interactive discussions and Q&A.

        •    Early Adopter, Beta and Early Field Trial Opportunities

The Customer Connection program is your avenue to participate in pre-release product trials. Be part of cutting edge collaboration technology by partnering with Cisco to make better products for you.

        •    Advisory Groups Influence Product Direction

Participate in small advisory groups that work closely with Cisco product, user experience, and documentation teams.

        •     Member Resources

The private member community highlights resources to help you stay up-to-date and manage your Cisco Collaboration, Enterprise Networks, and Security solutions. Check the community often to learn about new resources.

Join the Customer Connection program

Upcoming Webinars & Events

Cisco Global Events Calendar

Cisco TechWiseTV News

TechWiseTV – Cisco’s window to the world:   http://www.cisco.com/go/techwisetv

Subscribe to Cisco’s YouTube channel:            http://cs.co/Subscribe

Cisco dCloud Labs

Cisco dCloud is Cisco’s next-generation lab-as-a-service platform, providing customers with self-service training and a way to experience Cisco Solutions— from scripted, repeatable demos to fully customizable labs with complete administrative access.

It’s completely free, and new labs are being added all the time. 

Training and labs are available across all architectures: Collaboration, Data

Center and Virtualization, Enterprise Networking, Security, Service Provider,

and Services.

Please contact your account team if you are interested in using Cisco dCloud, and follow us on Twitter

@ciscodcloud to get the latest news and announcements. An Intro to dCloud

Enterprise Network News

The Future is Now! Cisco Catalyst 9100 Wi-Fi 6 Access Points

We know that you’re thinking that this is just another access point that’s meeting another standard, this isn’t flying-car news. And you’re right, it won’t bring you a flying car, but these new devices have greater bandwidth, a more dependable connection to the network and features that will continue to automate your network. These new features are going to allow for a lot of really great uses–and in a lot of ways, that’s better. How so? How about things such as robots and advanced virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR).

Students are able to learn by literally immersing themselves in their studies. Whether it’s using AR to go back thousand and reliving a historical battle or delving into a scientific study. The VR and Wi-Fi 6 partnership isn’t just for pointy haired, second grade geniuses either. Surgeons can employ VR to work on patients at a hospital on the other side of the world. This means that geography and time will no longer be the deciding factors on whether patients get the treatment they need.

To make use of this new technology, you’re going to need a reliable, scalable and secure wireless network that can handle the additional number of devices and the data that they’re going to create. That’s where the Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points comes in.Here are some things you can expect:

  • Enhanced features:  Target Wake Time, which is a new power-saving mode allowing the client to stay asleep and to wake at prescheduled times to exchange data with the access point. The energy savings over 802.11n and 802.11ac is significant, with up to three to four times the older standards. In addition, this improves power and battery efficiency in end devices like smartphones, tablets and IOT devices.
  • Addresses the growing IoT explosion: The Cisco Catalyst 9100 access points provide multi-lingual support and application hosting of IoT protocols such as Wi-Fi, BLE and Zigbee. IoT is more than lights, heating and security cameras. From life-saving medical equipment in hospitals to restocking robots!
  • Customizable with a programable RF ASIC: The Catalyst 9120 access point has custom RF ASIC and provides real-time analytics. When combined with Cisco DNA Assurance allows you to gain RF intelligence and visibility that can be analyzed and used to run your network more efficiently.
  • Reliability: always-connected, always dependable; a seamless experience. The Catalyst 9100 access points have improved roaming features allowing a better Wi-Fi experience. 
  • Capacity: Thanks to Wi-Fi 6, there is a reduced latency with 100+ devices communicating at the same time. 

The Future is Now! Presenting the Cisco Catalyst 9100 WiFi 6 Access Points  

Together WiFi 6 and 5G Will Bring a Huge Wave of Innovation  

OpenRoaming explained  

Wi-Fi 6 is for Developers!

The Opportunity for Wi-Fi 6 Applications

What kinds of new applications does Wi-Fi 6 enable? Let’s look at some possibilities.

A university has thousands of students, and each student is carrying multiple devices. With the higher-density of Wi-Fi 6, all of them could be connected at once, streaming an interactive AR learning app and still experience a quality connection. That changes how we learn and enables new education models.

