The Data Center can be a Cornerstone of Sustainability

Many organizations, including US Federal Government Agencies and the Department of Defense (DoD), are continuously shaping their data center… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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The Data Center can be a Cornerstone of Sustainability

Many organizations, including US Federal Government Agencies and the Department of Defense (DoD), are continuously shaping their data center strategies as part of their digital transformation journey. Decision-making criteria often include impacts on cost, elasticity, security, operational availability, and mission resiliency.

Now, enter a new metric – Sustainability! Introducing sustainability into the mix may raise the question “can you deploy a data center designed for sustainability to reduce energy cost and CO2 emissions without sacrificing elasticity, security, operational availability, and mission resiliency”?

The answer can be “Yes”! At Cisco, we found that a data center designed for sustainability has an ecosystem that can be a catalyst for higher productivity and performance at a lower cost in terms of both energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The benefits go well beyond the data center ecosystem itself – they extend to other sustainability initiatives including supporting distributed mission operations, smart buildings & smart forward mission hubs, and grid & operational energy management. The bottom line is that a data center modernization strategy can be a cornerstone of two journeys – Digital Transformation & Net Zero.  We call it ‘Smart Zero’.

A Framework for Implementation

So, let’s look at lessons learned from a data center strategy that can deliver. At Cisco, we made our data center strategy a cornerstone component of our own sustainability journey.  Between 2016 and 2021, we consolidated from 26 to 16 data centers, involving closing some facilities and retrofitting others, to take over their workloads to provide a better workforce, partner, and customer experience powering our increasingly interactive global operations at a lower energy cost and reduced CO2 emissions.

Let’s look at how our lessons learned can help power your journey using a five-part framework:

Start with Sustainable Design – As part of our IT fleet management programs, we regularly replace used equipment capitalizing on more energy-efficient equipment that increases workload capacity with less hardware and reduced energy consumption per Virtual Machine. In fact, Cisco servers can support 312% more same-sized VMs per blade than they did in 2016 resulting in a reduction in energy (watts) per VM by 27%. In one of our data centers, we consolidated 37 racks of previous-generation servers and third-party storage into six racks of Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series servers and backup storage decreasing power and cooling loads by 59%.
Optimize Operations – Optimizing means doing more with less—less equipment, space, power, and cooling. The retrofitted data centers have the power and cooling infrastructure to support more workloads in a smaller space — reducing floor space by about 41%, tripling power density, making sure we can scale to meet unexpected demand, and consistently meet our 99.99% uptime target.
Manage Energy – Energy management is a two-part process – increasing use of renewable sources and monitoring energy efficiency. Now, rooftop solar provides power at our data centers in Allen and Richardson, Texas; Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and Bangalore, India; and the Allen facility also features a 10 MW wind farm. Inside, we find savings opportunities using our data center visibility tools including Data Center Information Management (DCIM) tools for continuous optimization. For example, temperature and relative humidity data help decide where to add airside economizers, high-efficiency tiles, cold/hot air containment curtains, blanking panels, cool boots, etc. The Allen facility now runs airside economizers approximately 50% of the time. The impact has been significant – 8 MW of solar installed and 84 energy management projects have led to $3.7 M energy cost reduction & 17K tons of CO2 emissions avoidance annually since 2013.
Increase Asset Recovery & Reuse – At Cisco, we are evolving to a regenerative, circular model in which we reduce the resources we consume and the waste we generate. When data center equipment is no longer needed, we can reuse it, refurbish it to resell through the Cisco Refresh program, or use it for parts. In the five quarters ending in February 2022, over 1800 Cisco UCS servers from our data centers were refurbished and resold. Beyond the hardware, we have innovated to extend the life of our fiber cable backbone. Designed in 2007 for 10Gbps it has scaled to 400Gbps, by upgrading the optical Small Form Factor Pluggable (SFP) modules at the endpoints to reduce cost, CO2e emissions, and e-waste associated with re-cabling.
Practice Responsible Procurement – We take steps to make sure our data center suppliers (equipment vendors, colocation facilities, public cloud providers) follow sustainable practices. Our Supply Chain organization uses the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) Code of Conduct, which we have adopted as our own Supplier Code of Conduct. We use supplier scorecards to help measure and manage suppliers’ conformance to Cisco’s environmental and human rights requirements, and we are now extending that to our IT suppliers (storage, cloud providers, etc.).

Getting Your Journey toward Data Center Sustainability Started

So, it is absolutely possible! Transforming the data center ecosystem is a catalyst for your Digital Transformation and your journey to Net Zero. So, capitalize on Cisco’s experience and our data center solutions designed for sustainability to power your sustainable future.

