NETWORKING

Network operations teams have always been under pressure, but the upheaval caused by the pandemic quickly increased the strain. With agility, remote productivity, collaboration, and unwavering uptime becoming more important than ever, network teams are now reevaluating their capabilities, processes, and tool sets. And many are realizing a reactive, break-fix approach is no longer viable. The only way to meet today’s continuity, availability, and security requirements is to establish a proactive and predictive operational approach…

There was a time when Intel was all-x86, all the time, everywhere. Not anymore. Last week Intel held its annual Architecture Day with previews of multiple major upcoming architectures beyond x86. For once, it’s not hyperbole when they say these are some of the “biggest shifts in a generation.” And it’s not just architectures or just more and faster cores, it’s new designs, whole new ways of doing things. Instead of just packing more cores…

The United States has grown through generations and descendants of immigrants. More than at any other point in history, those immigrating are more educated – 45% hold at least a bachelor’s degree. Yet, two million degreed and professionally experienced immigrants and refugees face a multitude of barriers that prevent them from applying their full potential in the United States. Since 1999, Upwardly Global (also known as UpGlo), a national nonprofit, has strived to fulfill its…

The last 18 months have challenged us all as a global society. We’ve had to reimagine and rethink the way we socialize, learn and live – and at times, we’ve all felt the burden of the pandemic.   But perhaps the most significant burden of the pandemic is the one placed on our healthcare providers and frontline workers.   These courageous caregivers stepped in when case numbers were rising around the globe, and quickly pivoted to provide care to those…

German data center hardware giant Schneider Electric is the latest OEM to jump on the on-demand leasing program hardware, in this case the company’s American Power Conversion line of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). The primary beneficiaries are channel partners, but the user comes out ahead as well. This is similar to the on-premises leasing model used by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Dell Technologies, Lenovo, Cisco, and more. Rather than make a massive up-front purchase, you lease…

Ten years ago today, August 20, 2011, Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape and an influential investor, published a pivotal story in the Wall Street Journal: Why Software is Eating the World (also reprinted on his venture capital firm’s Web site). It was a stake in the ground and a rallying cry. I’ve never forgotten that story and the impact it had on me. When Marc’s story appeared, I was working at Microsoft, in developer…

AMD likes to crow about how its Epyc server processors can encrypt the content of virtal machines while they’re in operation so they are secure and isolated, preventing other VMs on the processor from accessing the encrypted contents. Well, researchers from the Technical University of Berlin have found a weakness in that feature, known as Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), and published a theoretical attack that defeats the protection. The paper ”One Glitch to Rule Them…

“Powering an inclusive future for all” is Cisco’s purpose statement. I always emphasize that this is the purpose statement of the company and the CSR organization. Cisco has always been about doing good and driving impact. It’s part of our culture and woven into all we do. When India became the only country globally to mandate a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law, we saw great opportunity. Section 135 of the Companies Act of 2013 prescribed…

Just over a year ago, organizations were grappling with transitioning their traditional workforce to a work-from-home model. This included moving critical resources to the cloud, ensuring every employee had access to essential business applications, and securing communications between the home office and the corporate network. But today, most of those same organizations are undergoing another shift. But instead of returning to the traditional pre-pandemic work model, they are looking to accommodate a new work-from-anywhere (WFA)…

This might be a very existential question… a bit like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. “How do I know what is reality?” Well, I have the answer for this: Cisco ThousandEyes can help with this! It might not be able to help distinguish between shadows on a wall and the real world behind it, but it can help with verifying your policy enforcement. In this blog post I will tell you all about it, and…