A manufacturing plant has robots that work on mission-critical applications. With the higherdensity and power savings enabled

by Wi-Fi 6, we can connect more IoT devices throughout the plant. All these devices and robots can operate with high-performance connections that are secure and reliable.

The new level of connectivity for devices and applications impacts your end-to-end network, all the way from the data center and cloud, to the campus and branch, to the edge, and to the device.

It’s also about connecting Wi-Fi 6 and 5G. It’s important to consider capabilities such as intent-based networking to let you manage and operate your entire network, using automation to drive policy across the network, and assurance to know it’s working as planned. You can build in security and analyticsfrom the network up to applications, users, and devices.

Wi-Fi 6 is programmable, and that means a whole new world of applications and businesses are possible. These changes will happen fast, so application developers and network and IT providers need to get started now to prepare for the future wave.

We are excited to announce a new Wireless Developer Center to help you get started today. Check out our new Wi-Fi 6 developer center for API calls, learning labs, videos and other tools that will help you take advantage of this burgeoning opportunity. Once you have an app ready, you can test it in one of our sandboxes. Be sure to join us at Cisco Live in the DevNet Zone for more hands-on learning opportunities with the DevNet team.

WiFi 6 is for Developers!  

Read More here  

Cisco WiFi 6 (802.11ax) Solution  What Is WiFi 6?  

5 Things to Know About  WiFi 6 and 5G

Your Catalyst for the Past, Present, and Future

This is an exciting time at Cisco. The Intent Based Networking strategy we announced two years ago is kicking into high gear with customers adopting our solutions faster and faster. Today, Cisco Enterprise Networking SVP/GM Scott Harrell laid out the need for the modern access network to deliver an unplugged and uninterrupted experience for all users and devices. This is necessary for the wirelessfirst, cloud-driven and data optimized world we live in. Today we are introducing our newest products to meet that need: the Cisco Catalyst 9600 switch, Cisco Catalyst 9100 and Cisco Meraki MR 45/55 access points, and the OpenRoaming partnership to make Wi-Fi onboarding much simpler.

Passing the Baton

With the coming of Wi-Fi 6 and 5G, we will see a new wireless world, reshaping how businesses and consumers interact. These wireless services are significantly faster, with greater capacity and improved latency. In short, they are changing the way we do business.

New World, New Products

The new Catalyst 9600 modular core switch addresses the demands of Wi-Fi 6, mGig speeds, and security in a cloud-driven world. We’re taking the innovation that we did on Catalyst 6000 and extending the same way of working in routing and software-defined WAN across the entire portfolio, including software and services. This switch will serve as a foundation for the next generation of multi-domain, Intent Based Networks, and will allow customers to create a wireless-first network built as a single fabric for wired and wireless.

Moving into the Future

We now have one unified operating system and a focus on simplification across the portfolio to drive more consistency throughout our customers’ networks. With this launch, we have built our entire access portfolio with the Catalyst 9000 family for Intent Based Networking – wired and wireless. The teams are really energized right now to take our customers to the next level and make anything possible on the network.

Read More Here

Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series SwitchesNext Gen 6500

The Future of Access is Now  

Down to the Core: A Deeper Look into the Cisco Catalyst 9600 Series  

Cisco Drives IntentBased Networking Forward with MultiLevel Segmentation  

Ansible: Powered by Cisco DNA Center

We have all seen the segmentation of people and technologies into what we lovingly refer to as ‘silos.’ Initially, these silos were formed to group together teams with common skill sets, ownership, accountability, etc. The effect that we see from this division into functional groups typically manifests as some level of communication hindrance that limits full cooperation between the groups to obtain a higher level objective. If you look at the technology industry, the same sort of logical grouping is prevalent. For example, we have technology silos like Campus Networking, Data Center Infrastructure, Security, and Storage.

Ansible for Higher Level Automation

What we need to help drive a cohesive strategy for management across each of these domains is a common interface to act as the glue between them. This “higher layer” can interface with each technology domain using whatever interface is exposed by the manager or by reaching the devices directly. Ansible is a fantastic solution to act as this glue. There are over 2000 modules to provide that communication mechanism into each domain. The coverage is broad enough to span the entire gamete.