For more information on Cisco and Data Center Sustainability, see:

At Cisco Live, a Journey to Sustainability
Solutions – Cisco IT Data Center Sustainability – Cisco
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series
Cisco Servers – Unified Computing System (UCS) – Cisco
Cisco UCS X-Series Modular System At-a-Glance – Cisco
Cisco Data Center Networking Solutions – Cisco

  Learn how Cisco's data center strategy demonstrates how sustainability integration can reduce energy costs and CO2 emissions while advancing digital transformation and Net Zero objectives.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Co-authored by Vivek Bhargava.

Realizing the full potential of industrial digitization requires extensive connectivity of operations assets wherever they might be – at busy city intersections, inside… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Co-authored by Vivek Bhargava.

Realizing the full potential of industrial digitization requires extensive connectivity of operations assets wherever they might be – at busy city intersections, inside utility substations, in rail and subway stations, along extreme temperatures and high-vibration production lines, within wind or solar farms, in mines and in oilfields. In these kinds of harsh environments, organizations need to deploy, secure, and maintain a wide range of connected devices. Full connectivity is the starting point and needs a network that is scalable, resilient, secure, and incorporates proven IT practices to keep the network performing up to expectations.

A new class of industrial rackmount switches

In January last year, Cisco launched the first two products in the Cisco Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series Switches portfolio. These switches are closely related to the widely adopted Cisco Catalyst 9000 family with the same hardware ASICs, the same IOS XE operating system, and offer the same level of network automation, assurance, and policy enforcement by Cisco Catalyst Center (previously known as Cisco DNA Center). This year, we are extending that portfolio with one of the industry’s most innovative and comprehensive product sets.

Figure 1: Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series all-fiber models

The new all-fiber and all-copper models of these rackmount, Layer 3 switches deliver the same security, scalability, and automation that customers have come to expect from our Catalyst 9000 enterprise-grade rackmount switches. But the Catalyst IE9300 switches are ruggedized for industrial environments – unlocking new opportunities to bring enterprise-grade networking to industrial networks.

One switch family, unlimited possibilities

Specific features make these multifunction switches especially powerful and versatile. For example, the latest models offer higher Power over Ethernet (PoE) wattage and high PoE budget (up to 720W). That means organizations can connect more – and higher-power, higher-bandwidth – endpoints, including Wi-Fi 6/6E access points, 4K UHD and PTZ cameras, digital signage, and even thin clients and user laptops, to name a few.

These models also provide higher bandwidth – up to 2.5GE downlinks and 10GE uplinks – for high-bandwidth endpoints and to enable data to be backhauled from many access switches in field deployments such as road intersections, railroads, and manufacturing environments. For utilities, the products’ high-density fiber ports and IEC 61850 compliance make them ideal for substation automation. Across industry sectors and use cases, Software-Defined Access makes it easier to interface industrial networks with enterprise networks. They also unlock the benefits of Cisco Cyber Vision and Endpoint Analytics to enhance visibility and security throughout industrial networks.

Figure 2: Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series all-copper models

The IE9300 family is built to withstand extreme temperatures and is hardened for vibration, shock and surge, and electrical noise. These switches offer extended durability thanks to no moving parts and their fanless, convection-cooled design. And they comply with specifications for several industries – from Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) to utility substation environments.

To put it more conversationally, you can think of the Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series as the Layer 3 switches that you can use for (almost) everything and (nearly) everywhere!

Use cases for the Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series Switches

One of the best ways to illustrate the potential of these new products is to describe some of the use cases they make possible:

High density fiber access. Fiber ports offer several benefits over copper. Fiber cables are immune to electromagnetic radiation, offer safer transmission in hazardous conditions due to their electric isolation, and can transmit data over much longer distances without experiencing signal degradation or loss of quality. Use cases for fiber include industries such as utilities that are modernizing substations using native fiber devices, and traffic backhaul from field deployments.
Clock input and precision timing. GPS and IRIG-B inputs that allow network synchronization ensure that different devices across the network are working with the same time reference, which is crucial for applications requiring coordinated actions. For example, in energy sectors, accurate time synchronization is crucial for monitoring power grid events, fault detection, and grid stability. Further, Precision Timing Protocol (PTP) Power Profile built into the IE9300 ensures 50ns per-hop accuracy that keeps the delay within 1µs over 16 switch hops.
Aggregation and cost-efficiency. 10G uplink fiber aggregation switch makes it possible to connect Resilient Ethernet Protocol (REP) and Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP) rings in non-climate-controlled field points-of-presence. This use case has broad potential in field deployment such as in roadways, wind, and solar farms. The 10G uplinks help avoid oversubscription that could occur in Gigabit only switches.
Distribution layer switching. Uplink ports open new opportunities for IE9300 to be used as distribution layer switches that you can deploy right in dusty and hot environments ensuring that critical data flows smoothly between access switches and the core network. Stacking capabilities of IE9300 ensure scale and redundancy.
High-wattage and high-density PoE. Copper models of IE9300 offer a variety of PoE options and can provide power to connected devices with a total of up to 720W per switch. Note that the IE9300 delivers 720W of PoE power while still maintaining a 1RU form factor, a first in the industry. Moreover, you can configure the switch to deliver up to 90W on a single 2.5GE port. This combines high bandwidth with high-power on a single port enabling new use cases.
Flexibility and scalability. Although the IE9300 switches have a fixed port count, and multiple units can be stacked to increase the number of available ports while still appearing virtually as a single switch, which reduces configuration complexity. Management by Cisco Catalyst Center makes onboarding and reconfigurations easy, increasing flexibility to keep pace with operations.
Visibility and security. Granular visibility into connected assets and network traffic is the necessary first step in ensuring operations security. Compute capabilities within the IE9300 allow it to run Cisco Cyber Vision sensors that provides visibility, risk assessments, and helps form the basis for network segmentation for security.

