Imagine our planet as a vast network — not of technology and devices, but of life.

Earth Month invites us, as stewards of this global network, to initiate impactful changes, both small and s… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Imagine our planet as a vast network — not of technology and devices, but of life.

Earth Month invites us, as stewards of this global network, to initiate impactful changes, both small and significant, in our daily lives. Over the last two years, I’ve committed to a personal challenge that aligns with our corporate ethos of sustainability. I’ve eliminated plastic water bottles and paper coffee cups from my routine, even while traveling.

Take a moment to visualize a reusable water bottle – a simple, yet powerful tool in our sustainability kit. This bottle has accompanied me across various landscapes and through numerous experiences, becoming a symbol of my commitment to the environment. Each refill represents a small victory: a plastic bottle saved from the fate of recycling or landfill.

Using a reusable water bottle every day instead of a single-use plastic one can impact your carbon footprint.

Based on the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable data, a 500-milliliter plastic water bottle contributes approximately 82.8 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. If you were to consume one such bottle daily for a year, the emissions would add up to over 30 kilograms (about 67 pounds) of carbon dioxide. By opting for a reusable bottle, you can avoid these emissions and take an active step towards reducing your individual environmental impact.

Our organization, Cisco, has set ambitious environmental goals: achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across our value chain by 2040 and 100% of new Cisco products and packaging to incorporate Circular Design Principles by fiscal year 2025. These initiatives mirror our company’s mission to power an inclusive future for all, one where environmental stewardship is paramount.  And in that future, Mother Nature has a voice:

While these corporate goals are crucial, individual actions play an equally important role. My journey began with a simple water bottle, and I encourage each of you to consider how your choices can contribute to a greater collective impact.

What steps can you take, not only during Earth Month but year-round, to protect our planet?

Here are a few actionable ideas for you to consider:

Organize or participate in a cleanup in your community
Calculate your carbon footprint
Educate yourself on plastics
Take a plastic quiz
Reject fast fashion

I invite you to reflect on these suggestions and consider integrating them into your daily routine. Your contributions, no matter how small they may seem, can lead to positive changes for our planet. Share your thoughts and additional ideas with our global community.

Together, we can help forge a path toward a more sustainable and inclusive future.

For Cisco employees, there are additional resources at your disposal (links for internal audiences only):

Check out Cisco’s Earth Aware 2024 (SharePoint)
Use Cisco’s Community Impact Portal to organize or participate in a cleanup.

"}]]  The advent of Earth Month reminds us of our role as stewards of the planet's vast network of life. With Cisco's ambitious goals to achieve net zero emissions and integrate Circular Design Principles, we all play a part in this journey. Join us in making sustainable choices, not just during Earth Month, but all year round. Together, we can build a more sustainable, inclusive future.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) provides a powerful REST API to automate and simplify security management tasks. You can find CDO API Documentation on DevNet. And tune in to a live discussion on … Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) provides a powerful REST API to automate and simplify security management tasks. You can find CDO API Documentation on DevNet. And tune in to a live discussion on April 24th on YouTube or LinkedIn to learn about how to get started, and integrations of CDO with Ansible and Terraform.

Key features include:

Manage devices, services, and device managers
Deploy changes to devices at scale
Manage objects (coming soon)
Perform complex searches (coming soon)
Monitor changelog (coming soon)
Execute commands across the device fleet (coming soon)
Build custom dashboards for Managed Service Providers

The CDO REST API empowers organizations to streamline security operations, improve efficiency, and strengthen their overall security posture.
To access CDO APIs, you must include an authentication token in your requests. Follow these steps to get your API token:

Log in to CDO
Go to the Settings page
Generate an API token (which does not expire)

Include this token in the header of your API requests using the Bearer token method for the desired tenant.