Campus Networking

Cisco Campus networking has seen significant growth in maturity with the DNA Center solution. DNA Center provides GUI driven workflows that greatly simplify complex deployments allowing the technologist to focus on what they want the network to do rather than the specific configurations. The Assurance engine is without a parallel in the industry. Assurance provides unprecedented visibility into the health of your networks, end users, and applications.

Cisco has released the concept of DNA Center as a Platform and provides access to the APIs that drive the DNA Center solution.

Learn More Here

The Ansible modules for DNA Center have been published on Cisco DevNet Code Exchange where you can find links to more information and most importantly, the GitHub repository.

Ansible: Powered by Cisco DNA Center

Ansible for Higher level Automation with Cisco DNA Center  Coding Essentials I NetDevOps Series, Part 3

Collaboration News

Webex: Delivering the Best Video Experience for the Modern Workforce

Today, meeting via video is not a nice-to-have; it’s already a standard for most – certainly the newest generation of workers have grown up with it. It’s no wonder that we saw a 50% adoption spike in usage in the first weeks of our recent version of Webex. A cultural shift has happened and we are now in a video-first era. “Good enough” video experiences are not good enough.

As video meetings usage continues to grow, so does demand for higher quality video. The burgeoning Millennial and Generation Z workforce demand HD video. Great video is one of the things we know you appreciate the most about Webex Meetings, and we provide a high definition, high quality, video-first experience that is awesome.

It starts with the network

Amazing video experiences has to start with a rock-solid, secure global cloud infrastructure and network backbone. It’s one of the key things that separates Webex video meetings experiences from the rest of the pack. Our Webex backbone is purpose-built to handle video and media, so our video meetings connections are secure and simply faster. The video is crisper and clearer than any other solution out there. Hey, don’t just take our word for it – check out this post from Zeus Kerravala of No Jitter.

But Webex brings much more to the table…

Read below how Webex brings security, cognitive collaboration and transformation to  industries like education, hospitality, medicine, design where people rely on seeing things making it almost better than being there.

Webex: Delivering the Best Video Experience for the Modern Workforce  

What Is Cognitive Collaboration?

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Contact Centers

AI is shaping the future of customer experiences and the contact center.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating a lot of excitement and there are good reasons for this. According to Forbes, 50% of IT professionals believe artificial intelligence and machine learning are playing a role in cloud computing adoption, growing to 67% by 2020. 

This week we will be speaking at UC Expo about the role that artificial intelligence is playing in advancing contact center productivity and efficiency, and in particular how this is benefiting the agent and customer experience. With all the news around AI, it’s easy to get lost in the hype versus reality. I’d like to demystify some of this and share my view of the five most common myths I’m hearing about as I travel the world talking to colleagues, partners, and customers. Five myths about AI :

  • AI is new
  • AI = chatbots
  • AI can replace all your people
  • AI is all about automation
  • AI will reduce call volume 

While AI for contact centers isn’t necessarily “new”, advancements in algorithms and the ability to apply them in real-time to massive amounts of data being created from contact center operations is. This combination opens up exciting new possibilities for companies to break free of constraints to address issues that have been challenging contact centers for decades. These include contextual routing realtime work to agent attributes, more precisely forecasting agent schedules, and higher degrees of customer personalization. As more and more data accumulates, processor speeds increase unabated, and algorithms march forward, AI will have a larger and larger role in making contact centers more efficient and effective.

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence’s Role in Contact Centers

Announcing the New Cognitive and Collaborative Contact Center  Cisco Integrates with Google Contact Center AI  What Is Cognitive Collaboration?

Five Game-Changers for Mid-Market Businesses That Boldly Move to Cloud Calling

The State of the Cloud Calling Market

Globally, the mid-market cloud PBX segment is just starting to pick up momentum, with analysts projecting a 24% global segment CAGR of 24% through 2022, to build on a low current market penetration level estimated at 12%. See Figure 1.

New cloud options, like Cisco Webex

Calling, are adding the scalability, reliability and security, along with a more sophisticated collaboration feature set that mid-market business requires. The cloud is better able to economically address the multi-site, contact center and mobile connectivity shortcomings of the onpremises options available to mid-market organizations. Equally important is the ability to support a cloud migration strategy that offers seamless operation throughout the time a business requires use of a mixed cloud/on-premises model. Because most mid-market businesses are not ready to go all-in on the cloud in one step, support for a common dial plan, administration and directory model through this transition period is an essential check point to starting a successful cloud migration.

