Learn more about Cisco TelePrescence TX9000 Series. The TX9000 Series is the new benchmark for TelePresence, featuring state-of-the art industrial design to maximize video immersion. TechWiseTV host Robb Boyd welcomes special guest Mike Walker to walk through what makes this so special.

nGenius Forensic Intelligence Brings Contextual Visualization of User Sessions; Enables IT Organizations to Quickly and Decisively Investigate and Respond to Security Incidents

NetScout Systems, Inc. today announced nGenius Forensic Intelligence, a new analysis module for the nGenius Service Assurance Solution that enables network operations and information security teams to accelerate forensic analysis of network traffic with automated, accurate and contextual session reconstruction and visual replay for security-focused investigations. As the first announced product resulting from NetScout’s acquisition of Fox Replay BV, the nGenius Forensic Intelligence analysis module further strengthens NetScout’s Unified Service Delivery Management strategy by adding sophisticated, yet simple-to-use CyberSecurity network forensic analysis capabilities to the nGenius Service Assurance Solution. Leveraging the market-leading nGenius InfiniStream appliance’s high-performance data capture capabilities, nGenius Forensic Intelligence enables a faster, more effective and collaborative security investigation – resulting in dramatically faster time to knowledge to support incident response and investigative requirements.

Historically, most security investments have been focused on perimeter defense. In the face of an evolving threat landscape, the borderless nature of networks and the dramatic increase in security incidents, enterprises are now tuning their security strategies to create more data-centric focused approaches that strengthen their post-incident forensic analysis capabilities. However, even with today’s network forensic tools, the ability to swiftly investigate security incidents by reconstructing and analyzing network activity has proven difficult and complicated. Performing physical packet analysis is a valuable approach, but requires deep expertise and packet analysis literacy, requiring more time spent stitching together bits and pieces of network traffic versus actually analyzing an incident – stealing precious time from an urgent incident investigation. The technical challenges are further compounded by the limited access to captured packet traffic for historical back-in-time analysis due to the high cost of always-on visibility and capture capabilities.

“Advances in threat techniques, along with continued vulnerabilities in people and software, mean that businesses need to continually monitor and assess their security status,” said John Pescatore, vice president distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Today’s advanced targeted threats use multiple attack paths and sophisticated evasion techniques. The ability to collect, store and analyze large volumes of network traffic to detect potential and successful threats is critical to rapid incident response and impact reduction, as well as for continually improving the effectiveness of security controls.”

nGenius Forensic Intelligence removes the complexity associated with network forensic analysis activities by delivering contextual visualization of IP communications sessions with automated reconstruction and contextual visual replay of a targeted session, enabling a incident investigator to see exactly what a user saw. As historical packet data is analyzed, a chronological list of network activity is displayed. The incident investigator can replay individual events, or all events sequentially in precise chronological order with a simple point-and-click action.

The self-contained network forensic analysis module supports both IPv4 and IPv6 traffic and can reconstruct and replay hundreds of IP-based services and applications, including web services, e-mail, social media, and voice and video sessions. A simple and logical workflow enables a wide range of technical and non-technical users across IT operations teams to rapidly investigate targeted activities, users, or specific networked resources. Powerful and flexible filtering and searching capabilities streamline investigations, enabling the incident investigator to focus on specific activities, thus simplifying cyber investigations and speeding time to knowledge.

As part of the nGenius Service Assurance Solution, nGenius Forensic Intelligence supports highly complex, distributed network environments by leveraging the always-on monitoring capabilities of the nGenius InfiniStream appliance. As a trusted and reliable source of rich, accurate and secure historical network traffic, the nGenius InfiniStream appliance provides high capacity, continuous packet capture for Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet links, with secure storage capacities ranging from 1 terabyte (TB) to 96 TB at a single network monitoring point. This flexibility enables IT organizations to cost-effectively scale data collection from hours, to days, to weeks to meet a wide-range of network forensics requirements. In addition, the distributed processing and analysis capabilities inherent within the nGenius solution delivers performance at scale while reducing the associated packet transfer impact to the network. The recently announced nGenius 1500 series packet flow switch further complements and strengthens network forensic activities by enabling IT teams to dynamically direct traffic from virtually anywhere in the network to an nGenius InfiniStream appliance for on-demand packet capture and facilitate rapid incident response or a targeted investigation.

nGenius Forensic Intelligence provides a highly secure environment with a zero-desktop footprint. All reconstructed data is stored on a dedicated secure server to maintain data security, minimize unnecessary network traffic and protect the incident investigator from any reconstructed malware. Role-based access policies protect against unauthorized access of sensitive data and provide a full audit trail of all incident investigator activities.