As you look to evolving your industrial network and gain from Industry 4.0 opportunities, look to the Catalyst IE9300 Rugged Series as your solution to connect everything – everywhere.

Learn more

Visit the Catalyst IE9300 page, get a closer look at the models to see how they could work for you, get all the details in the datasheet, request a personal no-obligation no-cost consult with one of our switching experts, or reach out to us with your questions in our community space.

  Learn about the use cases for the new class of industrial rackmount switches with unlimited possibilities  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Jump straight into latest perspectives about cloud application security and Cisco Full-Stack Observability with these developer sessions and interviews.

What is the best way to implement full stack… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Jump straight into latest perspectives about cloud application security and Cisco Full-Stack Observability with these developer sessions and interviews.

What is the best way to implement full stack observability seamlessly across diverse cloud native environments? Do cloud native environments require an updated approach to security? As a DevNet interviewer at Cisco Live 2023 in Las Vegas, I had the privilege of engaging with a wide array of technology experts working to answer these questions, and more.

From media interviews to sessions to community events, the event was full of guided learning and innovative perspectives, including foundational topic overviews and practical use cases and real-world examples of organizations that have successfully implemented innovative solutions. I’m excited to spotlight a curated selection of DevNet on-demand sessions and media interviews from Cisco Live, available for you to watch. Keep reading to explore two top-of-mind developer themes: cloud-native application security and full stack observability.

Please note that a Cisco login is required for the Cisco Live sessions below. 

Cloud Native Application Security

Enrich your application’s security to effectively tackle today’s challenges head on.

Cloud native architecture is the modern backbone of enterprise applications, and security is a critical aspect of its development. As a developer, staying ahead in this dynamic landscape means not only understanding how to build scalable and efficient applications, but also how to ensure their security. Watch these on-demand resources to learn the latest perspectives on how to protect your applications and data from potential threats and vulnerabilities throughout the entire cloud native development lifecycle.

Explore best practices for Kubernetes and cloud native application security

Dive into the foundations of modern cloud native architectures and development practices in Application Security for Kubernetes and Cloud Native Worlds with Girish Sivasubramanian, principal software engineer at Cisco. Find out key techniques that developers use to build and effectively secure robust enterprise applications. See examples of how to design and deploy solutions that provide visibility into application behavior, establish application segmentation, enforce workload policy, and proactively identify, respond, and remediate workload risks.

Accelerate your cloud native security efforts with DevSecOps

Cloud native development enables you to achieve scale and deliver an exceptional end-user experience. However, traditional security measures don’t suffice to protect cloud native applications in today’s threat landscape, especially when dealing with multicloud environments and fast-paced DevSecOps processes. Watch DevSecOps (Shift Left) to Secure Cloud Native Application with Faisal Azizullah and Arvind Kumar, principal architects at Cisco, to explore how DevOps and security teams use Cisco Solutions to continuously safeguard their growing cloud native deployment. They cover how to defend against threats and vulnerabilities across images, containers, runtime deployments, and Kubernetes infrastructure.

Master security best practices that work for serverless infrastructure

Serverless computing, a component of cloud native architecture, continues to gain popularity with development teams today. Understanding how to effectively secure serverless infrastructure is essential to protecting modern applications. Although traditional security practices designed for servers can’t often adapt to the distributed nature of microservices, there are evolved security strategies that align with the specific needs of serverless infrastructure. Watch Secure Your Serverless Cloud Infrastructure to review the foundations of serverless computing with Ryan Maclennan, technical marketing engineer at Cisco. He also covers which Cisco Security solutions DevOps and security teams use to protect a serverless infrastructure from threats and vulnerabilities.