Five GameChangers for MidMarket Businesses That Boldly Move to Cloud Calling  

How to Get On the Road to Cloud Calling Success  

Cisco Cloud Calling  

Why Huddle Spaces Are Gaining Ground in the Workplace

Nobody wants to walk into the office on their first day to find a sea of cubicles under fluorescent lights. Thankfully, in recent years, many businesses have taken a hard look at how they can optimize the office space to improve collaboration, increase productivity and attract top talent. And for good reasons, the hottest trend in the market today is the open office which provides a warm, friendly and collaborative environment, but it has come at a cost.

Building an open office floor plan requires you to remove barriers, like cubicles and meeting rooms, to create a more natural environment, but this trend comes at a time when collaboration with distributed teams is on the rise and employees need a space to collaborate with their team.

The Need for Huddle Spaces

I recently watched the “Bringing Video Conferencing to the Huddle Space” webinar where Robin Gareiss, President at Nemertes Research, delved into the growing need for huddle spaces in the office.


With the rise of the open office, employees are demanding more access to meeting spaces. In fact, employee demand is the #1 factor driving increased meeting space deployments. Since the once abundant meeting room is now scarce, collaborating with distributed teams has become increasingly difficult. Even if a group of employees finds a meeting room, knowing if there’s already a meeting scheduled in the room or for how long the it’s available for is often unknown. These factors are barriers to the collaboration efforts these organizations are trying to facilitate with the open office plan.

Why Huddle Spaces Are Gaining Ground in the Workplace

Bringing Video Conferencing to the Huddle Space (Watch)  

Bringing Videoconferencing to the Huddle Space (Read)

Staying Focused in the Open Office  

Security News 

Malicious Forces Cracking your SD-WAN Concrete? Reinforce your Network with Cisco SD-WAN Security

Cisco SD-WAN security reinforcing your WAN Network

Unlike other SD-WAN vendors’ solutions in which customers have to compromise on security, application experience or advanced routing, Cisco offers an integrated industry-leading SD-WAN with best-in-class security solution. This “no compromise” solution connects any device and any user to any

cloud and delivers consistent threat protection from branch locations to the cloud edge.

With Cisco SD-WAN, multiple layers of enterprise-level security capabilities – such as application-aware firewall, intrusion prevention, URL filtering, file reputation, and simplified cloud security – can be deployed and managed through single interface dashboard, at scale.

Gaining additional protection with Cisco Umbrella, a secure internet gateway, is as simple as checking a box within the Cisco SD-WAN unified management console. Umbrella protects users across your Cisco SD-WAN from threats such as malware, ransomware, and C2 callbacks with no added latency These integrated security capabilities are powered by Cisco Talos security engine, one of the largest threat-intelligence organizations in the world, to block sources with suspicious behaviors before they proliferate across the network.

To meet today’s highly flexible and scalable demands of an SD-WAN solution, a built-in security approach needs to be part of any SDWAN architectural design to better detect and prevent evolving threats, while simplifying management and improving performance.

Malicious Forces Cracking your SDWAN

Concrete? Reinforce your Network with Cisco SD

WAN Security  

Enabling AMP in Cisco SDWAN  

Read More Here

Reinvent Branch Connectivity with Cisco SDWAN Security  

Cisco Unites SDWAN and Security to Address the New Cloud Edge  

SDWAN Security Powered by Viptela Cisco Talos Threat Intelligence Group

Incident response: Putting all the R’s in IR

It is well established that the ‘R’ in IR stands for “Response.” But given the challenges facing incident response teams today, IR could just as well stand for “It’s Rough.” The landscape is challenging, tools are multiplying, and the talent shortage seems insurmountable.

First of all, according to Cisco’s recent CISO Benchmark Study, 79 percent of security leaders are finding it challenging to orchestrate threat response in a multi-vendor environment. There has also been a drop from Cisco’s 2018 survey in the number of legitimate security alerts organizations are remediating – down from roughly 50 percent last year to just under 43 percent this year. All this means that incident response is not getting any easier: only 35 percent of security professionals find it easy to determine the scope of a compromise, contain it, and remediate it.

