Cisco Live Recap: In the BYOD Era the Network is Still King
Posted on Thu, Jun 21, 2012 @ 12:34 PM
MCPc's anyplace workspace at Cisco Live
I had the opportunity to attend Cisco Live last week in San Diego, and what an amazing week it was!
On Monday June 11, the week-long event kicked into full swing with 17,000 physical participants and 125,000 virtual participants. The day included several special sessions focused on Borderless Networks and Mobile Device Proliferation, Data Center and Cloud, Collaboration and Video, and Security. Additionally, Monday was the opening day for the World of Solutions, where MCPc was a silver sponsor.
The highlight of Tuesday was the keynote delivered by Cisco CEO John Chambers. The presentation was riveting and thoughtful, as John discussed the fact that Cisco continues to make progress towards getting back to the basics that made Cisco the technology juggernaut that it is. Specifically, focusing on innovating in the route, switch and enterprise voice/collaboration markets, where Cisco sits as the market leader. John also talked to us about the fact that the new normal is performing at a level that is above average. In other words, average is dead, and in 5 years, above average will be dead. Market transitions wait for no one. The speed of change is accelerating in our networked and hyper-connected world. Another highlight of the keynote was the demo section, where LISP (Locator/ID Separation Protocol) was shown in practice. The demo was very cool! In short, you can think about LISP the same as mobile number portability, except for IP addresses.
On Wednesday, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior took center stage. She shared insights on Cisco’s newly announced Open Network Environment (ONE), a comprehensive framework that provides the industry’s broadest approach to network programmability, supporting use cases across public sector, cloud, service providers and enterprises. For those of you who have read about emerging trends around software defined networking (SDN), this is part of Cisco’s vision for SDN. Cisco’s ONE is a programmable framework that consists of three alternative programmability models for both enterprises and service providers:
- Controllers and agents
- Programmatic interfaces
- Virtual network overlays
ONE is designed to allow organizations to create applications to harvest network intelligence and extract greater business value from the underlying network.
Thursday’s keynote included Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman of the popular show Mythbusters. Adam and Jamie talked about innovation and helped the audience shake up some of our long-held assumptions on a number of topics -- a point hammered home by a video demonstrating Adam’s talent for igniting his flatulence! To say that this session brought the crowd to their knees is an understatement!
A few other key takeaways that I had from the week:
- The network will continue to be king, as we find ways to leverage the amazing intelligence we have from the network, and using that information to our advantage from a mobility, security, and BYOD perspective.
- BYOD is driving so much of what is happening in the industry, as it affects every layer of IT infrastructure.
- Video is at a tipping point and is becoming an ever larger share of network traffic, as well as a primary source to share information and unleash innovation.
- Cisco announced the UCS E-Series Server modules -- very cool in my opinion. The E-Series provides high-performance blade servers deployed in Integrated Services Routers generation 2. The servers provide up to 16 gigabytes of RAM and 2 terabytes of local storage -- all in a router! Very awesome! Combine this with LISP, and now you can treat an application as just another object in the datacenter and move the application from the datacenter out to the branch router!
- The Cloud Connected Solution was announced and discussed as a new platform for optimizing the cloud experience, preserving cloud security and simplifying cloud-based operations. It's designed to facilitate a world of many clouds with both enterprise and service customers leveraging public, private and hybrid models. Again, very powerful messaging around where the market is headed and what IT leaders need to be prepared for.
- The BYOD movement fueled by Apple and the iPad has led Cisco to develop an internal group that focuses exclusively on how the two organizations can leverage each other’s strengths and work and innovate together more closely.
It was definitely an amazing week of learning, networking and sharing ideas at Cisco Live. More than anything, the week cemented in my mind the power that MCPc is bringing to the market with anyplace workspace. It's exciting to be part of an organization that strives to push the boundaries, help clients innovate and stay ahead of technology trends.
 |
Darin Haines, Chief Technology Officer, leads MCPc's technology consulting practice and spends much of his time speaking to business and IT leaders about effectively using collaboration and other advanced technologies. Connect with Darin on LinkedIn.
|
Stay Connected with MCPc: Subscribe to the blog; follow us on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.