“With the introduction of nGenius Forensic Intelligence, NetScout is bringing meaningful change to the network forensics market landscape with the first automated session reconstruction and replay analysis product integrated into a service assurance platform,” said Steven Shalita, vice president marketing at NetScout. “Leveraging one universal intelligent data source that supports service management and forensic analysis activities further extends the value of packet-flow investments while also improving the level of collaboration across IT teams. In the end, this will empower IT organizations to further simplify and consolidate their network monitoring architecture, thus reducing vendor complexity, improving time to value and lowering the overall total cost of ownership.”

Availability

The nGenius Forensics Intelligence analysis module is now entering controlled early field trials (EFT).  General availability is planned for the June/July 2012 time frame. nGenius Forensic Intelligence will ship as a self-contained hardened server that leverages native packet streams from nGenius InfiniStream appliances. Contact Mountain States Networking for more information.

New Data Protection Technology Restores Up to Eight Times Faster Than Traditional RAID to Help Customers Optimize Overall Performance

The sheer volume of data and information produced by big data and high-performance applications continues to grow at explosive rates. How organizations store, manage, analyze, and protect this data can mean the difference between forging ahead and falling behind. As a result, the decision an organization makes about the storage platform or solution that serves as the foundation for its IT infrastructure is as critical as ever.

NetApp announced several major enhancements to its NetApp E-Series platform to help its ecosystem of OEM partners more effectively serve their customers’ growing big data requirements and also serve as the platform for many of NetApp’s own big data solutions. The new features, which are available in the latest version of NetApp SANtricity software, the storage management software for the E-Series platform, include improved data protection, performance, and management capabilities. With the enhanced platform, OEMs have a storage foundation they can build on with confidence to deliver their own unique and innovative storage solutions to address their customers’ high-performance needs and continue to grow their own business. Furthermore, these enhancements strengthen NetApp’s position as an innovation leader and expand on the platform’s already industry-leading combination of price, performance, and density.

Thanks to the added flexibility these new features deliver, OEMs can also leverage the E-Series platform to address other environments, such as virtualized infrastructures and Microsoft applications, providing them with the versatility to serve additional customer segments to help further expand their business opportunities.

E-Series Platform Provides High-Performance Storage Building Block

New features in the enhanced E-Series platform include:

• Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) is an innovative new technology that provides customers with enhanced data protection and improves overall performance. DDP administers dynamic reconstructions of failed drives, providing customers with the ability to restore a storage system to optimal conditions following a drive failure eight times faster than with traditional RAID architectures. DDP can also reduce the impact on the performance customers experience while restoring from a drive failure by nearly 60%. This enhanced data protection technology enables big data customers to maintain business continuity and reduce overall storage system costs.
• Additional data protection capabilities are provided by enhanced NetApp SANtricity Snapshot™ technology that enables customers to schedule more frequent and flexible Snapshot copies, helping to improve overall recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) performance. The improved RPO and RTO performance increases data availability and reduces the amount of time and money an organization needs to allocate to recover valuable information.
• VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration is now available across the E-Series platform. This provides customers with tighter integration between the storage array and VMware tools to help manage their storage environments. The added integration offers customers in virtualized environments increased flexibility, more efficient use of server resources, and increased performance and scalability.
• Thin-provisioning capabilities enable organizations to enhance overall efficiency by increasing storage utilization and reducing administrative costs.
• Active-active LUN ownership enables customers to standardize and simplify system configurations since LUN ownership to each controller does not have to be performed manually. This feature also balances the load automatically across both controllers, which helps optimize performance.

Mountain States announced today that it is the recipient of a Cisco Partner Summit global award for Services Partner of the Year 2011. Cisco unveiled the winners at its annual channel partner conference on April 17 in San Diego, Calif.

Cisco Partner Summit global awards are designed to recognize exemplary channel partners who demonstrate best-in-class business practices and serve as a model to the industry. Areas of consideration include innovative practices, application successes, unique programs, problem solving and sales approaches. All winners are selected by a group of Cisco Worldwide Channels and regional executives.