Attackers continue to innovate and come up with new attack types at a record pace. They’re so brazen that they even use Facebook and other social networks to share tools and sell stolen, personal information. Meanwhile, security teams struggle to keep up with this innovation, acquiring new technology to deal with every emerging threat.

Three more R’s: readiness, recon, and remediation

In actuality, there’s more to the ‘R’ in IR than just ‘response.’ To effectively respond to attacks, organizations not only have to react when they occur, but also:

  1. Be prepared for them in the first place. (Readiness.)
  2. Have an efficient way of obtaining visibility into any threats that make their way in. (Recon.)
  3. Mitigate attacks as quickly as possible. (Remediation.)

How do you master all these R’s? Read below how Cisco Threat Response (CTR) has become a foundation for fast, efficient incident investigation and response across the entire Cisco security architecture bringing together threat intelligence from Cisco and third-party technologies, as well as Cisco Talos, via a single intuitive console.

Incident response: Putting all the R’s in IR  

Advanced Malware Protection

Threat Hunting Workshop  

“Spark Joy” With New 12.0 Email Security Features & Videos

When you see “software update available,” does it spark joy? For many of us, the answer is a resounding “no.” But, don’t be fooled into thinking that our new 12.0 release of Cisco Email Security is anything other than extraordinary. 

Here are three reasons why:

  • Our SVP of Product Management, Jeff Reed, puts it best: “It’s our biggest update in years.” We’ve poured resources into our Cisco Email Security product and it shows in a release that’s full of new features that directly impact our customers’ biggest pain points.
  • Cisco’s 12.0 release is threat focused. From the ground up, this release aims to arm organizations against common threats like phishing and business email compromise. As the frequency of email threats continue to rise, our customers can be confident that we continue to improve our security technology with updates to Sender Domain Reputation and External Threat Feeds (ETF).
  • We’re investing in the user experience. 12.0 for Security Management Appliance introduces Cisco’s next generation user interface and drives administrative intuition forward. A quicker UI, easy-to-read reporting summaries, and the continued trusted results makes it easier than ever to have an integrated approach to your email security posture.

Ready to dive into our latest release? We’ve compiled several resources to help you realize the value of these updates. First, the Release Notes for 12.0 for Email Security and the Release Notes for 12.0 for SMA include what’s new in the release and provides an easy-to-use guide to updating your software. Next, be sure to check out more videos in the link below for a more in depth look at our most noteworthy features. 

Topics covered in these videos are:

  • How-Tos Widget
  • External Threat Feeds (ETF), which support STIX/TAXII
  • Sender Domain Reputation (SDR)
  • DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE)
  • Smart Licensing
  • Cisco Threat Response

“Spark Joy” With New 12.0 Email Security Features & Videos  

Cybercrime and Fraud Part 1: Modern Tales of Piracy and Plunder  

Cisco Email Security AtaGlance  

Ways to Reduce Ransomware Impact: Actions You Can Take Today

During the past year, Cisco Security Incident Response Services has provided emergency incident response services for many customers dealing with incidents that sometimes become a ransomware event. In many cases, we were engaged by the company at the first sign of trouble and were able to help contain the initial incident and reduce the ability of the attacker to shift to a ransomware phase. In other incidents, we were asked to help long after the attackers were in the environment and the systems were already encrypted.

Initial Attack

The first thing to consider is intelligence-based email monitoring and filtering. An example of this would be the Cisco Email Security Appliance (ESA) product which integrates Cisco Talos threat intelligence into an active email inspection platform.

User Actions

Subsequent to the initial malicious email entering an environment, the next obvious question is “did the user open it” or “did the user click the link”? To answer these questions, we require some specific log telemetry from within the environment.

Lateral Movement

Lateral movement occurs next. To detect and thwart this, we need to reduce the ability for a user account to move freely within the environment without being validated or having authorization.

Account Compromise

Following the attack life-cycle, the next phase is account compromise:  did the user either provide their credentials (e.g., if they were prompted to enter their password to access what appeared

to be a legitimate company web page) or did the malware gather local cached account data from the system? This is where we recommend multi-factor authentication (MFA) as the standard for all environments.

Privilege Escalation

The next phase is privilege escalation.  In this phase, we recommend a multi-pronged approach as there are multiple risks to address. The first risk is if the environment has a shared local administrator password across multiple devices. This is still a very common practice in many environments due to a number of factors.