Uncover the latest trends and practices in cloud native security

Discover a holistic approach to cloud native security in my interview What Are We Shifting Left? Security?  with Kelsey Hightower, distinguished engineer at Google Cloud. He and I discussed the challenges of implementation, the need for prioritization, and the value of collaboration and API-driven approaches to enhance security measures effectively. Watch now to learn how Kelsey recommends developers gain visibility into application behavior, enforce workload policies and effectively identify and respond to potential threats and vulnerabilities in today’s technology landscape.

Browse all security sessions here

Cisco Full-Stack Observability

Move closer to attaining a comprehensive end-to-end view of your application.

Full stack observability breaks down siloes and moves beyond domain-specific monitoring to correlate telemetry across multiple teams and domains and deliver always-on, secure, and exceptional digital experiences for customers and employees. We can use observability practices to harness the power of real-time data, analytics and visualization tools to paint a complete picture of their system’s health and performance. Watch these resources to learn how to understand your systems comprehensively, streamline debugging and troubleshooting, and proactively identifying potential issues before they affect end-users.

Define your observability vision

A well-defined observability vision empowers you to select the right tools, frameworks and techniques that best suit your application’s unique challenges, ultimately leading to more valuable and actionable insights from your efforts. These sessions are a great place to get started picking what to include in your own full-stack observability vision.

If you only have a quick break, watch the session Full Stack Observability in Action in 20 mins to see a streamlined overview demo with full stack observability components. You’ll experience the capabilities of Cisco Full Stack Observability firsthand, including application performance monitoring and end user monitoring with AppDynamics, end-to-end visibility across the internet with ThousandEyes, and more. When you’re ready for a more in-depth exploration of full stack observability, watch to navigate the process of defining your observability use case and developing your solution using the Cisco FSO platform. You’ll also explore a use case showing how an organization harnessed the power of Cisco’s FSO platform and AppDynamics Cloud to craft an innovative solution that delivers unparalleled visibility into microservices deployed on a hybrid platform.

Optimize cost and resources with full stack observability

Find out how to use full stack observability to make a real impact where it matters most – your organization’s bottom line. Watch Optimize Cost and Resources with Cisco Full-Stack Observability to discover how advanced analytics and automation can drive cost optimization and resource efficiency for your cloud native applications. Learn about Cost Insights, our latest solution designed to help businesses understand usage patterns, save money, and maximize ROI in the cloud. Additionally, explore the power of the Application Resource Optimizer, which draws on the inherent context present in the FSO Platform to reduce costs while not sacrificing business objectives – balancing risk and efficiency in ways never before possible.

Transform raw data into actionable insights with dashboards

Dashboards act as a centralized hub where you can access and view the visual representation of the relevant observability data collected from different sources. Grafana has emerged as the preferred dashboarding tool among industry experts, empowering teams with seamless visualization and monitoring capabilities. Watch the session Building Grafana dashboards with Cloud Native Application Observability to learn about Cisco AppDynamics’ expansion of Grafana support and use cases, with a focus on our open-source integrations for the AppDynamics Cloud. You’ll learn how the power of simple dashboards offers users the flexibility to create adaptive, predictive and scalable observability solutions with ease.

Get inspiration from organizations already implementing Cisco’s Full Stack Observability solution

Explore how other teams are using the Cisco Full Stack Observability platform to solve business challenges and improve cross-functional visibility in these use case-focused media interviews. First, watch Bringing Machine Learning into the FSO platform to learn how Kanari built a solution on top of the Cisco FSO platform as part of the early access program. Next, dive into the realm of business observability solutions with in Building Business Observability on the FSO platform with Evolutio to uncover their secrets of achieving proactive and effective observability in real world scenarios. Finally, watch CloudFabrix Integration with Cisco’s FSO Platform to learn more about their journey through the Design Partner Programs.

Browse all of the Cisco Full-Stack Observability Sessions here

Looking for more?

We’ve got even more content for you! Browse all on-demand DevNet sessions and media interviews from Cisco Live.

Which DevNet sessions stood out to you?

Share them on your favorite social media channel using the hashtags #CiscoLive and #DevNetZone so everyone can enjoy them!

Ready to try these concepts yourself? Get started here.

Learn how to connect the dots across every layer of your application on the Cisco Full Stack Observability hub for Developers.
Explore how to implement end-to-end lifecycle protection for cloud native application environments, including code and build protection, with Cisco Panoptica.
Proactively enhance your application’s performance and ensure uninterrupted user experience with comprehensive visibility from Cisco AppDynamics.
Connect with peers and get feedback in the Developer Observability Community, a new hub dedicated to aiding developers in mastering full stack observability. Share a tip or ask a question now to start a conversation!