Example of a request to get a list of devices

curl -X GET
--url https://edge.us.cdo.cisco.com/api/rest/v1/inventory/devices
--header "Authorization: Bearer $API_TOKEN"

Helpful resources

CDO API Documentation at DevNet
Automating the Cisco Defense Orchestrator module
CDO Postman collection

Wednesday, April 24 webinar:

Join Principal Software Engineer, Siddhu Warrier and Product Owner, Aaron Hackney as they discuss the new and improved CDO API. We’ll take a deep dive into how to get started, and take a brief look at Ansible and Terraform integrations with CDO as well.Join us via: YouTube   |  LinkedIn 

"}]]  Cisco Defense Orchestrator (CDO) provides a powerful REST API to automate and simplify security management tasks. Learn how to get started, and about integrations with Ansible and Terraform.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

With data signals coming from every direction, it’s getting harder to monitor how well your digital infrastructure is (or isn’t) working.

In my 17 years at Cisco, I’ve learned a few things. For… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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With data signals coming from every direction, it’s getting harder to monitor how well your digital infrastructure is (or isn’t) working.

In my 17 years at Cisco, I’ve learned a few things. For example:

Life comes at you fast, data comes even faster
The ability to respond to new information quickly and effectively is crucial
Success in any enterprise ultimately comes down to your ability to ensure the best possible customer experience, and to do it consistently, time after time

At Cisco AppDynamics, we believe every customer interaction should be delightful. And not just for our own customers, but also for the people they do business with. Every application, connection, transaction, download, and service experience should work exactly as designed.

Of course, that’s not possible. Some days it feels like technology has a mind of its own. Mistakes happen. Connections get dropped. Bugs are unfortunate but inevitable. It’s how quickly you can identify and resolve these problems that makes the difference between industry leaders and everyone else. That’s why Full-Stack Observability (FSO) plays such a crucial role in ensuring the best possible customer experience, as well as more efficient business operations.

In an increasingly sophisticated digital environment, observability is really the ability to absorb and manage everything, everywhere, all at once, across the entire technology stack. That includes telemetry coming from network and edge devices, on-premises and cloud applications, ERP logs, API calls, website activity, threat intelligence reports, and more.

Full-Stack Observability allows organizations to analyze tens of millions of data signals pouring in each day and use them to minimize downtime, reduce business risk by making applications more secure, and optimize IT operations by intelligently allocating workloads.

It’s a maddeningly complex problem to solve, but the result is well worth the effort: smoother operations, lower costs, happier customers. It really is that simple.

Why Cisco?

A lot of people ask me what Cisco brings to the observability problem. ‘Don’t you guys make networking gear?’ is something I’ve heard more than once. I have two answers to that question. One is that we have a strong legacy of solving knotty technology challenges. And two, our robust set of FSO tools is second to none.

Allow me to start with a bit of history. Many people don’t realize that the Internet started out as a heap of disparate communications protocols like TCP/IP, BGP, Telnet, and others that couldn’t communicate with each other. More than 30 years ago Cisco built a router that handled all these languages fluently, helping to create the modern Internet. Just as you probably don’t think about your plumbing until the toilet backs up, most people don’t think about what it took to make all these things work together seamlessly, 99.9% of the time.

Many people look at us as a hardware company, and with good reason. Cisco servers are an irreplaceable element of the global Internet, handling more than 200 billion DNS requests each day. But software is core to our DNA. In fact, Cisco has thousands of engineers are dedicated to software development.

Just as we solved the problem of how to get different Internet protocols to speak the same language three decades ago, we’re doing something similar for the billions of data signals pouring into operations centers today.

We’ve combined AppDynamics’ segment-defining application monitoring solution with our Cloud Observability Platform, ThousandEyes threat intelligence feed, and support for the Open Telemetry standard (OTel), allowing us to see deeper and further into digital infrastructure than any other entity.

Our acquisition of Splunk  —  the industry leader in collecting and analyzing metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) — enables us to help enterprises move from detection and response to prediction and prevention.

I would challenge you to find any other vendor in this space with as complete a suite of observability solutions, or a deeper commitment to making FSO an integral part of IT operations.

Awareness and agility

I’ve spent most of my career at Cisco working in the collaboration space. Since I took over as Managing Director of AppDynamics & Observability for EMEA last year, I’ve been scaling a fairly steep learning curve. (Speaking personally, going deep on FSO is also a bit like absorbing everything, everywhere, all at once.)

