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Cisco’s winner for an Extreme Business Makeover

Published

Deon Botha

on August 14, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 0 Comments

Pimping

Last night in Johannesburg (13th August 2008) Cisco announced the winner of the Extreme Business Makeover Competition.

This competition might just be the thing a growing SMB needs to get more competitive, agile and ready for business in the fast paced economy of today so that the SMB can communicate at the speed of business unlike Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that’s the show where the people go and demolish the families house, build a totally new house and pimp it out with stuff the family couldn’t afford in the first place in a month of Sundays.

Where this prize from Cisco will be different from the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is that

Cisco products are reliable in that they generally don’t just break down,
Cisco products and solutions are well integrated and
If one compares apples with apples Cisco products are cost effective (I’m not going to go get technical here but comparing other SMB products and what you get between vendors I feel Cisco is very well priced with lots of Enterprise Class Technology).

For SMB companies that are struggling with managing vast amounts of data in a secure, reliable and cost effective manner there really is only one technology partner that offers you complete peace of mind in one neat package. All this while offering employees, customers, partners, and vendors access information anywhere and any time without breaking the bank.

On the topic of breaking the bank generally SMB business have cash-flow issues because operational activities take precedence over large capital expenditure projects and Cisco knows this and run amazing leasing deals and rentals offers (recently prime less 4%) for those of us not lucky enough to get this kit for free.

But now back to the competition; The competition was launched in March 2008 and invited local businesses to compete for the first price of a total network transformation featuring all the pimped out Cisco products and solution worth R 300,000 ( $ 37,500 USD). In Cisco products and solutions that should do some heavy pimping!

The winner of the first prize was a company by the name of redpeg a SETA accredited education and training services provider that offers training programs and workplace interventions. The company broadly operates within the workplace HIV/Aids arena and consults to businesses of all sizes to enable them to build capacity to implement manageable and sustainable HIV/Aids workplace programmes.

New Cisco IOS Software Activation and Licensing Workflows

Published

Deon Botha

on July 22, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 7 Comments

I was introduced to this new Cisco IOS Software Activation and Licensing idea at a Partner Enablement session on the 6th of June and my first impression was “Windows Activation on steroids”. A post by Joe Harris has a visual workflow link that explains this process if this whole thing confuses you.

One of my questions to the presenter afterwards was what impact would this have on the simulation software packages like dynamips. My position being that I wasn’t able to build a lab simply for learning/studies even with Cisco discounts at this point in my career. He understood my point of view and knew of many other partners in similar positions but couldn’t really answer me.

What I gathered from my session on the 6th of June was that not all Router and Switch platforms will migrate to this new activation and licensing platform but it will happen over a period of time. This activation and licensing system is being implemented because the “gentlemans agreement” system Cisco has used in the past isn’t working where there is misuse of the current system.

That being said I did ask how this will directly affect me and the answer was that on initial order/sale not a whole lot. When a customer purchases a switch/router they generally purchase what they want with the licensing they want. On a scenario like that the IOS and feature is installed and activated before being shipped to the customer or me and then I go install.

This new system will start becoming a bother when upgrading from IP Base to another feature license. This will require the following steps:

The order of a Product Authorization Key (PAK) from Cisco
The Unique Device Identifier (UDI) from the Router/Switch
Entered this information into the Cisco Licensing Portal
Taking the information from the Portal and installing the license onto the Switch/Router

The installation of the license file can be done using the *.lic file that you receive from the Portal using the Command line interface or the Cisco License Manager software. Using the command line:

Switch#license install tftp://x.x.x.x/license.lic

Alternatively one can use the call-home feature and the PAK Number, this however would mean that you have an internet connection to the Router/Switch and you feel comfortable that you won’t have the *.lic file when things go wrong as the Switch/Router installs this directly from the License Portal:

Switch#license call-home install PAK PAK-NUMBER CCO Username: abcdef CCO Password: !...................... Follow the prompts to install the license

There was talk about an emergency license availability for “emergency purposes” where say for example a customer has a current desperate need for an upgrade feature set this very instant and the order cycle would take a couple of days to fulfil. The emergency license would take a couple of hours at most and last for a finite period while the order process ran its couse.

The Ooh factor in Cisco Telepresence

Published

Deon Botha

on July 17, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 1 Comment

UPDATED: Got sent some WOW stats!!

For those of us that visit Cisco.com fairly often this video clip (below) will be something that you may have seen before (it was featured a while back on the page). I really love this video clip simply because I lol’ed (laughed out loud) when I saw it the first time. I thought about the clip again after reading this from mybroadband and neither the video nor the article does this Cisco solution justice simply because until I was physically shown this solution at the Cisco offices I couldn’t quite grasp “how” Cisco imagined it was going to “cut back travel” costs with Collaborative Technologies.

