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Providing a work-your-way solution for diverse users with multiple devices, anytime, anywhere
Today’s CIO must deliver innovative business solutions and give employees more freedom to work the way they want – all while reducing IT complexity. Consumer devices have proven to be a cost effective and attractive way to keep employees engaged and productive, but many organizations struggle with securely introducing these devices into the network. Securing corporate data, applications, and systems is essential to any BYOD strategy, and IT organizations need to ensure a secure experience from both a device and network access perspective. As corporations develop an any-device, anywhere strategy, IT needs to know who is on the network, the location of the person, and the type and status of the device. This white paper provides a strategy for implementing BYOD securely.
In today’s IT marketplace, Big Data is often used as shorthand for a new generation of technologies and architectures designed to economically extract value from very large volumes of a wide variety of data by enabling high-velocity capture, discovery, and/or analysis. IDC believes that organizations that are best able to make real-time business decisions using Big Data will gain a distinct competitive advantage over those that are unable to embrace it.
As Big Data efforts grow in scope and importance, the network (both within the datacenter and across the WAN) will play a critical role in enabling quick, sustainable expansion while also ensuring these systems are linked to existing mission-critical transaction and content environments.
Increase security and reduce risk by using existing technology in a non-traditional fashion.
Security is all about risk mitigation. How much risk is an agency willing to accept, and how much are they willing to spend to lower that risk to an acceptable level?
There are multiple ways to lower risk, such as:
• Increasing situational awareness through continuous monitoring of network, data, hardware and personnel resources.
• Tightening security policies for employees and guests moving within buildings.
• Increasing physical security measures when entering the building.
• Isolating physical networks.
• Using stronger authentication mechanisms (multi-factor authentication).
• Implementing an identity management system.
Unfortunately, these solutions all come at a financial cost and, in some cases, can actually prevent employees from doing their job, impacting their productivity. This paper suggests that by using some non-traditional devices in a security arsenal, and by using the network as the platform, an organization can significantly increase its security posture and reduce risk without requiring significant behavioral engineering or infrastructure costs.
How Today’s Government, Education, and Healthcare Organizations Are Benefitting from Cloud Computing Environments
Cloud computing is a disruptive technology model that is changing the way public sector organizations consume information and communications technology (ICT), and how they deploy and deliver services to stakeholders. A trusted network infrastructure is the foundation for any successful cloud implementation. This paper briefly reviews the status of cloud computing in government, education, and healthcare organizations. It also helps make the business case for a cloud implementation by summarizing the chief advantages and business drivers. Case study snapshots describe how public sector organizations have successfully implemented cloud services models in various environments worldwide.
Enterprises face increasingly complex choices in their network vendor strategies. IT leaders must introduce new technology for critical business functions, while managing IT costs and balancing operational risks.This report summarizes the findings from a detailed customer survey conducted by Deloitte to examine the operational, financial, and risk factors associated with the use of single vendor and multivendor approaches in different types of enterprise networks. By providing a framework for understanding the overall value drivers associated with these networking strategies, this report is intended to help IT decision makers evaluate the potential impact of different approaches.
Virtualizing a physical network into multiple logical networks each with unique attributes has grown in popularity. This network design is popular in healthcare, education, travel and other industries. Network virtualization was available only to the largest of enterprises and service providers, thanks to its cost and complexity of MPLS and VRF-Lite. But a new approach called Easy Virtual Network from Cisco changes all of that by reducing cost and eliminating configuration and management complexity opening network virtualization to a much larger segment of the enterprise market. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Sehjung Hah about Cisco’s Easy Virtual Network.
This paper introduces the new Layer 3 network virtualization solution Easy Virtual Network (EVN). It discusses the need for enterprise network virtualization and compares EVN with the traditional solutions. In-depth architectural information as well as the new provisioning syntax is included to get users fully familiarized with EVN at first look. Click here for a short video on EVN
In this Lippis Report podcast I talk with Prashant, Sr. Director of Server Access Virtualization Product Marketing at Cisco Systems about the new challenges of managing applications and layer 4-7 services in modern data center environments that consist of multiple hypervisors, a wide variety of workloads types and mobile/dynamic virtual machines.