  From media interviews to sessions to community events, Cisco Live 2023 had great sessions around Cisco Full-Stack Observability.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

As part of an ongoing effort to mitigate risks to investors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enacted new cybersecurity rules last month to provide investors greater levels of… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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As part of an ongoing effort to mitigate risks to investors, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enacted new cybersecurity rules last month to provide investors greater levels of transparency, giving them relevant, updated information that helps them assess cyber risks more effectively and make informed investment decisions. The new rules require public companies to disclose:

All material cybersecurity incidents within four days.
Material information on their cybersecurity risk management, strategy, and governance on an annual basis.

Disclosure of incidents

In a press release, the SEC states that the new Item 1.05 of Form 8-K which requires registrants to disclose any cybersecurity incident that is determined to be “material” – meaning that it may have a significant impact on the company’s financial position or operation, generally within four days. The registrant also must describe aspects of the incident including timing, nature, and scope as well as its impact or reasonably likely material impact on the registrant from the incident.

However, disclosures have the potential to be delayed if the immediate disclosure would pose a “substantial risk to national security or public safety”. Public companies must comply with the new reporting structure 90 days after the date of publication in the Federal Register or December 18, 2023 – whichever is later. Smaller reporting companies will be subject to the new Form 8-K requirements starting on 15 June 2024.

Companies that fail to comply with the new rules could face a number of consequences, including, but not limited to, hefty fines as well as the potential of investor lawsuits, and damage to the company’s reputation.

Disclosure of risk management, strategy, and governance

The SEC also defined Regulation S-K Item 106, which requires companies to describe their processes for identifying, analyzing, and regulating cybersecurity risks. In addition, the registrant now has an obligation to share the board of directors’ role in managing cyber threats – all of which must be recorded in the registrant’s annual report.

All public companies must provide the new disclosure beginning with annual reports for fiscal years ending on or after December 15, 2023, which means that calendar-year companies must comply with new standards in their upcoming annual reports.

Implications for the future

In most public companies, IT and security teams have been working very hard over the last few years to be able to detect and remediate threats. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) have implemented risk management and cyber governance strategies to drive IT security. However, the new SEC rules now require incident reporting and management of risks to industrial networks, as well.

Although securing Operational Technology (OT) has become top of mind, IT and CISO teams are sometimes just starting to make it a priority and often lack the visibility and control required to comply with the new SEC rules for both their IT and OT networks. So how can you manage cyber risks and report cyber incidents on your OT?

Step 1. Build your industrial DMZ

First, building an industrial demilitarized zone (IDMZ) is key to preventing network traffic from passing directly between the corporate and OT networks. Cisco Secure Firewalls provide a first line of defense to adversaries when attempting to breach a network. They provide stateful packet inspection to detect and stop a variety of attacks and will let you document your reports.

Step 2. Gain visibility into your OT

Most organizations do not have comprehensive or up-to-date inventory of connected OT assets. You can’t secure or monitor what you cannot see. Cisco Cyber Vision automatically builds and maintains your inventory, at scale, so you can assess your security posture, understand risks, and drive governance by giving IT and OT a common understanding of the current environment.

Not only does visibility let you detect malicious traffic and abnormal behaviors that could lead to threats you would have to report, but it also allows you to prioritize vulnerabilities to patch and segment your industrial network into smaller zones of trust, as recommended by the ISA/IEC62443 security standard. This is the foundation of a robust OT cybersecurity strategy.

Step 3. Control remote accesses

Remote access is key for operations to efficiently manage and troubleshoot OT assets. However, historically, 4G/LTE gateways or ad-hoc remote access software have been deployed, making it nearly impossible to enforce security controls. These shadow IT solutions must be identified (using the visibility capability from Step 2) and replaced with a secured solution to provide zero trust network access (ZTNA).

Cisco Secure Equipment Access lets you extend ZTNA to operational spaces. It empowers OT teams with an easy-to-use remote access solution that’s specifically designed to support their workflows and provides granular access controls based on identity, as well as context policies, together with audit capabilities.  These capabilities help organizations ensure that only authorized workers can configure connected assets, and that every action can be monitored.

Step 4. Include OT into your Security Operations Center (SOC)

Driving regulatory compliance and cybersecurity governance requires you to have a comprehensive view of your global security posture, across both your IT and OT domains. Information from your IDMZ firewalls, your OT visibility tools, your remote access solutions, and more, need to flow into your SOC to be enriched, correlated, analyzed, and reported. Platforms such as Cisco XDR let you uncover complex threats by aggregating intelligence from both Cisco security products and third-party sources.

