Cisco Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing 2020 Vendor Assessment

Why Cisco is a Leader in the 2020 IDC MarketScape

For the fifth consecutive year, Cisco has been identified as a leader in the IDC MarketScape! We are extremely proud to receive this recognition and while we strive to achieve for the benefit of our customers, it always feels good to be recognized for our hard work, especially in a crowded market among notable competitors. Cisco’s continued standing as a Leader in the 2020 IDC MarketScape Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing report is a strong indicator that customers continue to believe in the Webex vision and strategy. As the IDC MarketScape report points out, our “focus on enterprise-grade security, scale, and management functionality are selling points for customers.”

IDC MarketScape studies companies’ recent paths, investigate where they think the company is going, connects with the company’s customers, and comes up with a positioning based on these parameters.

Our Approach to Collaboration

I see our position as a leader in this year’s IDC MarketScape as a validation of our approach to collaboration: We believe in tools that are easy to use and let users be productive from anywhere; that is integrated with the workflow and decision-making process; that have security built-in, not bolted on; and are inherently flexible, manageable and adaptable for scale and innovation. And for many of our customers, the best part is you can get it all from one place.

“Cisco’s one-stop vendor approach and broad portfolio of video collaboration solutions and endpoints that are integrated with its extensive UC&C portfolio can be key benefits for customers, whether you are a small, a midsize, or an enterprise organization,” said Rich Costello, IDC analyst. “This can be even more beneficial especially if you already have an existing investment in Cisco networking infrastructure or leveraging cloud-based services.”

MarketScape Vendor Analysis

We work hard here at Cisco to give customers the tools they need to be successful. Whether you are working from the Cloud, from an on-premise device, from your mobile, desktop, or tablet, we want to ensure that we’re providing you with the products and experiences you need.

Let me tell you more about why Cisco continues to be recognized as a leader by the IDC MarketScape and other industry watchers.

SOURCE: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Enterprise Videoconferencing 2020 Vendor Assessment, by Rich Costello, July 2020, IDC Doc# US46691620.

IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market, and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-5-year timeframe. The vendor market share is represented by the size of the icons.

Making the Workplace Experience Better 

We understand that the tools you use every day need to make your life easier, not harder. Webex combines calling, meetings, messages, and devices into one single unified experience, so you can work better, faster, smarter. While you are scheduled for back to back video meetings from home, you can see who is already waiting for you in the next meeting, and if you are running late, just send a message in your Team space to let them know while they wait in the security lobby, or attach a file from your Enterprise Content Management system for them to review in the meantime. And if you have a few extra minutes before the next meeting, you can video call a colleague for a quick discussion with a single click. The ease of use of Webex makes connecting and collaboration simple and frictionless. It combines both hardware and software to fit today’s workstyles, workflows, and workspaces.Our unified platform provides all the collaboration tools needed – with just one, modern, unified application.

Our Customer’s Needs are our Top Priority – Simple Buying Model 

This is an unprecedented era, where remote working collaboration tools — video conferencing, devices, phones, headsets — have become the lifeblood for businesses to stay connected and productive. That is why we have formulated a simple purchasing model.

HaaS: offers industry-leading collaboration endpoints with a more affordable payment plan and a better user experience through our Webex® unified platform. Set up your remote office with devices such as the DeskPro.

Flex plan: use Cisco collaboration tools with one simple subscription-based offer. It helps with transitions to the cloud, and investment protection, by including cloud, premises, hosted, and hybrid deployments, with the flexibility to use them all.

You have an easy way to access the tools you need. Our repeat recognition as a Leader means that we’ve demonstrated a seamless, intelligent portfolio for every type of workspace that meets market demand. Remote work is the new normal way to work and the Cisco Webex portfolio was purposefully designed to make interacting and collaborating with your teams effortless.

Increase Market Coverage

Our team has a focus on making Webex available to companies of all sizes.

The IDC MarketScape also notes that our recent acquisition and integration of BroadSoft has expanded our global carrier partnerships with a large base of cloud calling users who can now “create a compelling calling and meetings bundle with an integrated experience”. I am proud to say that we are a leader in cloud calling – with over 30M users served through our cloud calling platforms by over 400 carriers worldwide. We are working diligently with our partners to bring the complete Webex collaboration experience to all these cloud calling customers.

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Monitoring SAP Business Processes with Cisco AppDynamics

In today’s digital world, the application isn’t just a part of the business—in many cases, it is the business. So when performance issues strike, they’re more than merely headaches—they’re potentially revenue-impacting events. That’s why IT and business leaders who want to stay ahead of the curve and avoid costly downtime require a proactive approach to application performance monitoring (APM).

That’s where Cisco AppDynamics comes in.

With automatic baselining and anomaly detection, Cisco AppDynamics provides comprehensive APM that helps businesses stay one step ahead of issues impacting their applications, including those in SAP environments. By providing an all-in-one view of application health, plus the ability to drill down to the line of SAP proprietary code, Cisco AppDynamics is uniquely capable of delivering insights businesses can act on.

Take Cepheid, a leading molecular diagnostics company based in California. For years, Cepheid’s operations team performed around-the-clock operational monitoring and support of its SAP applications using disparate tools, including logs, to manually monitor its SAP environment. Now, Cepheid uses AppDynamics to proactively detect and address issues before they become problems. If, for example, Cepheid’s SAP environment were to suffer an outage, supply chain and manufacturing would be at risk of being slowed, order fulfillment—better known in the SAP space as Procure to Pay—would stall, and downstream, the ability to pay suppliers and bill customers, known as Order to Cash, would also be impacted. But because Cepheid uses Cisco AppDynamics, the company knows it has a proactive monitoring solution designed to keep it ahead of the curve.

The high cost of not connecting SAP to business outcomes

Thousands of businesses around the world run their customer-facing and back-end processes with a combination of SAP applications for e-commerce, logistics, ERP, and supply chain, as well as non-SAP applications. When problems arise in these situations—for example, if revenue is down on an e-commerce site—it can be caused by a number of factors ranging from the simple (a lack of website traffic) to the more complex, such as an underperforming order management system. Whatever the cause may be, it’s critical that IT teams have the solutions needed to identify and prioritize issues at hand, for the sake of the customer experience and the health of the business. This is particularly relevant in the context of application problems that your customers can’t necessarily see, such as code issues or undersize compute notes that can cause them to abandon your application.

