architectural approach

September 27, 2017

SECURITY

When it Comes to Network Security, Your Best Defense is Security Everywhere!

New troubling cyberattacks are in the news almost daily. No one is immune. Have you checked your credit score lately? I just finished freezing mine. A national credit bureau breach is the latest wide-ranging theft of data to hit the news. You are probably wondering: “Is my network secure and what wo…

June 2, 2017

SECURITY

Less is More – Fewer Cybersecurity Vendors Yield More Effective Security

As I’ve talked about before, many organizations have traditionally relied on a tactical approach to security: encounter a new threat, buy another box. This happened time and time again, resulting in a complex security “frankenstructure” of products. But new independent research from ESG shows that 6…

December 4, 2015

DATA CENTER

Ten Learnings and Observations from the 2015 London Gartner Data Center Conference (Part 1)

This past week I attended the 2015 Gartner Data Center Conference in London.  This is always a great conference to learn from, although it always pays to look out for some of the hype too. There were key note presentations from the sprinter Michael Johnson and from previous UK government Vince Cable…

August 25, 2015

DATA CENTER

5 Top Challenges of SAN Design: View from our SAN Design Experts – Part 2

Last week, here, I started my 2 part blog on some of the top SAN design and deployment challenges we see.  As I mentioned, I put this together with help from my SAN expert colleagues, Barbara Ledda and Wolfgang Lang.  We are all part of the Cisco Services professional services team, where we experie…

August 18, 2015

DATA CENTER

5 Top Challenges of SAN Design: View from our SAN Design Experts – Part 1

One of the aspects I really enjoy about my job is that I get to learn from some of the world’s top network and data center design engineers, and I get to hear about technology adoption challenges across the world. If there is a complex network or data center design being worked by our customers, if…

February 14, 2014

DATA CENTER

Get Started on SDN and Cisco ONE: Learn from Our New Technical White Paper

If you were to believe the industry press, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that many companies across the world were rolling software defined networking (SDN) technologies into their networks today.  I’m part of Cisco’s Services team and my colleagues across the world are the e…

February 10, 2014

DATA CENTER

IT Leaders can be Brokers of Cloud Technology

We live in a world of many clouds, clouds that are as unique as we are. Today’s IT leaders are helping organizations manage the new demands of rapidly changing business requirements and the delivery of innovative services, all due to the rise in cloud adoption. Yet, according to a recent Wired artic…

December 23, 2013

DATA CENTER

SDN Adoption Challenges: My Wrap Up For 2013

2013 was the year I started working on SDN – specifically in the area of devising professional services for Cisco ONE and Application Centric Infrastructure, ACI.  A few months ago, I used a compendium to summarize my Cisco Domain TenSM blogs.  This was well received, so  I thought it would be…

December 17, 2013

DATA CENTER

Use SDN Strategically – and NOT as a “Band Aid”

The other week I attended the “Software Defined Networking 2013” conference in London.  This is a UK-based event for the discussion of SDN, OpenFlow and Network Virtualisation Solutions from a strategic perspective.  There were quite a few interesting perspective s I picked up at this conference.  I…