The new SEC rules require that public companies bolster their cybersecurity strategies. As industry digitization requires more connectivity, OT and IT networks have converged. Cisco’s comprehensive IT security solutions can be easily extended to support your OT security requirements as well, so you can create consistency across your organizations and build on your existing expertise to mitigate the growing number of cyberattacks.

To learn more about how Cisco can help you secure your industrial operations, please contact us or visit cisco.com/go/iotsecurity. And don’t forget to subscribe to our OT security newsletter.

We’d love to hear what you think. Ask a Question, Comment Below, and Stay Connected with Cisco Secure on social!

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  New rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have implications on public companies’ cybersecurity posture. Learn how Cisco can help.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Patients today expect ease, convenience, efficiency, and a digital experience when accessing healthcare services. To deliver on these high expectations, technology must bring contextual intelligence,… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Patients today expect ease, convenience, efficiency, and a digital experience when accessing healthcare services. To deliver on these high expectations, technology must bring contextual intelligence, communication, and data to the proper point of care.

The future of this healthcare technology revolution rests in IT’s hands as those teams now need to manage applications, devices, data, and workflow while balancing a significantly higher cybersecurity risk. The future of care delivery is a “healthcare anywhere” model where data is simultaneously mobile but controlled and secured.

Cisco Thought Leadership in Healthcare

Healthcare system CIOs tell us one of their highest priorities is to establish an enterprise telehealth standard that is integrated into the current workflow and can scale securely.

We encourage you to explore our new thought leadership paper, titled “How to securely scale telehealth adoption,” where we discuss:

Digital healthcare today
The four pillars of effectiveness needed to scale telehealth securely
Actionable next steps to address your healthcare organization’s approach to digital front door, telehealth and more

  Healthcare system CIOs tell us one of their highest priorities is to establish an enterprise telehealth standard that is integrated into the current workflow and can scale securely. Learn how.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

As a young college student, I was introduced to the world of networking, and from that moment, I knew Cisco was where I belonged. The way its technology connected the world and empowered businesses… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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As a young college student, I was introduced to the world of networking, and from that moment, I knew Cisco was where I belonged. The way its technology connected the world and empowered businesses left an indelible mark on my heart and set the course for my life’s journey.

After college, I embarked on a path to turn my dream of working at Cisco into reality, immersing myself in learning and building up my skills. I pursued my CCNP Collaboration certification and gained invaluable experience working for Cisco partners. It was a journey filled with challenges and triumphs, but my determination to join Cisco never wavered.

I sharpened my skills while applying for a few Cisco roles over the next several years. Finally, the day arrived after interviewing for a Cloud Contact Centre Engineer position — a role perfectly aligned with my evolving experience and aspirations — and I received the news I had eagerly awaited. I was going to be a Cisconian! I was brimming with anticipation and excitement for the adventures that lay ahead.

However, life has its own way of testing our strength and resolve. Just two months into my journey at Cisco, when the excitement of a new beginning was still fresh, my world was shaken. My daughter, who was on the brink of turning one, received a diagnosis that necessitated immediate hip surgery. My wife had just begun her pre-registration training year as she embarked on her path to becoming a pharmacist. Together, we faced the challenging intricacies of settling into new roles and caring for our daughter.

Though, having read past stories on the We Are Cisco blog before joining the company, I approached my situation without a shred of doubt. Recalling the genuine support extended to my colleagues, as recounted in those heartfelt narratives, reinforced my belief that Cisco was the right place for me. It was as though those blogs had preluded my journey, assuring me that putting people first was a cornerstone of Cisco’s culture, existing long before I walked through its doors.

Amidst the whirlwind of change and responsibility, Cisco’s support emerged as a beacon of hope, reminding us that we were not alone on this journey. Thanks to the comprehensive benefits Cisco offers, we could ensure my daughter received the best medical care promptly. It was a sigh of relief amidst the storm, knowing that my employer genuinely cared about the wellbeing of my family.

But the true magic of Cisco unfolded during those challenging months. My manager and team showed an empathy that transcended any ordinary work relationship. They granted me emergency leave without a second thought, encouraging me to prioritize my family above all else.  As I returned to work, the ability to have a flexible schedule was crucial when managing a child in a cast for three months with follow-up medical appointments. My daughter’s appearances on Webex meetings when juggling schedules with my wife were met with smiles and waves. And as I learned and got comfortable in my still-new role, I could lean on teammates for their knowledge and support.

I had always believed that Cisco would be a place of growth and camaraderie, but experiencing it firsthand was beyond anything I could have imagined. During those months, I realized I had not just landed a job, but I had found a family that uplifted and supported one another through thick and thin. I wasn’t just another employee; I was an integral part of a global community where individuals come together, united by a shared vision of making a positive impact on the world.