Practical Ways to Reduce Ransomware Impact: Actions You Can Take Today  

Cisco AMP for Endpoints excelling in AV Comparatives Business Main Test Series  

Data Centre News

Sometimes Your Only HCI Competition is Yourself

If you haven’t heard, Cisco is excited to start delivering the new HyperFlex HX220c All NVMe hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) systems with Intel Optane to our customers, making us the first to market with a fully engineered all NVMe HCI solution.

Engineered Performance, Simplicity, and Scalability

When we launched HyperFlex in 2016, we set out to redefine HCI market. Focused on addressing three core foundational pillars – performance, simplicity, and scalability, to provide our

customers with the results that matter to the most– increased end-user productivity, operational efficiency, and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO). We introduced a fully engineered HCI solution centered around a high performance distributed file system, the HyperFlex Data Platform, fully optimized to the UCS compute and networking architecture to deliver unmatched performance per node. This performance advantage enables HyperFlex users to run smaller clusters to maximize TCO savings – something that has been shown in lab reports by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), in the 2017 report, Hyperconverged Infrastructure with Consistent High Performance for Virtual Machines and

the 2018 report, Missioncritical Workload Performance Testing of Different Hyperconverged Approaches on the Cisco Unified Computing System Platform (UCS).

Sometimes Your Only HCI Competition is Yourself  

A Closer Look At Why Hyperconverged Infrastructure Performance MATTERS  

Cisco and F5 Team Up to Address Continuous Deployment Integration Challenge

Cisco ACI App Center, if you aren’t familiar, is an open and programmable infrastructure sporting an open API. It enables deployment of a wide range of services and acts, as a sort of infrastructure deployment app store for the enterprise. Partners, customers, and community solutions are available.And now it includes the F5 ACI ServiceCenter. Through a supported integration, we’ve teamed up with F5 to provide L4-L7 (application

services) capabilities within Cisco’s APIC environment. This gives joint customers the ability to deploy a full complement of application services, such as Advanced WAF and DDoS protection, network stitching, and enabling full-stack visibility.

F5 ACI ServiceCenter will make it faster and simpler for customers to deploy and consume F5 application services.  Using a declarative interface that reduces the time and effort required to automate deployment pipelines, but that doesn’t mean we’ve reduced capabilities. F5 ACI ServiceCenter still enables the same programmable extensibility to optimize and secure applications.

Multi-Cloud Challenges Addressed

For the enterprise, that means being able to easily deploy application services in a more intuitive, userfriendly experience across multiple environments. Yes, that means public and private cloud as well as on-premises or remote data centers. However, since each environment is unique – with its own network characteristics – integrating with F5 will improve the onboarding and deployment of application services dependent on those networks. We’re eliminating any potential abrupt stop to a deployment in progress.

It’s also important to enable visibility from the network to the application, from L2 to L7. This integration offers just that and enables customers to address one of their top multi-cloud challenges: visibility. Visibility is an integral component of every other capability – from security to availability to performance. Enabling full-stack visibility is a boon to all operational concerns and developers alike. It aids in troubleshooting, shutting down attacks, and optimizing performance.

To learn more, join us at the SDxCentral webinar on May 21st at 10:00 am PDT – Registration link.

Cisco and F5 Team Up to Address Continuous Deployment Integration Challenge  

ACI App Center Download the F5 ACI app

Knowledge 2019: Cisco and ServiceNow Joint Innovations Showcase

Cisco ServiceNow – Key joint innovations showcase in Cisco Booth

Let us give you a brief preview of what you can expect to see in our booth. Cisco ACI App for ServiceNow and Cisco NAE App for ServiceNow are the two key innovations we have jointly introduced into the market, leveraging the flexible and extensible ServiceNow App Store. The Cisco ACI App addresses key use-cases such as, ACI Multi-fabric discovery, Incident/Fault management, and ACI physical and logical topology Cisco ACI App for ServiceNow discovery. It also delivers visibility and automation from the application tier all the way down to the physical infrastructure, improving the speed and efficiency of IT provisioning, management, and troubleshooting.

