NETWORKING

Small businesses often succeed by getting a lot done with relatively few resources. Through a combination of ingenuity, agility and pure hustle, they overcome complex challenges in ways that make it look simple to their customers. The pandemic demonstrated this in spades. But even as business returns to “normal”, the world is no less complex. In fact, the pandemic likely accelerated a shift to a more complex world — one that operates at ceaseless high…

Two years after the COVID-19 pandemic proved the internet invaluable with so many of us working, shopping, educating our children, and accessing health care – all from home – we’re still faced with a digital divide between those who have access to broadband Internet and those who don’t. Efforts by service providers to upgrade their network infrastructure to handle increased load has been both rapid and impressive, but more is needed. There remains a significant…

Security has never been more top of mind. Perhaps it’s exacerbated by what’s going on in Ukraine and the challenges it presents to the world, including the real fears over cyberwarfare. Of course, threats becoming advanced, the move to the cloud, and hybrid work remain among our customers’ biggest challenges. Who knew that when we all left the office more than two years ago, we would be gone to for so long—let alone hybrid work…

Going Under the Hood with AppD and IWO As noted in my previous blog, How Targets Work, the core focus of Intersight Workload Optimizer (IWO) is to ensure that workloads get the resources they need, when they need them, while simultaneously optimizing for cost and utilization – what we call Application Resource Management (ARM). However, for an application to truly perform well, it needs more than just the right physical resources at the right time;…

According to the UN, 6.5 million Ukrainians have been displaced within Ukraine, and according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) more than 4 million people have been forced to flee the country since the invasion began on February 24, making this the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. The scale of the unfolding humanitarian crisis in mind-numbing: experts estimate that 12 million people will be in need of humanitarian assistance.  At Cisco,…

“I so look forward to the next firewall hardware upgrade cycle!” – No One Ever Always Give More If I learned one thing from my firewall customers over the many years, it would be that they like to upgrade their hardware appliances as much as an average consumer likes to shop for a new car. No amount of flashy vendor marketing materials with the obligatory “industry-first” promises peppered all over can make up for this…

The relatively stable world of enterprise networking has undergone quite a bit of upheaval over the past few years. As a result, networking professionals with traditional job titles have assumed new responsibilities, and entirely new job titles have emerged. Key trends reshaping the jobs of network professionals include increased adoption of cloud services; the push for more automation of business processes; and the rise of technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN), SD-WAN, Internet of Things (IoT) , secure…

10’000 Hours / Getty I’ve been working on the internet since the early ’80s and its predecessors, such as ARPANET, before that. So when the web, or WEB as we put it then, came along, I started keeping a close eye on web browsers.  Web browsers are still the primary way we connect with the endless fields of data, stories, and video that make up the modern web. Today, Apple Safari on smartphones — thanks…

Cellular technology, evolving from 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE and now 5G, is one of the main pillars of industrial IoT networks. It enables connectivity with thousands of remote devices deployed in the field, across industries and use cases. Like any technology, cellular technology evolves over time as new releases of 3GPP specifications are developed, implemented by vendors, and adopted by services providers or private networks operators. Today, the main market trend is 4G/LTE services, while new…

Pre-pandemic, digitally enabled healthcare was progressing; we recognized the burden of disease was unsustainable and that there was a real need to shift to a preventative care model, underpinned by technology. However, the last couple of years have proven how capable technology is at aiding our pressurized health care systems, creating a sense of urgency to rapidly accelerate its integration. The power of digital connectivity and equitable access The power of digital connectivity throughout the…