Today, as I look back on my journey, I can say with utmost certainty that my dream to work for Cisco was worth every ounce of effort. Cisco has not only provided me with a fulfilling career but has touched my life in ways that matter the most.

So, those considering joining Cisco, take that leap of faith and apply! Embrace the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology alongside some of the brightest minds in the industry. But most importantly, know that you will join a family that stands by you in every twist and turn of life’s journey. Together, let’s build a future where innovation knows no bounds.

Are you ready to experience a company that cares? Find your opportunity now.

Subscribe to the We Are Cisco Blog.

  Raad's dream came true joining Cisco as a Cloud Contact Centre Engineer. Having his world shaken soon after, the company's response reinforced his belief that Cisco is the right place for him.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

The Generative AI Revolution: A Rapidly Changing Landscape

The public unveiling of ChatGPT has changed the game, introducing a myriad of applications for Generative AI, from content creation to… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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The Generative AI Revolution: A Rapidly Changing Landscape

The public unveiling of ChatGPT has changed the game, introducing a myriad of applications for Generative AI, from content creation to natural language understanding. This advancement has put immense pressure on enterprises to innovate faster than ever, pushing them out of their comfort zones and into uncharted technological waters. The sudden boom in Generative AI technology has not only increased competition but has also fast-tracked the pace of change. As powerful as it is, Generative AI is often provided by specific vendors and frequently requires specialized hardware, creating challenges for both IT departments and application developers.

It is not a unique situation with technology breakthroughs, but the scale and potential for disruption in all areas of business is truly unprecedented. With proof-of-concept projects easier than ever to demonstrate potential with ChatGPT prompt-engineering, the demand for building new technologies using Generative AI was unprecedented. Companies are still walking a tight rope, balancing between safety of compromising their intellectual properties and confidential data and urge to move fast and leverage the latest Large Language Models to stay competitive.

Kubernetes Observability

Kubernetes has become a cornerstone in the modern cloud infrastructure, particularly for its capabilities in container orchestration. It offers powerful tools for the automated deployment, scaling, and management of application containers. But with the increasing complexity in containers and services, the need for robust observability and performance monitoring tools becomes paramount. Cisco’s Cloud Native Application Observability Kubernetes and App Service Monitoring tool offers a solution, providing comprehensive visibility into Kubernetes infrastructure.

Many enterprises have already adopted Kubernetes as a major way to run their applications and products both for on-premise and in the cloud. When it comes to deploying Generative AI applications or Large Language Models (LLMs), however, one must ask: Is Kubernetes the go-to platform? While Cloud Native Application Observability provides an efficient way to gather data from all major Kubernetes deployments, there’s a hitch. Large Language Models have “large” in the name for a reason. They are massive, compute resource-intensive systems. Generative AI applications often require specialized hardware, GPUs, and big amounts of memory for functioning—resources that are not always readily available in Kubernetes environments, or the models are not available in every place.

Infrastructure Cloudscape

Generative AI applications frequently push enterprises to explore multiple cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, and Azure, rather than sticking to a single provider. AWS is probably the most popular cloud provider among enterprise, but Azure’s acquisition of OpenAI and making GPT-4 available as part of their cloud services was ground breaking. With Generative AI it is not uncommon for enterprises to go beyond one cloud, often spanning different services in AWS, GCP, Azure and hosted infrastructure. However, GCP and AWS are expending their toolkits from a standard pre-GPT MLOps world to fully- managed Large Language Models, Vector databases, and other newest concepts. So we will potentially see even more fragmentation in enterprise cloudscapes.

Troubleshooting distributed applications spanning across cloud and networks may be a dreadful task consuming engineering time and resources and affecting businesses. Cisco Cloud Native Application Observability provides correlated full-stack context across domains and data types. It is powered by Cisco FSO Platform, which provide building blocks to make sense of the complex data landscapes with an entity-centric view and ability to normalize and correlate data with your specific domains.

Beyond Clouds

As Generative AI technologies continue to evolve, the requirements to utilize them efficiently are also becoming increasingly complex. As many enterprises learned, getting a project from a very promising prompt-engineered proof of concept to a production-ready scalable service may be a big stretch. Fine-tuning and running inference tasks on these models at scale often necessitate specialized hardware, which is both hard to come by and expensive. The demand for specialized, GPU-heavy hardware, is pushing enterprises to either invest in on-premises solutions or seek API-based Generative AI services. Either way, the deployment models for advanced Generative AI often lie outside the boundaries of traditional, corporate-managed cloud environments.