“Cisco is privileged to work with some of the best channel partners around the world, and it is my honor to recognize Mountain States as a Cisco Partner Summit global award recipient,” said Edison Peres, senior vice president, Worldwide Channels at Cisco. “The Services Partner of the Year 2011 presented to Mountain States recognizes its outstanding achievement as a Cisco channel partner in West Region in 2011.”

Thanks to all the employees at Mountain States who contributed to our success in services to make this award possible. This has been posted to our web page news items so you can refer customers to the web page or share this email with them directly. It is recognition that is well deserved by the team.

Customers Gain Greater Flexibility, Choice and Affordability with a New Series of Pre-Validated Design Architectures and Validated Management Solutions from Leading Vendors

To help more customers accelerate their transition to the cloud, Cisco and NetApp today announced plans to extend the FlexPod with a series of new pre-validated design architectures priced and sized for smaller workloads.  This new FlexPod series is built on a flexible, scalable, shared infrastructure that combines computing, networking and storage solutions from Cisco and NetApp. Additionally, to simplify and accelerate implementation of cloud automation capabilities, Cisco and NetApp have also validated several new management solutions from leading software management vendors for all FlexPod design architectures.

Highlights/ Key Facts

• Offering price and scale that’s sized for business application workloads with 500 to 1000 users, the entry-level FlexPod solution allows customers to invest only in the infrastructure they require and allow for simple and rapid scaling to meet growing demands as their business needs change.
• Customers gain investment protection with the new entry-level FlexPod solution, which easily scales to larger enterprises by simply adding incremental capacity, as their needs grow for larger application workloads.
• The entry-level FlexPod combines for the first time the NetApp entry level FAS 2240 and the Cisco UCS C-Series Cisco Nexus 5000 Switches, Cisco Nexus 2232 Fabric Extender, and Cisco UCS 6200 Series Fabric Interconnects.  
• Similar to other FlexPod pre-validated solutions, this entry level FlexPod provides greater flexibility and customer choice, supporting multiple hypervisors and business applications to help accelerate deployment of private clouds.
• Since Cisco and NetApp first announced FlexPod in November 2010, it has grown to become an extremely popular converged infrastructure platform. FlexPod is available worldwide through more than 500 FlexPod partners and more than 850 customers are using FlexPod for their data center infrastructure – representing more than 400% growth in customer adoption in less than a year. 

Flexible Management Options

• Cisco and NetApp offer customers greater flexibility and choice in how they manage their FlexPod solution. Management options include:
  • Validated FlexPod management solutions which provide unified, turn-key functionality for automation and orchestration. These solutions have passed extensive testing in Cisco and NetApp labs against a broad set of functional and design requirements. Solutions available today include products from CA Technologies, Cloupia, and Gale Technologies.  
  • In addition, customers can also maximize their investment in existing management tools by managing their solution via open APIs, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud, VMware vCloud® Director or VMware vCenter Server. 

Cisco Updates Mobile Ready Net Portfolio 5900 Series Embedded Services Routers for Personnel Operating Beyond the Reach of Traditional Fixed-Network Infrastructure Next Generation of Ad Hoc Mobile Networking Delivers Voice, Video and Data Applications in a Single Platform for Use by First Responders, Military and Government Markets

Cisco announced enhancements to its 5900 Series Embedded Services Router (ESR) product line, including the 5940 ESR and 5915 ESR, to bring improved performance and added features to the ruggedized routers. The updates expand the capabilities of Cisco Mobile Ready Net solution architecture, establishing a scalable mobile network that connects organizational resources with a high degree of security to connect users how, when and where they need.

The Cisco 5900 Series ESRs are the next generation of mobile and embedded networking, adding flexibility for industrial, commercial, military, homeland security and emergency response applications in even the harshest environments. The product line incorporates Cisco IOS Software with Cisco Mobile Ready Net capabilities to provide highly secure data, voice and video communications to stationary and mobile network nodes across both wired and wireless links. When combined with UHF, VHF, Wi-Fi and other radio platforms, these routers enable transparent roaming over multiple wireless networks, without requiring a connection to central infrastructure. The Cisco 5900 Series ESRs extend router functionality with security, link optimization and collaboration in one compact form factor.