But I genuinely feel this is an exciting time for observability. Every enterprise is dealing with increasingly complex digital infrastructure, and the ones who come out ahead will have a rigorous focus on the digital experience. They will need a platform that lets them know what’s happening to their infrastructure 24/7 – on premise, in the cloud, at the edge, and all points in between. These are areas where I believe Cisco can dominate.

I’m a huge believer in Peter Drucker’s mantra, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. That’s the basis for virtually all the management philosophies that came after — Six Sigma, Continuous Improvement Continuous Delivery, James Clear’s Atomic Habits, Steven Covey, take your pick. They all boil down to the same thing: awareness and agility. You need the ability to understand what’s happening in real time and respond appropriately. And that’s what FSO enables.

I’d love to continue this discussion and hear your thoughts about the pain points you and your customers are experiencing, and how observability solutions could help.

You can reach me at fsosales@cisco.com.

"}]]  With data signals coming from every direction, it's getting harder to monitor how well your digital infrastructure is (or isn't) working. Cisco FSO solutions can help.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

The past few weeks have solidified for me why I came to Cisco (almost a year ago, which is hard to believe). From the announcements of Cisco Hypershield and the Splunk acquisition, combined with… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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The past few weeks have solidified for me why I came to Cisco (almost a year ago, which is hard to believe). From the announcements of Cisco Hypershield and the Splunk acquisition, combined with power of our networking and data center expertise, and the greatest partners in the world—we’re now an unstoppable force in security.

A New Era of Distributed, AI-Native Security

Announced on April 18, 2024, Cisco is empowering our partners with a new generation of security architecture to bring to our customers. Introducing Cisco Hypershield, the first truly distributed, AI-native system that puts security wherever its needed – in your network; on every server; and in your public or private cloud deployments.

Learn more about Cisco Hypershield in the Partner FAQ and tune in on April 25 on the Cisco homepage or LinkedIn for a replay of our launch event at McLaren. We’re excited to leapfrog the competition with this announcement, which means more Cisco security and services revenue for you as a partner.

That’s not all we’ve been up to—we closed the Splunk acquisition to combine the full power of the network with market-leading security and observability solutions. As our partners’ success is our top priority, we’re balancing the need to quickly bring the benefits of our combined capabilities to our partners while ensuring a great experience.

There’s also another acquisition that recently closed, Isovalent. Cisco and Isovalent will build leading edge protection for every workload on every cloud. Learn more about these recent announcements on the Partner Communities page.

Investing in your Success

At Cisco Partner Summit 2023, we gave a promise to better protect security profitability with deal registration.

I’m happy to announce a big step in that direction with Cisco Security Concierge Deal Support. Partners now have access to a new specialty support team dedicated to accelerating registered deals and giving strategic support. Partners can get engaged through an option in CCW to opt-in, submitting a support ticket, or with a proactive outreach on targeted deals.

Our goal continues to be focused on simplifying the ease of doing business with Cisco Security through simple partner offers and programs aimed at maximizing your profitability (up to 30% blended margin).

The benefits of being a Cisco security partner keep growing. I’m confident the best days are ahead together!

Learn more about Cisco Hypershield here!

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

Cisco Partners Facebook  |  @CiscoPartners X/Twitter  |  Cisco Partners LinkedIn

"}]]  It’s an exciting time to be a Cisco Security Partner. From the announcements of Cisco Hypershield and the Splunk acquisition, combined new security offers to simplify selling Cisco Security and maximize your profitability. Read on to learn more about our new security innovation and promotions.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

I often get brought into meetings when a customer starts talking “DevOps”. We’ll discuss everything from infrastructure-as-code, automation, and continuous integration, to network as a service (NaaS… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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I often get brought into meetings when a customer starts talking “DevOps”. We’ll discuss everything from infrastructure-as-code, automation, and continuous integration, to network as a service (NaaS), cloud, and all things modernization. Regardless of what we cover, the customer “wants” always tend to be consistent; predictable pricing, minimal risk, and (most importantly) to move faster. Once the meeting is over, I usually get the same question. “So, what do I need to buy?”

Putting technical debt to work

This is when the hard conversation actually starts. It’s not necessarily from the customers perspective, but from our Cisco account team’s perspective. The answer to their question is “technically, nothing.” But after fifteen seconds of awkward silence, someone will respond with “what do you mean?” and justifiably so.