Today, a normal response to business process issues such as these is to bring stakeholders into a war room-like setting to participate in a vigorous session of finger-pointing based on siloed data about the application environment. Not surprisingly, this reactive approach is extremely inefficient and can lead to skyrocketing mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) as well as customer churn.

Enter AppDynamics Business IQ for SAP

To address the critical challenges associated with connecting SAP performance to the context of your business, AppDynamics has added the ability to manage business process performance, including processes that run a combination of SAP and non-SAP applications.

As a first step, Business IQ correlates the metrics of core business processes with those of underlying applications. These metrics are baselined by machine learning algorithms that determine “normal” operating conditions. This “normal” baseline is used as the benchmark for alerting when a metric deviates from the normal. When this happens, AppDynamics proactively sends alerts and provides potential root-cause analysis to remediate the issue.

Integral to the ability of AppDynamics to monitor SAP applications is its code-level visibility into ABAP, SAP’s proprietary programming language, which is used to build SAP applications. This capability complements the ability of AppDynamics to monitor non-SAP applications.

Core Business IQ capabilities include:

◉ Measuring how application performance impacts business health, using dashboards, health rules, and metrics to help you understand how application performance impacts customers and the overallbusiness in real time. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1.  Screenshot of an AppDynamics order management dashboard

◉ Monitoring and providing insights around the customer journey throughout the most business-critical paths in a business’s SAP- and non-SAP business processes. Through customer and businessjourney dashboards, you can identify critical steps customers take before specific conversion events or other milestones in their journeys. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2.  Screenshot of a customer order journey dashboard

◉ Proactively managing digital business processes around business journeys, allowing you to identify where bottlenecks exist at different steps of a business process before they become customer-impacting and to measure the health of end-to-end business processes with SAP and non-SAP application components in real-time.

With Business IQ from AppDynamics, business owners and IT departments can discuss the health of their business processes and connect with application health through one common language, as they deliver exceptional customer experiences. No more war rooms, just a single source of truth.

So if the success of your business depends on the health of your SAP-based business processes and applications, learn more about how AppDynamics, the only platform that unifies full-stack performance monitoring for business and IT, can help you.

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Work-From-Home Networking: One Size Does Not Fit All

In March of this year, commercial offices began closing around the world, and businesses sent millions of their employees home to do their jobs from there. For the most part, I.T. successfully supported the transition. The global Internet did not crumble, and most people found they could access resources and videoconferencing tools just fine. It’s a testament to I.T. workers around the world that this emergency transition worked as well as it did.

But we are no longer in the emergency phase of the shift to work-from-home. It’s time now to plan for a long-term change in where people work, how they access online resources, and how we support and secure these users and their workloads.

The fundamental shift is that we need to think about our people working from home, and the home networks they use, as the default network. We cannot think of these home installations as second fiddle to our corporate-controlled, office-based networks. Now we must consider every work-from-home worker, and every one of their home offices, as worthy of the same level of connectivity support as our company headquarters and branches.

Of course, we can’t really provide every worker with headquarters-level support for their home networks. But we can attack the challenge by breaking down the way we approach the different needs of different workers. And by using new methods to head off issues before they become critical.

The Status Quo: VPN Users

For many office employees in companies that rely heavily on corporate applications, the standard model of equipping them with Virtual Private Network (VPN) software for their computers will continue to work. Configuring split tunneling can optimize performance to cloud-hosted services while still giving employees secure access to corporate-hosted resources.

Choose the right solution for each worker’s home networking needs.

There are even some users who can throttle back from using VPNs. Today, we have employees who work exclusively on cloud services (like Office365), and we can take a zero-trust posture with their networking stacks, relying instead on the applications for security.

But even in cases where the end user isn’t connected to corporate-controlled resources or for whom connecting to a VPN is superfluous, we should still monitor the performance of the services they are using, to get ahead of any issues that may arise in their cloud services. With digital experience monitoring, it’s possible to check on network and application performance, even for networks and applications that do not touch our corporate infrastructure.

Enhanced Connectivity: Corporate Access Points in the Home

For employees for whom best-effort connectivity isn’t enough, we can replace or augment a home wireless access point with a Wi-Fi router that acts as an extension of the corporate network. A home wireless access point, configured by company I.T. before the employee installs it, can provide advanced security and monitoring and prioritize bandwidth for applications that need it.

As a side benefit for users, corporate access points can make an in-home network appear just like the at-the-office network. If their devices automatically connect at the office, they’ll do the same at home. There’s no need to bother with firing up a VPN.

For home workers who need to get non-PC devices, like IP phones, on the corporate network, dedicated corporate access points are also an easy solution.

Some of our customers support engineers working at home as well, and some of them need to get multiple devices on their companies’ networks. For them, extending the network into the home is by far the best solution.

In fact, for pure simplicity and ease of use, having a company Wi-Fi access point in the home can’t be beat — especially for the many employees who use multiple devices for work, like perhaps a laptop, a phone, and a tablet.  This solution removes the need to ever sign on to a VPN and makes seamless connectivity to work resources a snap.

And as remote extensions of the corporate network, corporate IT will have full visibility into these access points. They can manage the devices remotely and track performance and security issues.

Our Remote Workforce Wireless Solution is designed for these use cases.

When Poor Connectivity Means Lost Revenue — or Worse

And then you have the employees who absolutely cannot suffer downtime or performance outages: for example, real-time traders and medical professionals. These are workers for whom the vast majority of their productivity is interacting with remote systems or other people. For these workers, even a reliable ISP connection to their home office may not be good enough.

Furthermore, for high-security workers like traders, it may not be good for them to go direct to the Internet and risk falling prey to a honeypot attack from a van sitting outside their house.

More commonly, for a worker who has limited ISP bandwidth in their home, it may be unacceptable if, say, a video consultation degrades because a child in their house is competing for bandwidth during a distance-learning class at the same time.

For these workers, we recommend secure SD-WAN routers that can select better or alternate paths to necessary resources in real-time. In these homes, consider a router (like our LTE Advanced Pro) that has an independent wireless connection. I.T. personnel can configure this equipment so critical communications are routed over it – either all the time, or when the main link becomes burdened.

While a home-based SD-WAN router is overkill for most workers, when connectivity is mission-critical (and when you’re equipping execs who cannot stand being disconnected), it’s the best option. It’s also a good solution for employees who don’t have a reliable primary ISP.

Work from Home is Not One-Size-Fits-All

Our employees have been working from home for months, and it is time to start finessing their networking solutions. We need to consider individual circumstances, including the availability of reliable ISP connectivity for each user, the number and types of devices they work with, and how important it is that they remain online 100% of the time.