To address these multifaceted challenges, Cisco FSO Platform emerges as a game-changer, wielding the power of OpenTelemetry (OTel) to cut through the complexity. By providing seamless integrations with OTel APIs, the platform serves as a conduit for data collected not just from cloud native applications but also from any applications instrumented with OTel. Using the OpenTelemetry collector or dedicated SDKs, enterprises can easily forward this intricate data to the platform. What distinguishes the platform is its exceptional capability to not merely accumulate this data but to intelligently correlate it across multiple applications. Whether these applications are scattered across multi-cloud architectures or are concentrated in on-premises setups, Cisco FSO Platform offers a singular, unified lens through which to monitor, manage, and make sense of them all. This ensures that enterprises are not just keeping pace with the Generative AI revolution but are driving it forward with strategic insight and operational excellence.

Bridging the Gaps with Cisco Full-Stack Observability

Cloud Native Application Observability dashboard

Cisco FSO Platform serves as a foundational toolkit to meet your enterprise requirements, regardless of the complex terrains you traverse in the ever-evolving landscape of Generative AI. Whether you deploy LLM models on Azure OpenAI Services, operate your Generative AI API and Authorization services on GCP, build SaaS products on AWS, or run inference and fine-tune tasks in your own data center – the platform enables you to cohesively model and observe all your applications and infrastructure and empowers you to navigate the multifaceted realm of Generative AI with confidence and efficiency.

Cisco FSO Platform extends its utility by offering seamless integrations with multiple partner solutions, each contributing unique domain expertise. But it doesn’t stop there—it also empowers your enterprise to go a step further by customizing the platform to cater to your unique requirements and specific domains. Beyond just Kubernetes, multi-clouds, and Application Performance Monitoring, you gain the flexibility to model your specific data landscape, thereby transforming this platform into a valuable asset for navigating the intricacies and particularities of your Generative AI endeavors.

Get started with Cisco FSO Platform

  Troubleshooting distributed, resource intensive Generative AI or Large Language Model applications can be daunting. Cisco Cloud Native Application Observability on Cisco FSO Platform gives you the power to correlate data with full-stack context across domains and data types.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

The railway industry is increasingly embracing new systems and technologies to enhance operational efficiency, safety, and connectivity. As operators move on from their legacy systems, there is an… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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The railway industry is increasingly embracing new systems and technologies to enhance operational efficiency, safety, and connectivity. As operators move on from their legacy systems, there is an ever-increasing number of connections and complexity to deal with from a security standpoint.

Expanded connectivity means increased chances for cyber criminals to disrupt critical infrastructure and global economies. Threats have gone from simple hacks to sophisticated attacks for financial gain, disruption, and espionage. The world’s critical infrastructure – power grids, healthcare systems, food industries, and transportation – can and have been disrupted by cyberattacks.

At Cisco, we’re listening and working alongside rail operators, governments, and our networks to map out a digital future with trust at its foundation.

Enterprise Architecture Approach

An enterprise architecture approach and zero trust framework is recommended to think more holistically about how components in a network can work together to drive security and operational resilience. This enterprise approach, verses one that is more siloed, can deliver enterprise segmentation, security, and compliance across the ecosystem.

Collecting and analyzing telemetry at the lowest granular level provides the comprehensive visibility needed to enable rail operators to see what’s going on their network – in real time. This level of visibility enhances the capacity to troubleshoot whether the network is undergoing network performance issues or facing an adversarial attack. Visibility and analytics also result in the ability to orchestrate a dynamic response to either – anywhere across the enterprise.

Cisco Connected Rail

The Cisco Validated Design for Connected Rail provides an end-to-end architectural framework and a resilient network foundation designed to improve the safety, efficiency, performance, and service levels of rail operations. This architecture includes network segmentation to securely deliver multiple services (vital and nonvital) over a common infrastructure – lowering risk and reducing cost.

The Cisco Connected Rail solution validates the architecture for high-speed, robust wireless connectivity between train and trackside as well as resilient, scalable access and backhaul transport infrastructure to interconnect wayside, stations, and operations centers across an operator’s regions.

The new digital reality that rail operators face brings with it an unprecedented level of risk. The volume and sophistication of threats have left these organizations with a mixture of security tools that don’t always work together, are unnecessarily complex, and aren’t well-suited to address increasingly advanced and costly attacks.

Cisco works with rail operators around the world to achieve a holistic, simplified approach to security, privacy, and trust. At the heart of our approach is integration – reducing the complexity of managing dozens of products. With this platform approach, customers work seamlessly with the tools they have to create a more safe and secure transportation ecosystem.

For more information on how Cisco can help secure your rail operations visit Cisco’s Portfolio Explorer for transportation.

  The railway industry is increasingly embracing new systems and technologies to enhance operational efficiency, safety, and connectivity. As operators move on from their legacy systems, there is an ever-increasing number of connections and complexity to deal with from a security standpoint.  Read More Cisco Blogs