Here’s why I answer with that . . . we can “software-define” and “as a service” just about anything. We’re dedicated to our customers and we will figure out how to get the right gear from our factory to your warehouse as fast as you need it. Unfortunately, none of that really matters if you don’t transform the way you operate the network. Of course, deployment is a key part of the process but truly transforming operations tends to be the much bigger challenge.

Let’s put this in context of eliminating technical debt. Say we have a hypothetical government agency that has 30,000 devices going end-of-support in six months. This puts them at-risk. No support means no software patches — which means security gaps.

Unfortunately, their existing processes put them at eighteen months to refresh all 30,000 devices (not including procurement, award, lead times, etc). Now they’re looking at closer to twenty months, which means well over a year that their agency is operating at-risk. This gets people’s attention, often resulting in an all hands-on deck approach accompanied by a big check, replacing like-for-like while leveraging automation to deploy. Assuming everything goes off without a hitch, they’ll get everything deployed. But even if they meet the six month at-risk window, what happens during the next end-of-support announcement?

Steps to transform your technical debt

You can keep kicking that can down the road but can you ever break the cycle? I believe you can and suggest the following steps to transform your operations before the risks appears:

First, remember it’s all about the data. Whether it’s from your infrastructure, platforms, products, or software, pretty much anything with a CPU runs on data. Sure, some have nice user interfaces, and others require heavy customization, but ultimately you are sending operating instructions in the form of data and pushing across a variety of software and devices. This is why you must get control of your data by transforming your operations. Start by extracting all of it from your infrastructure and centralizing it (creating your “source-of-truth”). Thankfully this can be automated, even in complex multi-vendor, or legacy environments.
Second, make your data easier to manage. Structure and simplify it. By structure, I mean organizing data in industry-standard formats like JSON or YANG. Once you dig into network data models, you’ll notice a lot of redundancy. Strip out the unique variables — IP addresses, hostnames, descriptions — and what remains? Almost identical data models. So why do you need so many duplicates? You don’t. This is what I mean by simplifying. Pull the variables or key-values out of your data models and put them in a separate data source. A good example would be an IPAM like InfoBlox, Netbox, or Nautobot. With the key-values stored somewhere else, this leaves you with versatile data models for network services that are reusable across devices, cutting down the volume of data to manage, which leads to the next step.
Third, manage your data. This is the fun part. Where your keep your data is entirely up to you, but I highly recommend putting everything in a source control manager. Software developers have been using these tools for years. The immediate value you get through implementing version control justifies all the work. Everything else is just an added benefit. This is also where you start to see the operational transformation. When you manage the source-of-truth (SoT) data and not the individual device, you will always have an accurate depiction of your network because the network is always in sync with the SoT. When the SoT is accurate, you can start to wrap policy and governance around it, which is how we start to minimize risk. This leads to the final step.
Lastly, control your data. You’ve probably heard of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). If you haven’t, here is a quick explanation. Continuous integration allows you to always be validating, testing, measuring, and getting feedback of proposed changes without those changes being implemented in production. Now that we are managing our infrastructure as data, we can use CI to ensure any change that goes into production will be compliant and will not have any negative impact to the users. How is this possible? By using a digital twin. Remember, our data is not necessarily dependent on any hardware. All we need are virtual versions of our infrastructure and we can get close to a decent replica of our production environment, at least as far as our automated tests are concerned. Even if our digital twin isn’t exactly like our production environment, using it to better understand the impact of changes sure beats outage windows.

Strategies for modernization

Now that we’ve addressed moving faster and minimizing risk through data governance and testing, what about predictable cost models? Going back to our technical debt example, by fully separating the data from the infrastructure and focusing on managing the data itself, not the devices, we’ve unlocked your ability to consume technology as fast as you can field it.

This means models like hardware-as-a-service or subscription become financially beneficial. The best part, you own the data, so you are no longer locked into any single technology. There may be some details missing above since we have limited space, so I invite you to reach out to me personally to discuss. Until then, I encourage you to check out our latest in-depth newsletter titled Charting a New Course: Transforming Government Networks for the Digital Era. It features Gartner® research and also covers key issues and strategies that can help your agency tackle technical debt to modernize your mission networks, explores the  Hype Cycle™ for Infrastructure Strategy, and how to modernize infrastructure platforms and operating models in support of digital foundations.