Even when people start returning to offices, there will be many employees who work from home more frequently – and many who rarely, or never, come in to the office. Their home installations deserve the same level of consideration and support as any other place where our employees gather.

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Cisco DNA Spaces Indoor IoT Services with Wi-Fi 6 – Delivering Business Outcomes at Scale

Organizations today are facing unprecedented times, and the need to digitize physical spaces has never been more important.

To adapt to these new challenges, enterprises must shift toward a new, open and unified ecosystem that both (1) supports delivering outcomes at scale and (2) continues to provide the enterprise with control of their infrastructure and solution stack.

Cisco’s wireless infrastructure with Cisco DNA Spaces is a powerful framework to enable this new requirement. Wireless access points have evolved from being used for connectivity to being a sensor enabling location services –  and Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6 Certified Catalyst 9100 access points powered by Cisco’s Catalyst 9800 controllers can now serve as a powerful gateway for not just Wi-Fi devices but also BLE asset tags, beacons, and other IoT end devices.

With *Cisco DNA Spaces Indoor IoT Services, customers can take their wireless beyond connectivity, digitize their physical spaces, and gain insights on the behavior of people, and now things. Currently supporting at least 500 million mobile devices, processing over 1 trillion location updates, and live across over 1 million access points, Cisco DNA Spaces continues to scale into digitizing enterprises across various industries.

Enabling Multiple Use Cases through an Open, Unified Platform

Location services solutions today face major challenges with complexity and limited ability to scale. There is a fragmented market of proprietary solutions where new applications would require disparate hardware and software, limiting flexibility and reusability.

Vendor-specific apps and hardware mean that there are separate touchpoints for monitoring and support, resulting in disjointed support models. As customers discover more use cases and deploy more IoT devices, they run into management pains with vendor lock-in and limited scalability.

To overcome this complexity and cost, we are excited to announce Cisco DNA Spaces *Indoor IoT Services – which provides an open and unified platform for ordering IoT devices, onboarding and configuring devices, and connecting to industry-specific applications to enable business outcomes.

This offering will help customers deploy their applications rapidly, at scale, and at a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO).  This empowers enterprises to deploy multiple use cases such as asset management, room finding, space utilization, environmental monitoring, employee safety, and more, all enabled through a single middleware layer.

With Cisco DNA Spaces Indoor IoT Services, customers can deploy a broader spectrum of end devices, all without having to deploy separate gateways.

The IoT Device Marketplace features a broad spectrum of supported end devices ready for customers to order and deploy. Customers have a wide choice of specialized beacons, tags, wristbands, badges, sensors, and other devices that are ready to deploy.

They can choose these devices based on their required use case, technology, form factor, and price. The device vendors are validated and are integrated into Cisco DNA Spaces end-to-end support model.

Customers can discover and order end devices through the IoT Device Marketplace.

Cisco DNA Spaces also has an ecosystem of partner applications that are easy to activate. The Cisco DNA Spaces App Center features industry specific partner applications that leverages the location data from Cisco DNA Spaces, delivered over the Firehose API, to drive business outcomes across healthcare, workspaces, retail, hospitality, education, and manufacturing.

Discover vertical specific partner applications on the Cisco DNA Spaces App Center.

Wi-Fi 6 Access Points with Dynamic Gateways

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6 certified Catalyst 9100 access points can now host the Cisco DNA Spaces Advanced Gateway, deployed through Indoor IoT Services. This gateway enables management of BLE beacons and asset tags. The access points also come standard with a BLE radio, allowing them to scan, detect telemetry, transmit, and receive location information from various BLE end devices.

This decouples devices & applications, meaning customers can enable multiple applications with a wide range of devices, without having to worry about vendor compatibilities. This also replaces the need for overlay networks, and customers won’t have to deploy separate gateways.

End-to-End as a Service

Cisco DNA Spaces Indoor IoT Services is an end-to-end as a service offering that greatly simplifies the activation, configuration, monitoring and management of IoT end devices from different vendors. You can discover devices from your network, activate them, and group these devices by assets, use cases and types of devices.

Device management is made simple with the ability to apply policy-based configurations to the device groupings.

Apply policies to device groups, based on use case or asset.

End-to-end monitoring & support capabilities are also being expanded to include the end devices, in addition to Cisco DNA Spaces location data, access points, and partner applications. Monitoring will now include device battery level, last heard, and firmware to ensure that your end devices are working optimally.

Monitor devices through the dashboard and get proactive alerts on which devices require attention.

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Multi-Site Data Center Networking with Secure VXLAN EVPN and CloudSec

Transcending Data Center Physical Needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs illustrates that humans need to fulfill base physiological needs—food, water, warmth, rest—in order to pursue higher levels of growth. When it comes to data center and Data Center Networking (DCN), meeting the physical infrastructure needs are the condition on which the next higher-level capabilities—safety and security—are constructed.

Satisfying the physical needs of a data center can be achieved through the concepts of Disaster Avoidance (DA) and Disaster Recovery (DR).

◉ Disaster Avoidance (DA) can be built on a redundant Data Center configuration, where each data center is its own Network Fault Domain, also called an Availability Zone (AZ).

◉ Building redundancy between multiple Availability Zones creates a Region.

◉ Building redundant data centers across multiple Regions provides a foundation for Disaster Recovery (DR).

Availability Zones within a Region

Availability Zones (AZ) are made possible with a modern data center network fabric with VXLAN BGP EVPN. The interconnect technology, Multi-Site, is capable of securely extending data center operation within and between Regions. A Region can consist of connected and geographically dispersed on-premise data centers and the public cloud. If you are interested in more details about DA and DR concepts, watch the Cisco Live session recording “Multicloud Networking for ACI and NX-OS Enabled Data Center Fabrics“.

With the primary basic need for availability through the existence of DA and DR in regions achieved, we can investigate data center Safety needs as we climb the pyramid of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Safety and Security: The Second Essential Need

The data center is, of course, where your data and applications reside—email, databases, website, and critical business processes. With connectivity between Availability Zones and Regions in place, there is a threat of exposing data to threats once it moves outside the confines of the on-premise or colocation centers. That’s because data transfers between Availability Zones and Regions generally have to travel over public infrastructure. The need for such transfers is driven by the requirement to have highly-available applications that are supported by redundant data centers. As data leaves the confinement of the Data Center via an interconnect, safety measures must ensure the Confidentiality and Integrity of these transfers to reduce the exposure to threats. Let’s examine the protocols that make secure data center interconnects possible.

