Next Generation Tech-Talk: Recent Episodes
NextNet Partners
We innovate, educate and provide business outcomes for our clients using next generation network technologies with the best people in the business. www.nextnetpartners.com/
Join Mike Phetteplace and Phil Calzadilla CEO of NextNet Partners to discuss how to create a proper cloud and IT strategy based on business outcomes.
This week of Next Generation Tech-Talks join Phil Calzadilla CEO and founder of NextNet Partners and Tim Lake, Regional Manager at Cisco Systems for the State Local and Education team discussing Cisco Smart and Connected Communities.
A Little About Today’s Guest
Tim Lake leads Cisco’s Public Sector and Education field team for the Southwest States. He is passionate about strategic private and public sector partnerships leveraging technology to enable educational transformation and help deliver a new generation of citizen services. With a specific focus in Cisco’s Internet of Everything vision, he believes we will transform the Public Sector in the southwest over the next few years.
Prior to his current role, Tim partnered with educators around the Western US developing holistic 21st Century Learning Strategies enabled by sound technology investments and Cisco’s Education 3.0 Methodology. Before his career at Cisco he formed and subsequently sold a startup providing hosted applications to financial institutions. He lives in Phoenix and is a proud alumnus of The University of Arizona.
What are some of the trends you're seeing right now in SLED, in State, Local and Education?
“All of the things you've been hearing about for years on smart cities Internet of Everything, Internet of Things, all of those get used interchangeably. Now we're seeing that happen, and we are seeing some very innovative things happen at our customers. And we're seeing a lot of innovative people reaching out, speaking to us, asking how we solve some complex problems, go after some really great opportunities, and really transform the way citizens interact with our government.”
What does the term Smart Connected Communities mean for you guys at Cisco?
“That's a term that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. And I don't say that in a bad way. It means that if someone at a city, whether it's a leader, an elected official has an idea, whether it's an app or a way to change the transportation system or something around economic development, it's sort of a catchall way to use technology and digitization efforts to transform the community.”
What are you seeing with IoT and IoE in regards to State, Local and Education?
“Well, they're the first ones that can really take advantage of that at scale, and they have a responsibility to monitor things that are out there. Whether it's air quality, whether it's devices, whether it's citizens' safety, there's so much data that comes into these public sector entities, and it needs to be made available sometimes for legal reasons or just because they wanna provide that information out to the community. And they're in a very interesting point right now where they're being handed these challenges first, whereas private industry may not have these concerns unless you're large manufacturer, or you truly have a very big presence. So this is one of those very exciting times where IoE and IoT hits the public sector first and foremost, and then the private sector later.”
Are you seeing any specific verticals within SLED, so state, local, or education, that's actually doing something around IoT or IoE?
“Absolutely, and I think a lot of that is in process now, and I'm excited to be able to talk about it probably in a year with some of the customers that we're working with. I'm seeing some very interesting ideas around transportation.”
What would you tell our audience in regards of doing business with the public sector?
“Well I think one of the things I would say, depending on the audience, doing business with the public sector is a very interesting, sometimes challenging, opportunity, and I think as people, vendors, look at wanting to do business with the public sector, they need to go in with eyes wide open, and understand while it is a different market, it's still a very innovative group of people. And NextNet understands this. You as well as anyone know how much opportunity there is doing business with the government, but that you've got to go in knowing your stuff and willing to work in ways that are helpful to them.”
For a full transcript of today’s show on Cisco Smart and Connected Communities click here!
In this week’s edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, Chad Chaffee, Practice Director of NextNet Partners’ Core Practice joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder, NextNet Partners, to discuss Cisco IWAN.
NextNet Partners’ Core Networking & Converged Infrastructure
Chad Chaffee is the leader of our Core Networking and Converged Infrastructure practices at NextNet Partners. He provides leadership and mentorship to engineers in the practice, creating career/training paths for technical & business knowledge advancement. Chad also works closely with customers to identify needs in order to develop new solution offerings.
What the heck is Cisco IWAN?
“IWAN is a Cisco architecture that allows customers to be able to save money across all of their remote sites and to simplify the management and deployment of those remote sites, as well as enable new business initiatives and business models.”
Let's back up, what exactly does it do?