Updates to Cisco 5900 Series ESRs include:

• IP Multiplexing, a satellite link optimization technology that improves bandwidth efficiency for customers using satellite links with packet-per-second constraints.
• Improved performance of up to 30 percent on Cisco 5940 ESR.
• WAAS Express, a cost-effective, transparent and easy-to-deploy WAN optimization solution that improves limited bandwidth link performance.
• Extended number of Call Manager Express end points for Cisco 5940 ESR to support larger teams of up to 150 individuals.
• Dynamic Link Exchange Protocol (DLEP), a link and route optimization technology, has been added to address the challenges faced when merging IP routing and radio frequency (RF) communications. DLEP is the latest protocol in the Radio Aware Routing (RAR) family.
• To demonstrate Cisco’s commitment to improving product quality and security for all customers, Cisco 5940 ESR is Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), Common Criteria, USGv6 and IPv6 Ready Logo certified.
• In cooperation with industry leading partners, Cisco now offers fully supported networking applications such as Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) to support embedded deployments with the Cisco 5940 ESR.  Cisco has verified UCM on both the Extreme Engineering Solutions XPedite7332 and the Emerson Network Power CPCI7203 single board computers.  Both of these platforms have been certified by VMware and are included in the VMware Compatibility Guide.
• Together, the Cisco 5940 ESR and a single board computer running UCM create Advanced Networking Nodes from which mobile ad hoc networks can be built for military, public safety, energy, industrial, transportation and smart grid applications.
• In addition, Cisco 5940 ESR customers now have more choices with VMware vSphere, which has been expanded to cover a broad range of embedded processors, I/O devices and servers.

Cisco has unveiled a new line of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers with app enabled capabilities for consumers to power and enjoy their connected homes of today and tomorrow. The three new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers offer exceptional wireless performance and maximum throughput, as well as support for Cisco Connect Cloud, the next generation of Cisco Connect software, which provides simple anytime, anywhere management of multiple home networks. Cisco also announced it is working with top device manufacturers to simplify their networked products, (such as TVs, entertainment devices and home appliances) enabling new consumer experiences in the future.

“The proliferation of wireless devices and the explosion of video streaming have redefined the importance of the home network. Today’s connected consumer has high expectations for reliability, simplicity, and software and apps that grow with them over time,” said Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager, Cisco Home Networking.  “Our new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers are game-changing products that put intelligence into the home network so consumers have a platform that makes it easy to manage and optimize their devices, and enjoy apps that deliver great new experiences.” 

The new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers, (the EA Series: EA4500, EA3500 and EA2700), deliver the latest home Wi-Fi technology and offer a range of prices and performance for active online homes − easily handling everything from streaming HD video and multiplayer gaming to downloading large files, adding storage or printers, and connecting multiple devices. These advanced wireless capabilities are timely considering that globally there will be 15 billion networked devices in 2015, up from 7 billion in 2010.* Home networks will need to support an increasing number of devices added to the home, the bandwidth required to run all the devices, and the ability to easily and more securely add and manage these devices.

Software intelligence in the home network is increasingly critical to enabling a new category of apps for new home experiences.  The new Linksys EA-Series is now app enabled, to provide consumers with all-new, anytime and anywhere experiences and solutions in areas such as home control, entertainment and protection.

New Cisco Connect Cloud Extends Home Networking Options

Cisco Connect is the highly acclaimed software that guides consumers through simple setup and management of their Linksys E-Series and X-Series home routers. Cisco Connect Express is the company’s first mobile app providing home network management from smart phones and tablets while on the home network.  The next generation of Cisco Connect software, called Cisco Connect Cloud, works with new Linksys EA-Series products and enhances the users’ experience by giving them anytime, anywhere access to multiple home networks, from their smart mobile device, tablet app or web browser. Users can give guests Internet access, set parental controls, and add devices to their network from anywhere at any time through Cisco Connect Cloud’s easy-to-use password-protected site. New apps coming from Cisco and partners will deliver additional capabilities for connected devices, so that consumers can benefit from improved home network experiences right away and for years to come.

The new Cisco Connect Cloud Web-based software is planned for availability worldwide at no additional cost in June. New apps and partner solutions that take advantage of the Cisco home network platform are also planned for availability in June, with details to be announced at that time.