DC Interconnect Evolves from IPSec to MACSec to CloudSec

About a decade ago, MACSec or 802.1AE became the preferred method of addressing Confidentiality and Integrity for high speed Data Center Interconnects (DCI). It superseded IPSec because it was natively embedded into the data center switch silicon (CloudScale ASICs). This enabled encryption at line-rate with minimal added latency or increase in packet size overhead. While these advantages were an advancement over IPSec, MACSec’s shortcomings arise because it can only be deployed between two adjacent devices. When Dark Fiber or xWDM are available among data centers this is not a problem. But often such a fully-transparent and secure service is too costly or not available. In these cases, the choice was to revert back to the more resource-consuming IPSec approach.

The virtue of MACSec paired with the requirements of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) results in CloudSec. In essence, CloudSec is MACSec-in-UDP using Transport Mode, similar to ESP-in-UDP in Transport Mode as described in RFC3948. In addition to the specifics of transporting MACSec encrypted data over IP networks, CloudSec also carries a UDP header for entropy as well as an encrypted payload for Network Virtualization use-cases.

CloudSec carries an encrypted payload for network virtualization.

Other less efficient attempts were made to achieve similar results using, for example, MACSec over VXLAN or VXLAN over IPSec. While secure, these approaches just stack encapsulations and incur higher resource consumption. CloudSec is an efficient and secure transport encapsulation for carrying VXLAN.

Secure VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site using CloudSec

VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site provides a scalable interconnectivity solution among Data Center Networks (DCN). CloudSec provides transport and encryption. The signaling and key exchange that Secure EVPN provides is the final piece needed for a complete solution.

Secure EVPN, as documented in the IETF draft “draft-sajassi-bess-secure-evpn” describes a method of leveraging the EVPN address-family of Multi-Protocol BGP (MP-BGP). Secure EVPN provides a similar level of privacy, integrity, and authentication as Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2). BGP provides the capability of a point-to-multipoint control-plane for signaling encryption keys and policy exchange between the Multi-Site Border Gateways (BGW), creating pair-wise Security Associations for the CloudSec encryption. While there are established methods for signaling the creation of Security Associations, as with IKE in IPSec, these methods are generally based on point-to-point signaling, requiring the operator to configure pair-wise associations.

A VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site environment creates the ability to have an any-to-any communication between Sites. This full-mesh communication pattern requires the pre-creation of the Security Associations for CloudSec encryption. Leveraging BGP and a point-to-multipoint signaling methods becomes more efficient given that the Security Associates stay pair-wise.

Secure VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site using CloudSec provides state-of-the art Data Center Interconnect (DCI) with Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA). The solution builds on VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site, which has been available on Cisco Nexus 9000 with NX-OS for many years.

Secure VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site is designed to be used in existing Multi-Site deployments. Border Gateways (BGW) using CloudSec-capable hardware can provide the encrypted service to communicate among peers while continuing to provide the Multi-Site functionality without encryption to the non-CloudSec BGWs. As part of the Secure EVPN Multi-Site solution, the configurable policy enables enforcement of encryption with a “must secure” option, while a relaxed mode is present for backwards compatibility with non-encryption capable sites.

Secure VXLAN EVPN Multi-Site using CloudSec is available in the Cisco Nexus 9300-FX2 as per NX-OS 9.3(5). All other Multi-Site BGW-capable Cisco Nexus 9000s are able to interoperate when running Cisco NX-OS 9.3(5).

Configure, Manage, and Operate Multi-Sites with Cisco DCNM

Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), starting with version 11.4(1), supports the setup of Secure EVPN Multi-Site using CloudSec. The authentication and encryption policy can be set in DCNM’s Fabric Builder workflow so that the necessary configuration settings are applied to the BGWs that are part of a respective Multi-Site Domain (MSD). Since DCNM is backward compatible with non-CloudSec capable BGWs, they can be included with one click in DCNM’s web-based management console. Enabling Secure EVPN Multi-Site with CloudSec is just a couple of clicks away.

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Simplify IoT Edge-to-Multi-Cloud Data Flow with Cisco Edge Intelligence

DevNet is always looking for ways to help you do business smarter. And with our new IoT Edge Intelligence tools, you can now get your data directly from the network edge to the cloud, or from your own data center. Read on to learn how.

Connect assets at the edge to multi-cloud application destinations

Cisco recently made its brand new IoT data orchestration software – Edge Intelligence – publicly available. Edge Intelligence (EI) connects assets at the edge to multi-cloud application destinations securely, reliably and consistently.

The software integrates nicely with Cisco’s industrial networking and compute devices, which means that it already runs on some IOx capable devices (IR829, IR809, IC3000 and more to come very soon!). But today, you can get EI as a SaaS, where the user can manage assets, data policies, and data destinations via a centralized UI that enables remote deployment at scale.

Here at DevNet, we wanted to make EI fun and easy. So, you can now test, learn, and get hands-on with EI with our new Learning Lab and DevNet Sandbox:

How it works

Edge Intelligence is built on 4 pillars:

1. Data Extraction: You can automatically ingest data from any edge sensor using built in industry standard connectors residing on Cisco Network equipment. Supported sensor protocols include OPC-UA, Modbus (TCP-IP and Serial-RTU) and MQTT

2. Data Transformation: You can create intelligent, business ready tasks using policies to filter, compress, or analyze data using real-time computing. Edge Intelligence supports creating these data logic scripts using industry standard IDE tools (e.g. Microsoft VSCode)

3. Data Governance: You can create a central point of control with the authority and security to determine who has access and where that data may be accessed. Edge Intelligence allows for policy control at device and attribute level on raw or transformed data.

4. Data Delivery: You can choose and deliver which data is sent to which analytics destinations with seamless integration with cloud providers, including Azure IoT Hub and standard MQTT based destinations, like Quantela, Software AG.

Register now for my August 26th webinar

Here’s an easy way to find more about how Edge Intelligence works. In my August 26th webinar we will show you how you can create your asset types, asset inventory, and data policies within just a few minutes. And, send data from the edge to your MQTT broker or preferred cloud hosting service. We will also showcase creating data logic scripts for data transformation using the industry-standard IDE tool Visual Studio Code.

Source: cisco.com

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Top 10 Challenges Solved by SAN Analytics

Delivering high levels of performance for enterprise storage environments is a key objective for CIOs and CTOs, often measured in millions of Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and microsecond response times.