“IWAN is is an overlaying architecture that combines a lot of technologies that Cisco has had over the last several years, but has improved around DMVPN, performance-based routing and some application visibility and control, that allow you to save money; in the fact that DMVPN enables you to run over commodity circuits versus dedicated T1s. Which, for customers that have multiple remote sites, that's a large cost and expense for them. Customers can save money up to 10 times the amount because circuits could cost anywhere from $600 plus a month, where with commodity internet, you could be around the $60 range. When you multiply that by the number of sites, that can be a lot of savings for customers annually.”
Cisco's IWANs magically localizes and creates a private pipe for me?
“So for the corporate traffic that you're running across back to your data center, it's inside a tunnel. You're still sharing the bandwidth, potentially, depending on what kind of circuit you have with maybe your neighbors in the same building, but the speeds are getting so high now. I mean if you're going from 1.5 to even 10 or 20, up to 100, you're only going to be using maybe 10% to 1% of that bandwidth anyway, or what you're used to. So you're gonna see a performance increase in that standpoint. But in addition, a lot of times what customers are doing now since they now have a direct internet access (or DIA at my location) instead of having all of their users shove their internet traffic back to the corporate data center -- and then out the main internet pipe -- they offload that on the local internet that's there locally, and the only thing that's critical coming back to their data center is in that tunnel, and everything else is pushed off straight out to the internet.”
So, talk to me about how do we secure that to make sure that someone isn't on the internet hacking into us, doing all that stuff that hackers do.
“So as I said, the corporate traffic that's coming across the pipe, that's encrypted via I-Psec tunnels. That data can't be sniffed on the outside. But really, what we care about is, all my users bringing in their iPads and going on Netflix, or surfing websites. You can integrate in your router, it integrates in with Cloud web security from Cisco. So that gives you the ability to kind of enforce web use policies across your environment, even if they're not coming all the way back to your data center, which traditionally you would have a proxy at your data center, and control what types of traffic that users could browse to. Now with Cloud web security, you can actually do that out of the branches, still from a centralized controller management in the Cloud. And no matter which branch they're at, they're following those same policies. And then on top of that, we can also look at leveraging things like Advanced Malware Protection, or AMP, either at the end point or from a network perspective, to do that malware detection and malware protection for all of your clients.”
You mentioned simplification. Talk to me about how does this simplify things from a network perspective for maybe a small-medium sized business that doesn't have a lot of resources and things like that?
“So around some of the new product lines, APIC Enterprise Manager, or APIC-EM, can allow customers to deploy their routers in kind of a zero touch deployment standpoint, where I can put some baseline configuration on it, deploy it out at the site, and then utilize the APIC-EM to push the rest of the information out, to establish the VPN tunnel to create a lot of the PFR configurations. And that's kind of the IWAN plugin that allows you to push that out almost seamlessly, and zero touch. So, a lot easier to deploy your remote sites from that standpoint.”
So, just for the non-technical folks, APIC-EM, what is that?
“So technically it stands for Application Policy Infrastructure Controller Enterprise Module. So there are two types of APIC's. For IWAN it's APIC-EM, and that's essentially a controller that allows you to manage and control your routers and switches in your environment.”
Let's say you have 30 offices, and you're trying to make a change to the routing of those 30 offices, you can go to the APIC-EM, make your changes, decide what you wanna be and have it roll out?
“Some of that functionality is still coming in APIC-EM, but that is the vision, that's where they're going is. Everything will be controlled from APIC-EM, and allow you to deploy policies, allow you to deploy new devices and control QS settings. A multitude of features and technologies.”
How will this enable new business models?
“Well, a lot of customers today are trying to reduce a lot of the infrastructure that they have on premise. So, getting rid of Exchange, and going into Office 365, or Google applications, or various Software as a Service type applications. Through the historical dedicated circuit, MPLS, I'm still bringing all that traffic back into my core, and out the internet. But now that I have that DIA at each branch location. Now, instead of that traffic coming in through my corporate data center, now again, it's going out to the internet. And it's getting straight to the Cloud instead of having to go through some additional latency of frame relay circuit. And that just enables that to be more effective for all your users.”
What is the difference between Cisco SD-WAN and Cisco IWAN?
“Correct, yes. So, IWAN is an SD-WAN architecture. Really, the difference from a Cisco perspective is a lot of the integrations, like I said, around things like cloud web security, you have the power of Cisco behind you, you have predominantly I think 85% or more have Cisco switches and routers existing, firewall protection, everything along those lines from Cisco, so it's kind of all integrated. It's what the majority of engineers are used to running every day. So really, where Cisco's strong points is is just you've got the power of Cisco, the giant gorilla that really enjoys doing networking for enterprise customers. They're gonna keep developing and pushing the button and making new features and that research and development behind.”