So JP sent me some stats on Cisco Telepresence this morning. This is some WOW stats; in December 2007 Cisco announced 100 customer deployments in over 40 countries; companies like Verizon, BT, Procter & Gamble, SAP, and even in government (Xiamen Municipal Government).

The stats (9th June 2008) for the use of Telepresence in Cisco look like this; 229 Cisco Telepresence units in 108 Cities globally deployed in Cisco Systems. The overall average utilization of these units lie at about 45% as compared to <1% for video conferencing.

The units are spread globally as follows US/Canada has 145, APAC / Japan has 38, Europe has 38, and Emerging Markets has 8 units. The deployments are mixed CTS 3000/3200/1000 depending on the theatre.

Of these units 110,627 Teleprecence meetings has been scheduled to date at a total of 141,565 hours (average of 75 minutes per meeting) with 2,576 meetings a week in the past 30 days (May 2008). This technology is not only for in-house use as there has been 13,361 meetings with customers to discuss Cisco Technology using Telepresence.

Now comes the bottom line that I mentioned above about saving money (I didnt know this until today mind you) that 17,339 of the total 1110,627 meetings avoided travel meaning that Cisco saved about $165,080,000 (I like leaving zeros when talking about millions shows you how much we really talking about). That to anyone is a fair bit of money to be saving.

I was thinking until now that this could “potentially” save money, having this verified makes my eyes open to the potential of the solution.

Wonder if I can get one of these for demo in my living room

Autosensing on Ethernet

Published

Deon Botha

on July 15, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 0 Comments

Going over the RSS feed for the day, I found an interesting post with alot of value no matter what certification level you are at; Greg Ferro over at Etherealmind has a great post about autosensing on ethernet links, how it works and a short history of the standard.

He argues in his post that autosensing should be used as default as it works (compred to pre-standard times) and that not using it will create problems on GigabitEthernet links. At the time of my posting (I am posting so I remember his post and where to find it) there are two comments that I feel add value.

Head on over and remember to leave a comment.

Cisco South Africa Partner Career Day

Published

Deon Botha

on July 15, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 0 Comments

So I attended the Cisco South Africa Career Day 2008 and it was well worth going. The event was hosted by Cisco in conjunction with the Cisco Networking Academy and the University of Pretoria.

A way that I have used to gauge the importance of an event has been to look at the “headline” act. In todays case the introduction was done my General Manager of Cisco Systems, Mr Steve Midgley and the key note address was given by Deputy Minister of Education Mr Enver Surty.

The drill-down of the presentations was that there is a skills shortage and there are initiatives already happening and in the pipelines to help address this global problem.

The event took place at the the University of Pretoria in the Entertainment Hall and Lecture Room 100 and centred around the development and availability of skill in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector mainly locally but also touched on it globally (China and India).

The event was held at the University of Pretoria to provide Cisco Networking Academy graduates the opportunity to get some “face time” with Cisco channel partners. The event provided the Cisco partners an opportunity to meet the future talent and interview graduates face-to-face. This exposed Cisco Networking Academy graduates to openings within Partner organisations, while allowing Partners to asses prospective employees.

From Cisco systems there was a clear message that they were going to be actively involved in developing and building the skills needed to assist partners and in turn the local economy through various initiatives. They drove this message home by making this the “public” launch of the Cisco Talent Partner Portal that I posted about here 2 weeks ago.

I stole a few business cards myself and talked to some of the bigger partners, one never knows when that might come in handy.

Kudos again to JP for organizing the invite.

Cisco Talent of the Future

Published

Deon Botha

on July 7, 2008

in Asides, Business, Cisco Systems and Vine

. 0 Comments

As a heads up I’m going to be attending the Cisco South Africa Partner Career Day happening at the University of Pretoria. This event rolls into one many things I am really passionate about (I think most Cisco Certified individuals are passionate about at least some of these things) namely skills, the youth, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and training.

The event sounds similar to the Cisco Global Talent Acceleration Program (GTAP) (More at ITWEB) launch a while back and although that event was not really directly relevant to me (I was a little late out of uni myself to benefit directly or apply) or my business (we are Cisco Partner and this was basically a Cisco Post Graduate Training Program with a twist) there was talk about this programs content being extended or made available in some shape or form to the Partner Community (that means everyday businesses that are somehow connected to Cisco Systems in the ecosystem).

