Cisco Executive Briefing Center and more

Leaving the house just before 7 am, I headed to Santa Clara. It was a remarkably easy drive [80 to 680 to 880 to Tasman Drive]. I took me roughly two hours and fifteen minutes. It was a much easier trip than the last time. Over the years, I have made a lot of trips to the Cisco Executive Briefing Center.

I spent a couple of hours looking at Cisco video conferencing solutions. I am trying to figure out the right solution for our boardroom.

After a quick bite to eat at Cisco, I headed to the Microsoft campus in Mountain View. I was frankly disappointed with this stop. I am trying to find a room that I can show our business leaders, but I was underwhelmed by the Microsoft room configurations.

Back in the car just after 2 pm, I headed home. The world is a parking lot. It took me three hours and twenty minutes to drive 143 miles [880 to 680 to 580 to 205 to 4 to 5 to 50]. Waze did something interesting in Tracy. Just as the traffic was coming to a stop, it routed me north to Highway 4; section from 205 to 4 to 5 was an interesting drive.

Cisco Roundtable

I spent the day winding my way to Santa Clara and back. Although I have carpool stickers on my car, it took me three hours and twenty minutes to go 135 miles (50 to 80 to 580 to 238 to 880). Letting Waze lead the way, the traffic was horrific. I got to the Cisco Briefing Center in time for the meeting, but just barely. I told Sharon that the next time I was talking about making a day trip to Santa Clara that she should slap me.

I attended a roundtable event titled "Cloud, the Edge and the Future of IT." It was executive conversation with David Goeckeler: EVP and General Manager of Cisco's Networking and Security Business. Topics included: extending the Cisco network management into the cloud; how Meraki fits into the overall strategy plus Meraki cameras; a general discussion about the disjointed nature of Cisco's collaboration platform; and security tools (single pane of glass).

Afterwards, I wandered over to a different Cisco building for a quick look at some video conferencing technology. We are standing up a project to refresh our video conferencing technology.

It took me about two hours and ten minutes to wind my way home (880 to 262 to 680 to 580 to 205 to 5 to 50). I made a quick stop near our old house in Elk Grove for a late lunch.

Cisco Executive Briefing

Up before 5 am, I was out of the door about 5:40 am heading to Cisco Executive Briefing Center in San Jose. I have done this as a day trip a number of times over the last fifteen years. It is more than a little bit of a crapshoot to figure out how long it is going to take to get there. With the traffic fairly light on a Friday morning, it took just a little over 2 hours and 20 minutes door to door [80 to 680 to 880 to Tasman].

I spent the loin's share of the day in a briefing focused primarily on video conferencing. We have to make some decisions about video conferencing equipment for the new building in Roseville. The agenda included: Future of Work Environments and Telepresence; Current State of Healthcare and Patient Treatment; Demo: Collaboration Solutions and Extended Care Telehealth.

Heading home fairly early, (just after 2 pm), the traffic on a Friday afternoon was a mess. It took more than 3 1/2 hours to wind my way home [680 to 580 to 205 to 120 to 99 to 50].

Another Cisco EBC

Tuesday night after work, I drove to the Santa Clara Marriott. I was an easy two hour drive. I had not stayed at this Marriott before; I probably won't choose to stay there again...

I spent the day at a Cisco Enterprise Networking Executive Briefing in San Jose. The agenda included: Digital Network Architecture; SDA and Assurance; ISE and Trustsec; Wireless Roadmap, and; iWAN.

Whenever I attend these types of programs, I try to walk away with a couple of key points. My take-aways from this session are that we need to get our ISE pilot started and we need a roadmap for how to integrate iWAN into our network architecture.

Leaving the briefing at 3:30 pm, I spent an hour plus on a conference call. With one quick stop, it took three hours and fifteen minutes to slog my way home in the traffic.

Cisco Security EBC

I spent the day at a Cisco Security Executive Briefing in San Jose. The agenda included: Introduction & Cisco Strategy, Modern Network Digital Whiteboard; Security-Healthcare Perspective; Cisco Security Vision & Strategy; Cloud Security Overview; Cisco Stealthwatch with Titration Analytics; Threat Intelligence & Research (Talos); Ransomware Overview; Cisco Advanced Services, and; Cisco IT: Securing Operations.

Whenever I attend these types of programs, I try to walk away with a couple of key points. My take-away from this session was Cisco's operational strategy for connecting multiple types of devices. We need to fold some of this into our network redesign.

Cisco Healthcare Video Executive Briefing

I spent the day at a Cisco Healthcare Video Executive Briefing in San Jose. This was held at a different site than previous executive briefings: the old Webex headquarters. The agenda included: Solution & Mobility Demo; Product Roadmap; Intro to Advisory Services; HealthPresence 2.0 & Clinical Work Flows; Healthcare Clinical Demonstrations, and; VPOD Demonstrations. While Cisco is enabling video in a wide range of products and services and has some interesting capabilities, I am just not sure that the demand for video is going to be as high as they think it is. I am not sure that I see video as being as ubiquitous as data and voice services. I am going to try to leverage more the capabilities that we have in place.