For a full transcript of today’s show on CISCO IWAN visit
In this week’s edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, Bryant G. Tow Managing Partner at CyberRisk Solutions, LLC joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder, NextNet Partners, to discuss cyber security and the threats facing corporations on a day-to-day basis.
For a full transcript of this show go here.
In this week’s edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, David Feinglass, Solutions Engineer from Zerto joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder, NextNet Partners, to discuss the replication, disaster recovery and migration services offered by Zerto.
At Zerto, David Feinglass helps drive adoption of the Zerto Virtual Replication solution for Enterprise Clients and Channel Partner ecosystem in the Southwest region.
What is Zerto?
The Zerto Virtual Replication (ZVR) platform provides enterprise grade replication and failover orchestration of virtual workloads running on VMWare or HyperV, and is completely hardware agnostic. ZVR will replicate from any storage to any storage and can cross orchestrate from VMWare to HyperV, vice versa, or even replicate up the the AWS Public Cloud. Simple and easy to use, with RPO's and RTO's measured in the seconds, not minutes or hours, ZVR is truly revolutionizing how DR gets done.
“primarily Zerto is a business continuity and disaster recovery software tool that replicates virtual machine workloads from one site to another, and orchestrates the failover of those workloads, either for disaster recovery or for a migration.” - David Feinglass
What Problems Does Zerto Solve?
There's three primary reasons why you would want to look at Zerto:
Simplicity. It can be installed, configured, setup, replicating, and then testing failover in under an hour. I don't know of any other product that meets that incredible simplicity and ease of use.When you're choosing the machines you want to protect, you simply pick and choose which machines, and you don't have to worry about whether they're on a certain LUN or a certain volume, or a certain host. It's very simple and easy to use.
Power. When Zerto replicates from the hypervisor level, we get recovery time objectives measured in minutes, and recovery point objectives measured in seconds. An average of just a few minutes to failover, with four clicks, and recovery point objective, or data loss measured in seconds, we see an average of less than 10 seconds of data loss for all of our customers.
Flexibility. Since we are replicating from the hypervisor layer and not from the storage or the operating system layer, we're very agnostic, or independent, to any storage platform. - David Feinglass
Zerto Is Easy To Install
“The old ways of doing DR were really kind of cumbersome and difficult and in some cases extremely costly. And Zerto just has a very simple easy model. You just pay for per protected virtual machine, so you just buy what you need, and install it quickly without having to jump through a lot of hoops and bridges, and get your protection happening and then you can sorta sleep at night.” - David Feinglass
To learn more about the benefits of Zerto: Replication, Disaster Recovery and Migration contact NextNet Partners today.
In this week’s edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, Patrick Sliney, from Datrium joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder to discuss next generation storage technologies.
What is DVX Hyperdriver?
Datrium DiESL (Distributed Execution, Shared Logs) is the name of the DVX Hyperdriver software and file system. To best enable all essential storage operations like deduplication, compression, clones, RAID etc., the Hyperdriver is co-located where ample compute resources are available–on your server!
“Hyperdriver has become the landing spot for so many functions of the data center. VMware calls it the software defined data center. CISCO has application centric infrastructure, we've moved network control functions to the host, we've moved security functions to the host, the last bastion is storage controller functions. And so application data, the closer it lives to the virtual machine, the closer it lives to the application, the better response times we get, the happier our users and customers are. And so our entire thesis of our server powered storage design is to move that data to the hypervisor, where the applications can get the fastest possible access to their data, and of course, the fastest thing in storage today is flash. Everybody loves to flash, unfortunately the large vendors, the storage array vendors have to put a significant markup on that flash in order to maintain their margins. Our model is completely the opposite of that, we want our customers to buy their flash either through a partner like NextNet.” - Patrick Sliney
How Does Hyperdriver Scale?
Scale simply. Management is simple, cohesive, and end-to-end, available through a vCenter plugin. Adding hosts or flash is done through vSphere.
Scale efficiently. DiESL was designed from the ground up with end-to-end compression, deduplication and instant zero-copy clones at the per-VM level. It was designed by ex-VMware Principal Engineers to fit cleanly in the VMware vSphere ecosystem.