Additional resources

Cisco solutions for Federal Government
FedRAMP solutions by Cisco
Simplifying Firewall Management: Cisco Defense Orchestrator Nears FedRAMP® Authorization

Notes:

Gartner, Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategy, 2023, Philip Dawson, Nathan Hill, 25 July 2023.

Gartner, Modernizing Infrastructure Platforms and Operating Models in Support of Digital Foundations, Dennis Smith, 7 June 2023.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Hype Cycle is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of marchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

"}]]  Discover the four steps to transforming your agency's technical debt to speed modernization and enhance mission innovation.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

As one of the largest technology companies in the world, it is critical for Cisco to operate in a way that helps to protect our planet. Our holistic approach to environmental sustainability includes… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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As one of the largest technology companies in the world, it is critical for Cisco to operate in a way that helps to protect our planet. Our holistic approach to environmental sustainability includes how we operate our business, how we engage with suppliers, and how we help customers and communities reduce their environmental impact and adapt to a changing world.

Cisco’s Plan for Possible

And, Cisco has a plan to get us there. “The Plan for Possible” is Cisco’s next-generation environmental sustainability strategy and action plan. Our plan includes a core tenet: evolving our business from linear to circular. And that involves a circular economy– an economic model based on recycling, reusing, and reducing the resources used. To evolve our business from linear to circular, we must transition our business from single-use products to ongoing services. We will continue to adopt business models to extend the value of our products and reduce environmental impact.

We’re already doing this through our goal to incorporate Circular Design Principles into 100 percent of our new products and packaging by fiscal 2025. Through our product return program, Takeback and Reuse, our customers can send any product back free of charge, and we will put it to its next best use – whether to remanufacture and reuse or recycle it. In fact, we reuse or recycle nearly 100% of every product returned to us. Cisco Refresh has been around for more than 20 years. It offers Cisco-certified remanufactured equipment, available for most of the portfolio, providing a second life to products and reducing waste.

Today, everywhere around the world, Cisco celebrates Earth Day to raise awareness about environmental issues and taking action to protect our planet. And here’s the good news Cisco partners, you can participate, act with Cisco, and be rewarded for doing so!

Many of our customers have set sustainability goals, but few have fully operationalized their plans. They are looking for help. That spells an enormous opportunity for you, our partners. And Cisco can arm you with the tools and the training to start having those conversations with your customers. Your first step will be to get your Cisco Environmental Sustainability Specialization. This Specialization will equip you with the information you need to educate your customers on the benefits of migrating to cloud-enabled solutions while updating to current generation technologies. You will also be able to share with customers the impact they can have on the environment by participating in circular economy programs.

Cisco’s Takeback Incentive

Once accredited with the Environmental Sustainability Specialization, Cisco partners are eligible to participate in Cisco’s Takeback Incentive, currently available in participating countries. The incentive offers incremental discounts of up to nine percent on new products[2] registered as part of Takeback Incentive deals on refresh or migration opportunities. Replacing older hardware with new, energy-efficient Cisco equipment, can help customers reduce their carbon footprint.  Cisco partners can then take advantage of Cisco’s free takeback services so the used hardware can be responsibly recycled or repurposed, instead of ending up in landfills.

I am thrilled to share that — to date — of the over 800 Environmental Sustainability Specialized partners today, there have been thousands of approved deals and takeback opportunities booked.  We are expecting a whopping 340% more gear back this fiscal year!  I am proud of our Cisco partners. All your individual actions combined are certainly making a BIG impact.  Thank you!

Model potential energy and cost savings your customers can realize

Cisco Environmental Sustainability Specialized partners can now also provide powerful insights to guide customer conversations on the impact they can have on the environment. The Cisco Sustainability Estimator models the anticipated amount of energy savings and emissions reduction that your customers can realize by modernizing their hardware.[3]

Don’t let this opportunity go to waste – No pun intended 🙂

If you have not yet earned your Cisco Environmental Sustainability Specialization, what are you waiting for? Celebrate Earth Day with Cisco. Let’s work together to drive towards a circular economy that makes better use of our limited natural resources.