Production storage environments are extremely complicated, however, so that optimizing performance is akin to solving a multidimensional equation containing multiple variables that constantly interact with each other. Without visibility into those interactions, you’re left with best efforts for optimization. The likely consequence is neither an ability to extract maximum value from the storage investment nor the delivery of maximum performance to the business.

The solution? SAN analytics. IBM c-type SAN Analytics, is the industry’s first and only integrated-by-design architecture, provides deep visibility into SCSI and NVMe traffic at scale. Below, I’ve listed top 10 challenges that can be solved with IBM c-type SAN Analytics.

#1: Find the slowest storage and host ports in the entire network fabric.

Proactively identify storage and host devices (or ports) causing bottlenecks and affecting application performance. Storage admins often look for ports in the path of slow IO transactions, defined as longer IO or Exchange Completion Time (ECT), which is the time to complete read or write transactions.

#2: Identify the busiest storage and host ports in the entire network fabric.

You can monitor the busy devices and proactively plan capacity expansion to address the high-usage ports before they affect application performance. Note, knowing a busy device solves a different problem than knowing a slow device.

#3: Discover if poor application performance is due to storage access issues.

If ECT increases, slow storage access may be the cause for application performance degradation. If ECT does not change, you can safely rule out storage access issues and focus your troubleshooting on other infrastructure components.

#4: Determine the cause of storage access issues: storage array, SAN, or host.

If you determine that application performance issues are due to slow storage access, IBM c-type SAN Analytics can pinpoint where this slowdown occurs: within the storage array, in the host, or due to congestion (or slow drain) within the SAN.

#5: Verify multipath (MPIO).

To help optimize storage usage and avoid unplanned downtime, end-to-end paths between a host and storage are proactively monitored to prevent potential multipath issues. IBM c-type SAN Analytics can help you detect if all the paths are not active, or if their utilization is not uniform.

#6: Establish higher levels of visibility between Cisco® UCS Servers and vHBA traffic.

Expedite issue remediation and improve SLAs by getting end-to-end visibility between blade servers, SAN, and storage LUNs. IBM c-type SAN Analytics provides visibility into the vHBA traffic of the Cisco UCS servers by inspecting the frame headers that carry FCID of the server vHBA. Finally, DCNM SAN Insights correlates the initiator FCID to the WWPN of the server vHBA and the host enclosure.

#7: Stop the guesswork by implementing a data-driven storage vMotion.

Use the throughput, IOPS, and other information from IBM c-type SAN Analytics to optimize an application’s underlying infrastructure and make informed, data-driven decisions on moving storage-hungry VMs to lesser-used physical hosts or paths. This helps improve SLAs while reducing overall infrastructure costs.

#8: Verify and optimize the usage of storage array ports.

Confirm uniform usage and obtain detailed metrics at a LUN level to help make informed corrective actions. For example, if one port of a storage array is 70% utilized, while another port is only 30% utilized, you can move the LUN association to better balance the load.

#9: Enable change management and verification.

Hardware and software changes are ongoing in data centers (e.g., replacing faulty SFPs and cables, upgrading HBAs, performing software upgrades, and applying patches). Proper verification of changes can be challenging, due to a lack of end-to-end visibility. End-to-end monitoring via DCNM SAN Insights, run both before and after a change, can be used to prevent unplanned downtime, increasing customer satisfaction.

#10: Obtain automatic baseline and deviations.

Use advanced analytics, end-to-end correlations, and long-term trending to help make operations more proactive and productive. One of the biggest challenges facing storage admins is understanding the difference between good and good enough. As an example, just knowing the absolute value of ECT is of little help. Instead, you can use DCNM SAN Insights to learn the ECT of an IO flow, establish baselines, and calculate deviations automatically from the baseline.

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T-Mobile’s 5G Hype is Real. And Cisco is at the Heart of It

Seems like we see news about 5G rollouts every week, with networks being “lit up” left and right. But on August 4, there was a really big announcement from T-Mobile about their launch of the world’s first nationwide standalone (SA) 5G network. So, why all the hype with this one?

Simple. T-Mobile’s 5G SA is pure 5G throughout the network, providing the high bandwidth, blazing speeds, and low latency that is the transformational promise of 5G. And the numbers speak for themselves. This new network expands its 5G coverage by nearly 30%, covering almost 250 million people in more than 7,500 cities and towns across 1.3 million square miles. T-Mobile’s deployment of 5G SA is truly orders of magnitude larger than any other. According to Ookla’s latest report, T-Mobile has the largest 5G footprint in the U.S., with 14 times more 5G sites than AT&T and 140 times more than Verizon. Those are some pretty impressive statistics. 5G SA is the future and Cisco is proud to partner with T-Mobile to deliver this next-gen connectivity to the entire nation.

What’s the difference between 5G Standalone and 5G Non-Standalone?

Any consumer considering their next mobile purchase or upgrade options should be asking this question. And, so should businesses looking for a mobile operator to partner with on their own 5G digital transformation. Simply put, with 5G Standalone, the whole network is 5G – the radio, the core, all of the speeds and benefits. 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) uses 5G radio over the existing 4G network. And while 5G NSA can provide improved speeds, it’s generally accepted that 5G SA is where the real transformation happens.

It’s not just a big deal for T-Mobile. For Cisco, being one of the key partners in this new network is huge. We’re proud to be supplying the critical core cloud-native functions that differentiate between a 5G bridge (NSA) and pure 5G (SA). Let’s take a closer look at the technology Cisco is providing in the world’s first nationwide 5G SA network.

•  User Plane Function (UPF): Positioned between the radio network and the core, this is arguably the most strategic control point (in-line service control) in the 5G SA network. UPF is responsible for packet routing and forwarding, packet inspection, QoS handling, and external PDU session for interconnecting Data Network (DN) in the 5G architecture. UPF also opens the GTP encapsulation exposing the IP packets so that your mobile traffic can be properly routed and your quality expectations (QoS) understood and met. UPF is essential in MEC and peering in the mobile network.

•  Session Management Function (SMF): This function provides the mobile core gateways. All mobile data sessions – like video calls and streaming – are managed via the SMF. If the mobile core is the heart of the 5G network, then the SMF is the heart of the mobile core. Both the 5G UPF and SMF are deployed as an evolution of the control/user plane separation (CUPS) capability that Cisco has made available to our customers since 2016.

•  Policy Control Function (PCF): As the name suggests, PCF is the network policy control point. This function supports the unified policy framework, governing network behavior. It provides policy rules to control and enforce plane functions.

Why Cisco for 5G SA?