Scale dynamically. The Hyperdriver enables storage to be managed like VMs for elastic private cloud data centers. If a VM’s storage performance is slow, simply vMotion to a host with more cache or compute headroom.
Alternatively, if a host has unused local CPU headroom, turn on Insane Mode and accelerate the workload in-place with the touch of a console button. Typical results often show a doubling of virtual server application performance.
To learn more about the benefits of DVX Hyperdriver contact NextNet Partners today.
In this week's edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, Scott Mohr from Cisco Systems joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder to discuss what was known Cliqr, which since purchased by Cisco is known as Cisco CloudCenter.
What is Cloudcenter?
“So CloudCenter really is designed to run at the top end of all of your infrastructure and it allows you to have a service catalog or a shopping cart-like experience for application deployments into many clouds. In fact, CloudCenter covers almost 19 different target clouds both public and private, and this allows us to truly enable or deliver the hybrid cloud strategy. We have many customers that are either born in the cloud or on the startup side and we can cover those customers if they're launching application workloads into Amazon or Google or Rackspace, etcetera, Azure. Or, we have customers that are only managing, let's say, private clouds on V-Center environments around the globe in multiple data centers.
What CloudCenter does is really disaggregates the application from the underlying cloud operating system, and as a result, we build an application profile that allows us to port that application to many clouds. So it's actually really cool technology 'cause it allows you to, rather than having to rewrite your apps for every cloud operating system like CloudStack and OpenStack and VMware, etcetera, you can now build a template once and serve many clouds.” - Scott Mohr from Cisco Systems.
Control Your Use of the Cloud
You can control everyone’s use of the cloud. With cost and usage limits, rules-based automation. With summary and drill down reporting by cloud, application, user or project.
Cloudcenter is a comprehensive governance control of all applications, clouds and users, all from one intuitive dashboard.
To learn more about the benefits of Cisco Cloudcenter contact NextNet Partners today and model, deploy and manage applications with simple architecture and full scalability for your workforce.
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/cliqr-is-now-cisco-cloudcenter/
In this week's edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, NextNet Partners’ Vice President of Operations, Amanda Burkeen, joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder to discuss Cisco One, SMARTnet maintenance, licensing and ELAs.
Cisco Maintenance
“Cisco states that 82% of all organizations that call into Cisco Tech have incorrect information about their Smart Net contracts and will be unable to get coverage” - Amanda Burkeen
What is Smart Net Total Care?
Smart Net Total Care helps solve problems faster, improves operational efficiency, and reduces the risk of downtime. It gives you more time to focus on business innovation while proactively supporting your infrastructure.
CISCO ELA In Action
“Just recently, we finished a renewal with one of our existing clients. But knowing their internal plans, what their three year plan was, especially around security and all the investments that they were gonna start to make, we said, "Well, why don't we look at an ELA (Enterprise Licensing Agreement)?" This would allow them to simplify their licensing management by purchasing a single license that is valid even when they refresh their software, company wide. And once we ran an assessment against them buying those security components ala carte versus through an ELA, we realized that over a three year period we were able to save them almost $1,000,000.”
To learn more about Nextnet Partners can help you plan out and execute your Cisco One services call NextNet Partners today at (602) 247-8600 today!
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/brave-new-world-cisco-maintenance/
n this week’s edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, Jeff MacTavish Global SBDM of Hyper-converged Solutions at Cisco joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder of NextNet Partners to discuss hyper converged Cisco HyperFlex.
What is Cisco HyperFlex
Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series combine compute, storage, and networking into an easy-to-use system that brings new levels of speed and efficiency to IT.
“We launched… Technically, we launched on March 1st, so maybe we’re a little bit past that but it’s gone by in a blink of an eye but it’s been just a rocket since the day we launched it. The conversations, the demand. Not often does a sales guy in a sales organization, you actually have customers reaching out to you, “Hey, can you came in and give us an update on that?” So pretty excited.” – Jeff Mactavish
In this episode we discuss how Cisco HyperFlex delivers an all-in-one cloud computing option for customers that beats the competition independent scaling and architecture.
Cisco UCS platform
HyperFlex is built on the Cisco UCS platform. It is part of a data center architecture that supports traditional, converged, and hyper-converged systems with common policies and infrastructure management.
To learn more about the benefits of Cisco HyperFlex contact NextNet Partners today and enable your workforce to exist at its highest potential.