Learn more about “The Plan for Possible”

Resources:

Cisco’s next-generation environmental sustainability strategy

Environmental Sustainability Specialization

Sustainability Journey

Takeback Incentive

Circular Economy

Cisco Refresh

Cisco Black Belt Academy Sustainability training

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

Cisco Partners Facebook  |  @CiscoPartners X/Twitter  |  Cisco Partners LinkedIn

[1] Feature photo of this blog is for illustrative purposes and does not reflect Cisco’s takeback process for returned equipment.

[2] Until the end of July 2024.

[3] These are estimates based on average consumption and real-world results may vary. The Estimator is available to ESS partners only and be accessed in the Cisco Partner Experience Platform (PXP).

"}]]  “The Plan for Possible” is Cisco’s next-generation environmental sustainability strategy and action plan. Our plan includes a core tenet: evolving our business from linear to circular. And that involves a circular economy-- an economic model based on recycling, reusing, and reducing the resources used.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

When we introduced our first compute platform in 2009 with Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, there was a fair amount of snickering from industry watchers and established server vendors. Most didn’t e… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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When we introduced our first compute platform in 2009 with Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers, there was a fair amount of snickering from industry watchers and established server vendors. Most didn’t expect us to last in the compute market for more than a few years.

Not only are we still in the server business 15 years later, but the UCS B-Series is still a widely used, fully supported platform that continues to pay dividends for those who took the leap all those years ago.

As many will attest, this is not the norm. Whether it’s because of shorter support windows, frequent changes to chassis designs, or an inability to accommodate evolving power, cooling, and processing requirements, most server platforms need to be replaced every handful of years.

That was too disruptive and costly for Nathan Bullock, IT Operations Manager at Interstates, a construction industry leader based in Iowa. Bullock said the company was being forced into chassis replacements or major upgrades involving midplanes and backplanes just to leverage the newer blades.

Tired of the constant refresh cycle, Interstates deployed UCS X-Series, the successor to UCS B-Series that improves on the seminal platform in every way and was designed to last just as long—if not longer.

“I think Cisco UCS X-Series is the first platform that truly delivers on the promise of next-gen computing, where you can upgrade on the fly and continually tailor the environment to meet the needs of the business,” Bullock said. “And the longevity of the platform has really hit home with our finance, procurement, and executive teams.”

Designing for the future

So, how did we create a server platform that lasts well over a decade when the industry-standard is 5–10 years?

First and foremost, we leveraged our unparalleled networking expertise and applied it toward server innovation. We created a unified fabric that simplifies the connectivity between server, storage, and networking systems. More importantly, it eliminates the need for a fixed data plane inside the chassis, which represents the single most limiting factor in other server platforms.

Technologies change and evolve. The less you hardwire into the chassis, the more flexibility and longevity the chassis will provide.

Because of our groundbreaking unified fabric, UCS B-Series was able to seamlessly evolve from 10G to 40G using industry-standard connectors while other server platforms reached the power, cooling, and processing limitations of their fixed data plane. UCS X-Series provides an equally impressive upgrade path, ready to support the 10G/25G/40G/100G needs of today and 400G/800G needs of tomorrow.

“Our infrastructure is future proof,” said Rod Lucero, CTO of Xigent, an IT services leader that recently deployed the platform to support its new full-stack observability (FSO) offerings. “With UCS X-Series, we have a 100G backbone that can easily move to 400G and beyond. It gives us 14 years of runway and a ton of flexibility.”

That flexibility extends well beyond connectivity and network speed. UCS X-Series is fully modular, meaning different components—like CPUs, GPUs, and memory—can be mixed, matched, and swapped over time.

“Some of our workloads are more memory intensive than CPU intensive,” Bullock said of Interstates’ application portfolio. “With this new platform, we can tune each box for our specific needs instead of constantly overprovisioning or buying new ones.”

And they can adapt or upgrade those boxes as needed over an extended period of time.

For Xigent, the modularity of UCS X-Series has opened new service possibilities involving artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML), high-performance computing (HPC), virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and GPU-enabled workloads. And the simplicity of our cutting-edge management platform, Cisco Intersight, has supercharged their internal operations.