The list is long…

•  Cisco is a leading technology driver for 5G. We’ve committed $5 billion in 5G funding to help service providers evolve to this next generation of mobility.

•  We’re active in all of the key mobile standards development and recommendations.

•  We introduced the first cloud-to-client software-defined 5G architecture.

•  We’re opening the last proprietary segment of the mobile network with Open vRAN.

•  Our 5G mobility products are cloud-native and designed to monetize 5G service, reduce costs, and mitigate risks.

•  Our mobile core products leverage Vector Packet Processing (VPP) technology, which delivers the fastest processing of traffic and network functions without requiring 3rd party plug-ins or add-ons.

Another key reason to choose Cisco is that we continuously improve our software to increase performance and drive value. This means we can move mobile traffic between client and services as efficiently as possible. Whether it’s video conferencing (like WebEx), transmitting vehicular analytics, video streaming, or voice, it’s all data plane traffic. This is the traffic that Cisco’s 5G cloud-native packet core will provision and deliver across the T-Mobile 5G SA network. Our focus here ensures that we build best-in-class products and solutions that deliver on efficiency, customer support, and scale.

Building a 5G SA network is a major undertaking and investment. Service providers can feel confident that Cisco’s cloud-native 5G architecture drives the greatest value from the major investment that operators must make in spectrum and radio. With Cisco’s 5G architecture, the network is defined by the applications and services, not by the access technology.

Cisco solutions are designed to meet your customers’ needs and create new revenue, and we work hand in hand with you and your customers to make sure you get the greatest return on your investment. At the end of the day, that’s really the ultimate outcome – maximizing return, profitability, and value from your 5G investment. We join T-Mobile in celebrating the world’s first nationwide SA 5G network and look forward to seeing the impact it’s sure to make on millions of people.

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Network Automation and the Ingenuity of Data Models

Network automation has evolved on Cisco switches through various features and protocols over the years. Network architects typically take a multi-pronged approach to network automation which includes aspects of network provisioning and configuration that can be automated using scripts and tools. In addition, telemetry data and operational data from devices can be used to further automate tasks and close the loop on intent-based networking. Having a suite of network automation capabilities in the enterprise is critical for innovation and continues to be a powerful investment going forward.

“We will also accelerate our investments in the following areas: cloud security; cloud collaboration; key enhancements for education, healthcare, and other industries; increased automation in the enterprise; the future of work; and application insights and analytics.”

The move to network automation, quite like the move from manual transmission to automatic transmission in automobiles, can be met with strong preferences for one way versus the other! While there are several applications for which we may prefer to use manual CLI methods, it is important to understand the value and capabilities of network automation on our switches. Many modern automation tools also use CLI on a bash shell for scripting and execution, with well-defined templates being integrated into a GUI. Once we get a handle on how to automate functions for network deployment in an efficient, predictable and consistent way, it becomes easy to apply these methods where they are most relevant. With that, let’s shift into drive and get started!

Network Automation with Open NX-OS

The introduction of model-based network programmability on our switches in recent years can be considered trailblazing in how we automate network functions. The paradigm shift to data models on our switches makes network automation a reality with the use of managed objects and their associated constructs using different toolchains. Cisco NX-OS now has new capabilities with OpenConfig and gRPC Network Management Interface (gNMI) support to provide an open and model-driven facility to automate data center networks. Open NX-OS also offers different methods of API abstractions that allow us to automate key network functions with simple Python scripts.

In this article, we are going to cover two new frameworks for network automation using Open NX-OS methods based on Python 3.0:

1. PyDME: provides Python abstraction using Cisco DME and REST API methods
2. cisco-gnmi: wraps gNMI implementation using OpenConfig and gNMI/gRPC methods

We will illustrate the use of these tools with a simple example using the IEEE protocol LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol). We would like to detect Linux hosts connected to a switch and automatically configure the associated ports using a pre-defined template. In this scenario, we parse through the LLDP neighbors of a switch. If we find a Linux host attached to an ethernet port, we configure that port as a trunk. With the use of data models, we illustrate how this can be done with just a few lines of code, using the object structure to extract and manipulate the very specific attributes of configuration as desired. This basic example can be extrapolated to more complex deployment scenarios.

Both PyDME and cisco-gnmi consist of libraries that are installed off-box. They completely abstract the methods used to access NX-OS switches and retrieve data or apply configuration. While PyDME accesses the NX-OS managed objects through the Data Management Engine (DME) using REST API methods, the cisco-gnmi tool leverages OpenConfig and device YANG data models with gNMI/gRPC methods. It is not really fair to compare the two methods. However, I will be highlighting how each of them can be used to solve the same task. I’ll provide pointers to the actual code that implements this example and illustrate the value of the two different toolchains in this article. All code has been done using Python 3.0.

Note: These are not officially supported Cisco products, but can be used to streamline implementation with released Cisco NX-OS features such as REST API and gNMI.

Method 1: Open NX-OS Automation with PyDME

PyDME is tool that provides a Python abstraction over REST API using Cisco DME to access managed objects. It provides API constructs to access the switch and configure it. The library is available at the repository linked here.

To use it, install the library onto a host that has connectivity to your switches. Then setup a simple script in Python to perform the required task. The script runs on the host and uses the PyDME library to configure your switches and retrieve configuration and operational data from them using REST methods.

Switch Configuration

The example we use includes a Nexus 9000 with NX-OS Release 9.3(5). We have “feature nxapi” enabled on the switch. For our specific example, we also have “feature lldp” enabled, but this configuration can be included within the automation script.

Installation on the Host

PyDME can be installed on your host using a Docker install or a pip install (pip3 where appropriate). The required packages are installed, and you can optionally also install the associated utils to retrieve information about the managed object tree.

Code Constructs

To code your script, it’s helpful to understand the different constructs that PyDME uses.  These API constructs achieve tasks that would otherwise be done via REST API.

Node: To begin with, we define a node, which abstracts the switch we are about to access. The node is specified using the REST URL for the IP address of the switch. There are two associated methods used to access the switch: Login and LoginRefresh. Login is used to access the switch using a POST() method. LoginRefresh uses a GET() operation to prevent the session from timing out. Once we establish access to the switch using the username and password, we can then begin to apply REST API calls.

my_switch = Node(host_url)
result = my_switch.methods.Login(username,password).POST()

Managed Objects: We instantiate DME managed objects locally from the node using the “mit” which represents the Managed Information Tree (MIT). PyDME requires a thorough understanding of DME and its data models. It is important to note that each time the “mit” property is invoked on a node, it generates a different Managed Information Tree which the PyDME script uses as a local cache. Once this done, we can use GET/POST/DELETE methods to retrieve, post and delete data respectively using their corresponding REST operations.