Ultra High-Speed Network to be Used for Research and Education Applications Throughout the Mid-Atlantic Region

Cisco announced that Lumos Networks, a fiber-based service provider in the mid-Atlantic region, has successfully completed a technology test of Cisco’s 100 Gigabit (100G) coherent DWDM solution across its service area. This performance validation confirms that Lumos Networks can meet growing customer demand for high-capacity bandwidth on its existing 10G fiber plant simply by deploying 100G line cards in its current Cisco ONS 15454 platforms.

Highlights/Key Facts

• Lumos Networks is a fiber-based service provider in the Mid-Atlantic region serving carrier, business and residential customers over a dense fiber network offering data, voice and IP services. With headquarters in Waynesboro, VA, Lumos Networks serves Virginia, West Virginia and portions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland over a 5,800 route-mile fiber network.
• Lumos Networks has completed the successful testing of Cisco’s 100 Gigabit coherent DWDM technology on the Cisco ONS 15454 platform, proving that its network is ready to support these types of high-speed services.
• Demonstrating the increasing role of the network in people’s lives, the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report revealed that one in three college students and young professionals considers the Internet to be as important as fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter.

Cisco Introduces Connected Video Surveillance Delivered on Cisco Unified Computing System.Virtualized Applications on the Network Support Massive Scalability and Performance Increases; Reduce Total Cost of Ownership For Large Scale Safety and Security Operations

Cisco announced that Cisco Video Surveillance software is available on Cisco’s  Unified Computing System platform, now in use by more than 11,000 customers. By virtualizing Cisco Video Surveillance software, Cisco is providing significantly improved levels of performance, scalability, agility and manageability.

Cisco Physical Security solutions enable organizations to transform the way they protect people, property and critical infrastructure. The virtualization of these solutions with Cisco Unified Data Center applications is part of Cisco’s strategy to move toward a solutions-led building block approach for the complete Cisco Physical Security portfolio, resulting in an optimized IP network and Physical Security foundation.

This announcement is the next step in Cisco’s physical security strategy, providing customers with hyper-scalability and capacity, lower cost of ownership and simplified management. This news follows the Cisco physical security strategy evolution announced in Fall 2011 which aligned Cisco strengths with market opportunities and customer requirements to focus on large-scale strategic deployments. This provides customers with a combination of Cisco physical security products, services, third-party products and systems, and core networking, data center, video and collaboration offerings to support business needs.

The Video Surveillance Manager on UCS solution represents the first Cisco Video Surveillance Building Block that meets the deployment requirements for large-scale city, transportation, healthcare and energy requirements.

Key Facts:

• Modular UCS platform building blocks support massive scalability increases of up to 1,000 percent versus dedicated server solutions, allowing customers to scale to tens of thousands of cameras, delivering networked video surveillance for commercial, disaster and first responder needs, as well as large events.
• With a new rapid provisioning deployment model for large-scale city surveillance, transportation, critical infrastructure, energy, healthcare and other industries, Cisco Video Surveillance Manager provides centralized management with improved situational awareness and real-time response capabilities.
• UCS Express extends video surveillance as a service on the network as an easy-to-deploy, virtual solution with application consolidation on a blade-form factor for equipment that already exists in many branch offices.
• As part of an end-to-end solution, Cisco UCS offers infrastructure consolidation in the data center with innovative virtualization, memory, provisioning, I/O and management capabilities. Cisco UCS Express integrates the compute platform with all-in-one device convergence to facilitate the extension of data center applications into the branch.
• Management provided by the Cisco Unified Data Center, Unified Management, Unified Fabric and Unified Computing Systems delivers IT agility for fast provisioning, flexibility and lower operating costs.
• Highly secure separation capabilities for multi-tenant environments increase logical security and access control.
• Modular, scalable, high-density, and energy efficient, Cisco Physical Security Storage series platforms, as well as industry leading storage options from EMC and NetApp, will be available for use with Virtualized Video Surveillance as this solution is extended to the UCS B-Series and C-Series platforms.
• Cisco Capital offers a variety of flexible financing offers to streamline the acquisition of Cisco products and services.

Availability:

• Video Surveillance Software release 6.3.2 is available now on UCS Express.
• The software is scheduled to be available on other platforms including Cisco UCS B and C Series in June 2012.
• Contact Mountain States Networking for pricing on the UCS Express-based solution .