“We can see and orchestrate all of the compute, storage, and networking systems in our data centers with Cisco Intersight, and it’s so easy to move things around,” Lucero said. “We can take excess capacity from one data center, move it to the other, and make it available to a customer within a day if they have an urgent need—all from a single console.”

As you consider your next server refresh or upgrade, be sure to look back as well as forward. There’s only one platform that will reliably serve your needs until 2040—and possibly beyond.

Read the Xigent case study

Learn more

Read the Interstates case study
Learn more about UCS X-Series and Intersight

"}]]  Learn how the Cisco UCS B-Series seamlessly evolved from 10G to 40G by using industry-standard connectors — while other server platforms were limited by the power, cooling, and processing of their fixed data plane. UCS X-Series provides an equally impressive upgrade path, ready to support the 10G/25G/40G/100G needs of today and 400G/800G needs of tomorrow.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Imagine juggling multiple remotes for your entertainment system, each controlling a different device and requiring endless button presses to achieve a simple task. This is what managing a complex… Read more on Cisco Blogs

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Imagine juggling multiple remotes for your entertainment system, each controlling a different device and requiring endless button presses to achieve a simple task. This is what managing a complex network security landscape can feel like—a jumble of disparate solutions, each demanding your attention and contributing to confusion.

Today’s IT environment is no stranger to complexity. The rise of hybrid work, multicloud adoption, and more sophisticated cyberthreats have created a security landscape that traditional, siloed solutions simply cannot keep pace with. This leaves organizations vulnerable, jeopardizing the security of their data, applications, and user trust.

This is where convergence comes in. It’s just like having a single, universal remote for your entertainment system.

Secure access service edge (SASE) is this “universal remote” for your network security. It offers a converged approach that combines networking and security into a single, cloud-delivered service. By bringing security closer to the user and the cloud edge, organizations can help ensure comprehensive protection regardless of the user’s location or access point.

However, adopting SASE can feel like navigating a maze. Different vendors, complex integrations, and lengthy implementation times can leave you feeling lost. At Cisco, we understand the challenges you face and the need for simplicity. That’s why we’re committed to making your SASE journey simpler and more efficient.

Figure 1: Evolve to full SASE—Catalyst SD-WAN and Secure Access integration

Introducing the integration of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and Cisco Secure Access, a cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) solution. It’s a single, integrated SASE solution that unifies the power of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN with the robust security of our SSE solution, Cisco Secure Access. This powerful duo forms the foundation of our integrated Cisco SASE solution, offering a simplified path to robust security and streamlined management.

You can think of Catalyst SD-WAN as the intelligent highway, optimizing network traffic flow and ensuring reliable connectivity. Cisco Secure Access, meanwhile, functions as the tollbooth or security checkpoint, allowing only authorized users and devices access. When these two solutions are integrated, they offer a streamlined and efficient approach to SASE, helping to ensure secure and efficient access for your data, applications, and users.

Catalyst SD-WAN and Cisco Secure Access (SSE) combine to transform your network’s performance and security. Through Catalyst SD-WAN’s advanced networking technology, your data is intelligently routed along the most efficient pathways, optimizing cloud application performance and reducing latency by connecting users to the nearest point of presence (PoP). This ensures enhanced redundancy and supports the high bandwidth demands of specialized regional sites, underpinning your network’s scalability and agility.

Cisco Secure Access serves as a robust cloud-based security shield, embodying the zero-trust approach by thoroughly verifying and continuously monitoring each access attempt, while diligently scanning internet traffic to safeguard your network against the spectrum of emerging cyberthreats.

The integration simplifies the transition to SASE by eliminating the complexities of multivendor environments. A unified management platform offers centralized control and oversight of both networking and security functions, significantly reducing operational complexity and saving IT resources. This comprehensive control enhances decision making, streamlines workflows, and ensures a cohesive security posture across the entire network infrastructure.

Let’s explore how this integrated solution empowers you to address common security challenges.