Here is a snippet of the code for a GET and a POST operation. The GET() method illustrated below queries the lldpAdjEp model and all its children, which includes information about the switch’s LLDP neighbors.

mit = my_switch.mit
lldp_neighbors = mit.GET(**options.subtreeClass('lldpAdjEp'))

If we stop here and look at the structure of data in lldp_neighbors, this is what it looks like:

"lldpAdjEp": {
"attributes": {
"capability": "bridge,router,station,wlan",
"chassisIdT": "mac",
"chassisIdV": "0050.56b4.4bf0",
"childAction": "",
"dn": "sys/lldp/inst/if-[eth1/3]/adj-1",
<--- snip --->
"sysDesc": "Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS Linux 4.15.0-101-generic #102-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 11 10:07:26 UTC 2020 x86_64",
"sysName": "dirao-lnx1.aci.local"
}
}

We will iterate through all the lldpAdjEp instances and extract the interface ID from the “dn” attribute when the sysDesc attribute matches the string ‘Linux’.

If you’re wondering how to know which model to use, the DME model reference is a good resource. In parallel, the PyDME repository includes a util called buildMoTree.py that allows us to find the model and attributes we desire.

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~/pydme/utils$ python3 buildMoTree.py ../archive/dme-9.3.5-meta.json lldpAdjEp | grep -A 3 properties
properties of lldpAdjEp:
['capability', 'chassisIdT', 'chassisIdV', 'childAction', 'dn', 'enCap', 'id', 'mgmtId', 'mgmtIp', 'mgmtPortMac', 'modTs', 'monPolDn', 'name', 'persistentOnReload', 'portDesc', 'portIdT', 'portIdV', 'portVlan', 'rn', 'stQual', 'status', 'sysDesc', 'sysName', 'ttl']

Once we detect a Linux neighbor, we will set the configuration of the associated port as a trunk using POST(). To do this, we will need to re-initialize “mit” since we access “InterfaceEntity”, which is in a different branch of the Managed Information Tree. Here, we can modify the required attributes as part of the POST() method.

if_status = mit.topSystem().interfaceEntity().l1PhysIf(lldp_if)
if_status.mode = 'trunk'
if_status.trunkVlans = '1 - 512'
result_config = if_status.POST()

Now, we’re going to execute the script on our host and then verify the switch configuration for interface eth1/3.

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$ python3 pyDME-neighbor-trunk.py
We will set eth1/3
Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS Linux 4.15.0-101-generic #102-Ubuntu SMP Mon May 11 10:07:26 UTC 2020 x86_64
eth1/3 has been configured as a trunk

Method 2: Open NX-OS Automation with gNMI and OpenConfig

My previous blog post referenced the gNMI support we have on Nexus 9000 switches with OpenConfig and YANG. We discussed the different gRPC operations supported with gNMI, namely, CapabilitiesRequest, GetRequest, SetRequest and SubscribeRequest. We then illustrated the process of using gNMI Subscribe to subscribe to telemetry data on the switch and stream it to an open source collector, Telegraf. In this article, we will describe a tool that abstracts Capabilities, Get, Set and Subscribe using gNMI and OpenConfig. We are going to illustrate the same example above with LLDP and use this tool to “Get” and “Set” our data using gNMI.

The repository for this tool can be found in GitHub here. The library “cisco-gnmi-python” wraps the gNMI implementation to facilitate ease of use of Python programs with different Cisco implementations (IOS-XE, IOS-XR and NX-OS). It also includes a CLI form of the tool which can be used to implement gNMI functionality without the use of a Python script.

We will briefly go over the two methods here and leave you with a reference to the complete code.

Switch Configuration

In order to set up the switch for gNMI, we will need to follow the same steps as we did in the gNMI Subscribe example (refer to Steps 1 and 3). This includes installing the RPM packages for OpenConfig and configuring gRPC on the switch. Once we have the gRPC certificates installed on the switch, we also need to copy the certificate file (public key) onto our host where we will be installing the Cisco gNMI tool. In addition, since our example is based on LLDP, we enable “feature lldp”.

Installation on the host

Installation of the library on your host can be done with a pip or pip3 install like we did for PyDME. Once we have finished installing all the packages, we will be able to use cisco-gnmi both as a library with Python scripts as well as with the CLI tool.

pip3 install cisco-gnmi

gNMI CLI

Here is an example of how we can retrieve gNMI Capabilities using cisco-gnmi. This gives us information from the switch about gNMI versions it uses and data models and encodings it supports. The -ssl_target_override parameter overrides the hostname of our host. We also specify the credentials to access the switch including the certificate and the gRPC port number that is configured on the switch.

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$ cisco-gnmi capabilities -os NX-OS -root_certificates ./gnmi.pem -ssl_target_override dirao 172.25.74.84:50051
Username: admin
Password:
<--- snip --->
supported_models {
name: "openconfig-lldp"
organization: "OpenConfig working group"
version: "0.2.1"
}
<--- snip --->

The following CLI can be used to retrieve data from the switch using gNMI Get, for example.

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$ cisco-gnmi get -encoding JSON -data_type STATE -os NX-OS -root_certificates ./gnmi.pem -ssl_target_override ciscoprep -xpath "/interfaces/interface[name='eth1/1']" 172.25.74.84:50051

It specifies the path, type and encoding for which data is requested. As we can see with the xpath definition, we are using OpenConfig as the underlying data model to retrieve the state of an interface (the tool also supports device YANG as the data model which is specific to NX-OS). The type of information being retrieved could be config, state or all in NX-OS. In this example, we specify JSON as the encoding since it’s what is currently supported on NX-OS.

Use the example below to try a gNMI Set operation to update, replace or delete configuration on switches.

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$ cisco-gnmi set 172.25.74.84:50051 -os NX-OS -root_certificates ./gnmi.pem -ssl_target_override ciscoprep -update_json_config ./int_trunk.json

We specify our configuration to be applied in a JSON file called int_trunk. The SetRequest operation typically includes a path similar to the above example. It also includes a value which is the data to be applied on the switch.

Similarly, the cisco-gnmi CLI can also be used to do the gNMI SubscribeRequest operation.