What this would in effect mean to me and you (partner based students of the network world that either work for Cisco Partners or are trying to skill up on our lonesome) without the frills is a fast track, hard hitting, quick and to the point series of training provided by an accredited Cisco learning partner and tested by Cisco Systems themselves that gets you to written CCIE level as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Lets see what this event holds in store for us, I will post it afterwards. Thanks goes out to JP for the heads up and hooking me up with an invite (its nice and conveniently close to my offices).

CCIE Pilot is one step closer

Published

Deon Botha

on July 4, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 1 Comment

Head on over to CCIE Pilot and give a shout out there, Mar passed his CCIE written today. In his words now he is officially a “CCIE Candidate”, that makes it one small (big in my mind) step in his journey towards getting those magic numbers.

CCIE Magazine Launches

Published

Deon Botha

on July 4, 2008

in Asides, Cisco Systems and Vine

. 0 Comments

So Arden Packeer has been a busy guy it seems what with passing his CCIE Routing and Switching recently and starting off on the road towards another CCIE (Voice).

Tweeted this morning (for me at least) Arden launched CCIE Magazine and has the inauguration post up. Head on over and support a Networker in his endeavours; leave a comment, subscribe to the RSS feed, Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon the content and maybe even take out an ad if you are looking for some exposure for your own product or service (consider the exposure for recruiting advertising and the target audience for CCIE Magazine, thinking about yesterdays post).

It’s early days over at CCIE Magazine but it’s sure to grow into something grand.

EMEA Cisco Recruiting

Published

Deon Botha

on July 3, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 2 Comments

This may be old-ish news but I found this interesting. This is a Cisco initiative to help Channel Partners Address Technology Skills Shortfall with a new Partner Talent Portal in Middle East and Africa. Stories like this always lead me off the beaten track and thinking about interconnected things (I’m weird, that’s what makes me specials).

The management side of me finds this interesting, its probably more complex than this explanation but this is the basics of something called supply and demand (which is something I got drilled into my head when I was studying). The graph basically shows a single supply source for qualified individuals (that would be you and me) and a radical change in demand (market driven demand from Channel partners and even Cisco) and if you are wondering the other axis (not market) is generally what your pay might be as demand increases.

In times when there is growth (2010 World cup in South Africa, good economic conditions recently) there is a strong demand for “skilled” individuals (skill + experience), this creates a supply problem because there is then a short supply (due to (1) skill shortage in the form of certified individuals in this case (2) the certified individuals having no real world experience) to fill the demand.

This will always happens when there is a rapid upturn in the market, supply lags behind demand because oversupply is in most cases expensive (having certified individuals on staff with nothing to do) and counter productive (carrying the expense of certifying individuals when there is no work for them or need for them). There are many factors that play on this that I haven’t included because this can get overly complicated fairly quickly if you consider them for example in a South African context the massive skilled brain drain to other more developed markets, political factors, crime, local employment and training policies employed by companies, private sector willingness to skill and give experiential training, etc.

What is interesting and will be interesting about this scenario is what will happen in the short to long term future with the downturn in the global market, what I have already encountered (in the last couple of months) is that customers are less willing to undertake CAPEX spending (uncertainty about what will happen in the short to near term), which is bad as networking and network equipment is seen as a CAPEX spend.

If doom and gloom is on the horizon it doesn’t however mean the end of the world as OPEX spending to keep operations going will continue in the form of maintenance of currently installed equipment (which still needs certified skilled individuals to maintain) the only difference will be that the lifecycle of installed kit will be extended as customers will hold onto their kit longer to squeeze the Return on Investment ratio dry or the kit actually breaks.

Thanks goes to JP for the heads up.

Cisco Training Videos

Published

Deon Botha

on June 13, 2008

in Cisco Systems and Vine

. 2 Comments

Head on over to Josh Horton’s blog (blindhog.net) he has a nice post on Cisco training videos from Trainsignal pricing in at around R 4,900 ($ 597) including links to sample videos. The nice thing about training videos are that you can watch them again and again and again (this works for some people while it doesn’t for others), compared to boot camps where you need to go in thoroughly prepared (they set a frantic pace) spend your R 15,000 ($ 1,800) on the training and hope you keep up for the week.

Depending on what works for you and how you learn use what is best for you to learn and get your certifications. I have a friend that swears by CBT Nuggets he says that if it weren’t for their videos have been able to get his certifications at all.

Network Ninja

Archive for the 'Vine' Category

Cisco’s winner for an Extreme Business Makeover

New Cisco IOS Software Activation and Licensing Workflows

The Ooh factor in Cisco Telepresence

Autosensing on Ethernet

Cisco South Africa Partner Career Day

Cisco Talent of the Future

CCIE Pilot is one step closer

CCIE Magazine Launches

EMEA Cisco Recruiting

Cisco Training Videos

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