Securing branch offices and internet SaaS traffic: Branch offices and roaming users are particularly vulnerable to cyberthreats, especially with the growing adoption of Direct Internet Access (DIA). Our seamless integration extends robust cloud security across your entire SD-WAN fabric, protecting branch offices and users accessing internet and cloud-based applications.
Empowering zero-trust security: Our solution requires rigorous verification for every access attempt. This continuous monitoring approach ensures only authorized users and devices gain access to critical resources. By leveraging Cisco segmentation and micro-segmentation capabilities, you can effectively isolate critical network segments and resources, significantly reducing the attack surface and hindering unauthorized access.
Rapid deployment: Through the Cisco automation framework, you can rapidly deploy secure connectivity for hundreds or thousands of branch sites to Cisco Secure Access within minutes. This eliminates the need for complex, time-consuming manual configurations.
Streamlined customer onboarding: The streamlined purchasing process through the buying tool not only simplifies acquiring licenses but also automatically initiates the creation of tenant spaces tailored for your organization. This pivotal feature represents a significant value-add, seamlessly transitioning customers from the acquisition phase to operational readiness.

The benefits of this integrated SASE solution go beyond just simplifying your security stack, and include:

Enhanced security: Elevate protection for internet and SaaS traffic at branch offices, while effortlessly steering traffic for additional security. Benefit from a comprehensive suite of security features, including secure web gateway (SWG), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), data loss prevention (DLP), zero trust network access (ZTNA), firewall-as-a-service (FWaaS), and IPS.
Meet converged networking and security needs at scale: Deploy robust SASE architectures on top of your existing Catalyst 8000 series routers for high-throughput branch sites.
Distributed security enforcement offers tailored security, efficient traffic management, and enhanced protection. It combines on-premises NGFW on the Catalyst 8000 with cloud-based Cisco Secure Access, providing flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency. This model enables organizations to tailor their security posture to specific needs, offering a robust defense against cyberthreats and empowering them to manage demanding network traffic with strong security measures.
Operational efficiency: Simplify security implementation with policy-based routing and automated failover, minimizing complexity and ensuring smooth operation.
Enhanced user experience: Deliver consistent, unwavering security for roaming users, regardless of location, for a more seamless user experience.
Unparalleled agility: Scale security effortlessly to adapt to your evolving environment, enabling rapid and flexible responses to changing demands.
Unmatched network visibility and troubleshooting: Combining Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, ThousandEyes, and Secure Access delivers exceptional network visibility and troubleshooting capabilities. This powerful integration optimizes traffic flow, enhances digital experience assurance by securing user connections, and ensures robust connectivity across your entire network. Gain a comprehensive view of network health, streamline problem resolution, and create a resilient and efficient digital environment.
Always ahead of threats: Leverage the power of Cisco Talos threat intelligence for real-time insights that identify, correlate, and remediate threats at exceptional speed.

Jumpstart your SASE journey with ease

The integrated power of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN and Cisco Secure Access unlocks a scalable, secure, and simplified path to SASE. This powerful combination, merging the best of networking and security into a single solution delivers a unified experience for both IT and users. Centralized management of your entire network and security posture streamlines operations and simplifies SASE adoption. Additionally, users enjoy unmatched security with consistent protection across the network, regardless of location.

Learn more about Catalyst SD-WAN.

"}]]  Experience the seamless journey to secure access service edge (SASE) with the integration of Catalyst SD-WAN and Secure Access, simplifying your path to high-performance connectivity and enhanced security. This integrated solution delivers unmatched security and unified experiences for your network.  Read More Cisco Blogs 

Cisco will be back at HANNOVER MESSE 2024, where we will showcase our industry-leading, secure solutions that enable manufacturers to focus on creating a sustainable supply chain. Join us in person… Read more on Cisco Blogs

​[[ 4:30—5 p.m. CEST
Industrial Security Circus Stage
Transforming Manufacturing: Unlocking Industry 4.0 with Cloud Networking Thursday, April 25 ]]  Cisco will be back at HANNOVER MESSE 2024 to showcase our industry-leading, secure solutions that enable manufacturers to focus on creating a sustainable supply chain. Join us in Hannover to experience our innovative technologies in IoT, security, and more, all aimed at facilitating digital transformation with large-scale impact.  Read More Cisco Blogs