Stop by our booth to check out the cool, advanced features we have introduced in the ACI App to address performance and scalability (larger ACI fabrics).  Our showcase also features the NAE App with built-in automation. Capabilities include automatic ticket issuance for NAE detected faults/events, automatic ticket closure, and re-opening based on thresholds among major ones.

As customer adoption of ACI-ServiceNow becomes widespread, we will continue to cover newer usecases to address IT operational pain-points in DC/Cloud. Cisco is actively engaging ServiceNow across a broad spectrum of products in networking, namely, ACI, NAE, Nexus 9000 and ACI App Center platform. We have several customer deployments featuring Cisco ACI App for ServiceNow across the globe.

Knowledge 2019: Cisco and ServiceNow Joint Innovations Showcase  

Demo: Cisco ACI and ServiceNow Integration  

Cisco ACI and ServiceNow: Build a ServiceAware Enterprise Stack for Agile IT Operations Management

Cisco Network Assurance Engine Integration with ServiceNow

Demos: Cisco ACI and ServiceNow, App for ITSM Stakeholders  

Your Complete Guide to a Successful VeeamON with Cisco.

Protecting your most Critical Data

According to IDC’s 2017 Data Age report, nearly 20% of the data in the global datasphere will become critical to our daily lives. On top of that 10% of that data will be hypercritical. That means that enterprises are facing increasing risks from data loss. 

Veeam’s most recent availability report shows that 82% of enterprises are facing gaps in what their users demand and what IT can actually deliver.

These gaps can mean a disruption in application availability and the inability to access data, costing enterprises on average nearly $21M. This, in turn, means that companies deserve solutions that allow them to stay competitive, improve agility and help them ultimately protect their brand.

Since the last VeeamON in Chicago, Cisco and Veeam have worked together to further integrate our technologies to ensure our customers receive an enterprise-grade, highly available data protection and recovery solution for Cisco HyperFlex and an end-to-end, modernized, protected platform for SAP HANA.

Long story short, our teams have been hard at work, both developing and testing new integrations while preparing for a great trip to Miami.

Your Complete Guide to a Successful VeeamON with Cisco.  

Read More Here

Server Speed and Capacity for Business Application Demands  

Cisco UCS Servers Claim 7 New World Records on Industry Benchmarks

Nexus 9500 Turnes Five Building on 25 Years of Experience and Expertise

The Catalyst 6500 is highly successful and the most widely deployed modular switch in the industry. It came ouf of Cisco’s first acquisition in

1993. The longevity of the platform is a testament to the importance Cisco places on providing our customers with the best technology and protecting their investments in us and our products.

Birth of Nexus 9500

The Nexus 9500 was created by the same team to address customer asks for an agile, high performance fabric foundation for modern software defined data centers. In 2013 the team re-imagined a new modular switch for the 40G/100G/400G world while leveraging all the learnings and feedback from our Catalyst 6500 customers. When launched 5+ years back the Nexus 9500 incorporated multiple industry

“firsts”:

Hardware Innovation – Revolutionary modular switch design

•     Nexus 9500 chassis has no midplane which optimizes power/cooling as well as provides significantly higher flexibility to support multiple generations of linecards and fabrics modules

Silicon Innovation – Cisco Cloudscale ASICs

  • Cisco Cloudscale ASICs pushed the limits on scale, performance, visibility and reliability.
  • Key Features:  o Algorithm-based intelligent buffering: Dynamically solve real-world network congestion problems while minimizing network latency and optimizing cost.
    • Extensive data plane telemetry:Enable customers to correlate network health with actual real time data traffic to provide application service level insights.
    • Uncompromised security: Provide multiple encryption options at 10G/40G/100G line rate to secure links between adjacent data centers or links spanning the globe.

Software Innovation – Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) and VXLAN fabrics 

Nexus 9500 Turnes Five Building on 25 Years of Experience and Expertise  

Read More Here:

Cisco Fulfills on the Vision for ACI Anywhere  

ACI Anywhere Now Extending From OnPremises to AWS Cloud  

Cisco Cloud ACI on AWS

How to Find Relief for Your Network Infrastructure in the Age of Apps  

End of Sale Announcements

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC-L2 and APIC-M2)

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco Small Business Unmanaged Switches (95 and 110 Series, select models)

End-of-Sale and End-of-Life Announcement for the Cisco ASR1004 Modular Platform