Cisco Data Center Virtualization EBC

I spent the day at a Cisco Data Center Vitalization Executive Briefing in San Jose. The agenda included: Private Clouds (UCS and VCE); Next Generation Data Center; Operational Effiencies; CIUS Demo; next Generation Storage; and Cisco IT Data Center Tour. Unfortunately, I was more than a little distracted by a range of customers and personnel issues back at the office. I am still trying to wrap my brain around the value of the UCS solution compared to our current strategies. We are going to have some follow-up meetings internally to explore this topic.

Cisco Unified Communications EBC

I spent the day at a Cisco Unified Communications Executive Briefing in San Jose. The agenda included Unified Communications Vision, WebEx Overview, Telepresence roadmap, UCCE Roadmap and UC Applications in Healthcare. Most of my thoughts for the day focused on Telepresence, including a sense of urgency about getting our first two sites running, signage for the back of the rooms and the idea of incorporating one of our major vendors into the implementation.

CISCO Data Center EBC

After helping get Jack to bed on Monday night, I headed for the south bay and stayed the night at the Radisson Plaza Hotel near the San Jose Airport.

I spent Tuesday at Cisco in an executive briefing titled Data Center Technologies and Futures. The agenda included: Next Generation Data Center Architecture Strategy; Data Center Technologies; Cisco Datacenter Networking Strategy and Solutions Overview; Strategy to Leverage Datacenter Networking to Lower TCO; Overview of Storage Solution Set; Virtualization Market Movement; Virtualization as a Strategic Weapon; and Virtualization Solution Areas and Roadmap.

Whenever I attend these types of programs, I try to walk away with a couple of key points. My take-away from this session was that we need to push harder to use VMWare on our production windows servers. While we are using it extensively in development and test, we are not using it on a large scale in production.

Cisco Call Center Briefing

I spent the day in Santa Clara at the Cisco Executive Briefing Center. We took a large group for a briefing centered around call center technology. The agenda included: review of unified communications and IPCC; secure voice around UC and IPCC; telepresence demonstration; IPCC demo; and a technical discussion and review of Cisco end state architecture.

The telepresence demonstration was the most interesting part of the day. In The World is Flat, the author talks about using high definition video to drive video conferencing, but this is the first application of that idea that I have seen.

This is the fourth briefing that we have done with Cisco in the last two plus years. Other topics included Storage, Security and IP Communications and Wireless.

Cisco Executive Briefing Day 2

A group from Sutter spent a second day at the Cisco Executive Briefing Center. The agenda included: Cisco's IP Communications Strategy and Rich Media Solutions; Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity; Technology Innovation Center - IP Communications; Cisco's IP Communications Implementation; and, Real World Experiences, Lessons Learned in Enterprise Scale IP Communications Deployments.

This is the third briefing that we have done in the last eighteen months. We had a wireless briefing in March 2004 and a storage briefing in June 2004. My major conclusion from the two days is that we have to get our QOS project off the ground.

Cisco Executive Briefing Day 1

A large group from Sutter Health including Larkin, Wike, Jugoz, Risch and I spent the day at the Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center in San Jose. The agenda topics included: Self Defending Network Initiative; Cisco Leadership in Healthcare; Security Management, and; Cisco Security Best Practices.

Cisco Executive Briefing

A large group from Sutter Health spent the day at the Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center in San Jose. The agenda topics included: Sutter Health's environment and expectations; Cisco Systems' Storage Networking Current State, Direction, and Value for Customers; a Case Study: Cisco Systems' Information Technology; a tour of their data center with a focus on Storage Architecture, a review of management processes and tools; and a design discussion.

I came to two miscellaneous conclusions from the presentations. First, we need to be looking at technology that will allow us to use iSCSI connectors to access the SAN. Second, Sutter needs to incorporate more low end storage like NAS into our storage model.

Day long session with Cisco discussing Wireless Directions

Yvonne Risch, Steve Wike, Joe Larkin, Jon Baker, Sam Warnke, Robert Haubeck and I spent the day at the Cisco Systems Executive Briefing Center in San Jose. The agenda topics included: Wireless Strategy; Self Defending Network Initiative and Network Admission Control;Wireless for Healthcare; Wireless Standards, Hardware and Direction; Wireless Security and Architectures; and, WLSE Roadmap and Demo.

Sutter has deployed wireless networks at a large number of sites for almost two years. We have had a big push recently to install wireless networks in the hospitals to support a key clinical initiative: electronic medication administration. Sutter is rapidly approaching a crossroads and needs to make some key architecture decisions about where we go in the future with wireless, particularly in the area of wireless security, in order to support a wider range of devices.

One minor conclusion that I came to as part of the meeting is that we should be deploying wireless access points in a higher density with a lower power level than we currently are!