With CAPEX accounting for only 20% of the cost of a network, it is important to look beyond initial expenditures and consider TCO and the business value a network can provide. A third-party TCO comparison of a Cisco network versus other vendors illustrates that Cisco can deliver a 13% better TCO even before business benefits, such as network uptime and employee productivity are considered. Further, the Cisco Borderless Network Architecture acts as a platform for service delivery, allowing your IT organization to say “yes” to business and revenue-enhancing opportunities.
Modern corporate networks are under increasing pressure to support a wider variety of applications thanks to mobile and cloud computing, desktop virtualization plus video traffic having skyrocketed. Not only are bandwidth rates increasing from 1 to 10 to 40 GbE, but most importantly network services are needed to manage and support a different application portfolio mix and network access methods. Network services such as firewalls, WLANs, network diagnostics and monitoring plus application performance acceleration are needed to deliver a consistently excellent user experience. Cisco recently announced an upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6k with the availability of the Supervisor 2T that included re-vamped high performance service modules to deliver these network services. Goyal, product line manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss which network services need to be available in modern networks.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
Feature-rich, next-generation networks help drive innovation and value to midsize companies and position them for competitive advantage. Next-generation networks give midsize companies a competitive advantage. By removing many of the operational headaches of running a network, Cisco’s solutions free up departments to focus on driving business value and innovation. Feature-rich, strategic networks built for today and tomorrow remove the barriers to growth and give midsize businesses the agility they require to lead their markets. Find out how by downloading this executive white paper.
A new enterprise architecture for delivering policy-based services has become available. This document discusses the need for a policy-based architecture in today’s enterprise networks and presents “Policy-Governed Network” architecture as a pragmatic business solution. Building identity and context awareness into the network is critical to implementing an effective infrastructure.
Major topics include:
● What policies are and who implements them
● Changing network dynamics and problematic new technologies
● Important challenges to implementers
● Characteristics of a Policy-Governed Network architecture
● Policy-implementation platform: the Cisco® Identity Services Engine
● Scenarios showing how policies can address specific network issues
● How to begin transitioning to a Policy-Governed Network
Access Control List or ACL are important tools in the configuration and customization of network attributes, especially with the Catalyst 6500. In the Catalyst 6500 upgrade with Sup2T, the TCAM has been both increased and its architecture improved. For ACL, a major concern was the lack of visibility of TCAM overflows when new ACL scripts were submitted, disrupting network operation. Therefore, Cisco developed the ACL Dry Run and ACL Atomic Commit to mitigate this scenario. To verify ACL improvements, we use ACL Dry-Run to assure that the TCAM would not overflow, and then implement the changes safely with ACL Atomic-commit; assuring no network interruption. It’s a great short video that verifies how useful these new tools are in ACL management.
Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.
During the week of October 31, 2011, the Lippis Report tested Cisco System’s new Catalyst 6500 with Supervisor 2T or Sup2T for performance, upgradability, control and scalability at Ixia’s modern iSimCity laboratory in Santa Clara CA. By all counts, Cisco’s upgrade of the Catalyst 6500 via its new Sup2T, is its most ambitious and thoughtful yet for the venerable platform. The Sup2T is a major upgrade to the most widely-deployed switching platform in campus and data center networking. It’s the new Catalyst 6500’s network services that deliver most of the value, which is partially found in the Sup2T’s Policy Feature Card or PFC that increases NetFlow monitoring and a new TCAM design offering improved Access Control (ACL), Quality of Service design options, encryption security and many other features. This Lippis Report test verifies many of Cisco’s performance and upgradability claims. While it’s impossible to test all of the Catalyst 6500’s new 200-plus features with the Sup2T, we rather focus on a select few that will have the widest impact on IT business leaders’ product acquisition decision process.