Python script to automate configuration using LLDP and gNMI

Now that we’ve established that the cisco-gnmi library is installed and we are able to perform the different gRPC operations on our switch, we are already halfway there! This shows us that our switch configuration, OpenConfig RPM packages, and certificates are all working correctly. It also shows us that we can do a gNMI Capabilities, Get and Set successfully.

With all of this established, how do we write a Python script to do our original task? The script will have to first apply a gNMI Capabilities method to check if the OpenConfig model for LLDP is supported on the switch. Next, we will have to do a gNMI Get to retrieve the state of LLDP neighbors on the switch. With this information, we can extract the interfaces where a Linux host is detected and do a gNMI Set to set our interfaces with “switchport mode trunk”. And that’s it! We now have a working Python 3.0 script which is able to automate our task, with a completely open model using gNMI!

The complete code can be found on GitHub, but I would like to point out a few things here.

The code defines a new class called ConfigFunctions(). Within that class, the following functions are defined: Init, lldp_capability, get_lldp_ifs and set_trunk_host to perform our required operations. We also have a helper function called get_gnmi_json_val to convert our data from protobuf to JSON and decode the base64 string to UTF-8, so we can easily parse through it.

Now with all of this in place, let’s fire this script up!

ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$ python3 lldp-gnmi-getpython.py
Overriding SSL option from certificate could increase MITM susceptibility!
openconfig-lldp model supported on device
Setting up Interface: eth1/3
response {
path {
origin: "openconfig"
elem {
name: "openconfig-interfaces:interfaces"
}
}
op: UPDATE
}
timestamp: 1597283880756493972
ciscoprep@Ubuntu-host:~$

As you will see in the code, the xpath which is used to specify the OpenConfig model is invoked in the set_trunk_host function.

xpath = "openconfig-lldp:lldp/interfaces/interface[name='"+interface+"']/neighbors/neighbor/state/system-description"

There are a couple of important points to note when using the OpenConfig model:

First, we currently do not have a method to convert an interface from Layer 3 to Layer 2 mode using OpenConfig. The example script assumes that the interface being configured is in the default Layer 2 mode. However, if we’d like to add this configuration through gNMI Set, we can use the device YANG models.

Secondly, the OpenConfig model for LLDP that I used in my example did not include information about the local interface. Due to this, the example script iterates through the interfaces to note the interface in question when the Linux host is detected.

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Cisco Launches SD-WAN Cloud Interconnect Ecosystem with Megaport

Enterprises are consuming more business-critical cloud applications, and most connect to the cloud over the Internet. However, the Internet offers only best-effort connectivity with inconsistent network quality, which can impact application performance significantly.

Enterprises can also choose direct cloud interconnects for their site-to-cloud connectivity. However these “mid-mile” interconnects require customers to plan for capacity and global reach upfront, which can lead to underutilization and spiraling cost.

Today we are announcing a collaboration with Megaport, which offers Software-Defined Cloud Interconnects (SDCI). It provides programmable cloud interconnects to bridge enterprise SD-WAN sites to clouds in minutes instead of weeks, with strong performance and high reliability.

Cisco’s vManage will act as the overlay for software-defined cloud interconnects, providing ease of management and the capability to rapidly instantiate connections.

This collaboration will offer Cisco’s SD-WAN customers access to Megaport’s global reach. Megaport offers extensive connectivity choices, backed by service-level guarantees for assurance. It includes peering with location data centers, with a global footprint across 23 countries. Megaport connects to more than 200 cloud on-ramps, including leading SaaS services like Office365 and Salesforce, and to the six largest public cloud providers:  AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba. The Megaport ecosystem also connects to 200 network service providers, more than 700 data centers, and 360 IT service providers and aaS providers.

With this new collaboration, Cisco customers can leverage Cisco’s SD-WAN management platform, vManage, to software-define their cloud interconnects to multicloud and SaaS. With this integration, Cisco SD-WAN fabric will act as the overlay, and the Megaport Software Defined Network will act as the underlay.

This collaboration extends Cisco’s SD-WAN leadership, by offering an ecosystem platform for partners, of which Megaport is the first, to bridge Cisco SD-WAN fabric with the carrier-neutral and software-defined cloud interconnect fabrics.

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4 Ways We’re Growing with Cisco’s Community Garden

Something I have always loved and admired Cisco for is how they go above and beyond in connecting everything. Yes, we have great food services, a wonderful gym, and both indoor and outdoor spots at our global campuses (when it is safe to be in office, of course.) But it is not just about connecting the products and people here, but also the people to nature.

That is what surprised me the most, when I learned of our community garden in Bangalore – a small piece of land where employees can farm and grow fruits and vegetables.

It is where we, as team members can come with a focus on learning and growing together. We can pick daily yields like green chilies, before moving on to weeding and watering the plants. And what of pesticides? Well, Cisco is making an organic pesticide from the cafeteria’s solid waste so that we can have some organic veggies!

This is an activity with two kinds of results – a direct result which is the yields from the garden, and the indirect result of the experience we have because of our garden. I would love to share more about our experience with you and how our garden truly benefits our team.

1. Team collaboration: Each year, teams look for ways to bond through events, trainings, and experiences. I would say our garden has been one of our best team bonding activities. We see results every day and realize that we must put in the work – together – to take care of our plants. Every crop is different – some need more time to grow, others may be distracted by bugs, some may spread out while others go deep into the earth – these are things we have learned over time as we account for each plant and their needs. This translates to our team as well.

2. Relaxing with nature: Green, is the color of nature and it helps in comforting and refreshing the mind. It’s why many experts suggest looking out the windows often throughout the workday to have a moment of relaxation. Now think about how much physically going outside may reduce your stress. I know that by going out into nature as a team for those 10 – 15 minutes every day, we come back better rested and ready to tackle our afternoon with a clearer mind.

3. Share like friends: This community garden gave us a chance to expand our habit of sharing our crop yields with one another. We have gotten to try and learn new things, while bonding not just as a team – but as friends. It makes me proud to know that Cisco supports initiatives that work to make our lives more well-rounded and empowers us to make our friendships and teams stronger.

4. Work-Life Balance: At Cisco, we’re encouraged to bring our whole selves to the office – to really ‘be you, with us’ – and I’ve found our little garden even helps here as we bring stories back to our families of the great things that happened in the garden that day. We were also able to bring the family to the garden over the weekend so that they could see our efforts and help us to maintain the plants. This always gives me the biggest smile to see all the families working together as well.

It is wonderful to see one of the oldest professions (farming) blending so beautifully with one of the newest professions in tech. It is truly a gift that Cisco inspires us to connect everything in our lives to work towards a better world.

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