Learn More at http://www.nextnetpartners.com/tech-talks-cisco-hyperflex/
In this week's edition of Next Generation Tech-Talks, NextNet Partners’ Director of Collaboration Practice, Ken Reeves, joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder to discuss Cisco Spark.
“...business as we know it has changed; the days of sitting at your desk, tied to your desk phone and tied to email are gone. Actually, the new generation of workers, have changed the way that we operate already, so no longer are we making phone calls, we're starting with text messages and IM messages and we're escalating directly to video calls and content sharing” Ken Reeves, Director of Collaboration Practice, NextNet Partners
In this episode we discuss the differences between Cisco Spark and Jabber as well as other services such as Skype or Lync. We also discuss using Cisco Spark without having to “forklift” anything!
Cisco Spark is a Cloud based business collaboration service enabling customers to message, meet and call with anyone, anywhere, and anytime, inside and outside of their business. Companies need to work faster and to be more agile to survive in today's business culture. Spark is a tool to empower your workforce to message, meet and call from anywhere, while keeping all project based information in one system. Think of the “room” concept,
“In these rooms, you can actually see when someone's added to the room, when they responded to it, who saw the message, who didn't, and you can have it tracked that way in a single pane instead of having to dive through email messages.“ Ken Reeves, Director of Collaboration Practice, NextNet Partners
Cisco Spark is available for cloud and hybrid based solutions allowing companies to not abandon their existing infrastructure.
To learn more about the benefits of Cisco Spark contact NextNet Partners today and enable your workforce to exist at its highest potential.
In this week's edition of Next Generation Tech Talks, Vice President of Consulting at NextNet Partners, Steve Bradbury joins Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder of NextNet Partners as they discuss Steve joining the NextNet team. They discuss Steve's experience in consulting, working for manufacturers and working with clients.
Steve has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry in verticals such as financial services, healthcare, transportation and manufacturing.
Phil and Steve also discuss NextNet Partner's Stratosphere strategy which helps customers as they assess different technologies including cloud, hybrid and on premise options.
In today’s show special guest Vice President of Sales & Hybrid Cloud Services at Cisco, Ryan Macban and Phil Calzadilla, CEO of NextNet Partners as they discuss a new and exciting solution from Cisco’s hybrid cloud services group called Metapod. Metapod is a production ready, on-premise, OpenStack-based solution that is engineered and remotely deployed and operated by Cisco 24x7x365 on your behalf. It is stable, secure, and hybrid ready as well as a more cost effective solution than public cloud long-term.
Phil Calzadilla and Ryan Macban discuss examples from industries where the Cisco Metapod has made an impact reducing clients expenses and improving productivity and time to market. NextNet Partners is Cisco MetaPod authorized and MetaPod is a component of NextNet’s Stratosphere strategy to help clients consume and discern cloud, hybrid and on premise offerings.
Here are a few of the questions discussed in today's show:
- What problems does the Cisco Metapod solve?
- Where is Cisco Metapod applied? What industries? What verticals?
- What are some of the client outcomes that Cisco Metapod enables?
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/cloud-provider-cisco-metapod/
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO of NextNet Partners, and Nathan Hull, Director Core Networking, as they discuss how to protect your corporate network.
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/how-to-protect-your-corporate-network/
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO of NextNet Partners, and Jason Schling, Data Center Architect, as they discuss the latest practices on how to best backup and restore data in a hybrid and cloud environment.
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/how-are-you-protecting-your-data/
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO of NextNet Partners, and Nate Sellers, Director of Data Center Practice, as they discuss hybrid cloud solutions and how businesses can develop and implement a custom cloud strategy.
Join CEO Phil Calzadilla and Director of Collaboration Ken Reeves, at NextNet Partners, as they discuss the Cisco Collaboration Meeting Rooms (CMR). In this segment, Phil and Ken will also discuss how businesses need expert IT professionals to walk them through the ever-changing technical landscape of Web 3.0 communication. Cisco CMR brings together our industry-leading video conferencing infrastructure and proven, scalable, WebEx cloud conferencing services to deliver an exceptional meeting experience. With our technology you can host video-optimized meetings, which are available to anyone, anywhere, on any device.
Cisco CMR is available in cloud, on-premises, and hybrid deployment options. Ken Reeves, Director of Collaboration, at NextNet Partners is available for your questions to find the right solution for your businesses unique and crucial needs.
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/cisco-collaboration-meeting-rooms/
http://www.nextnetpartners.com/stratosphere-it-above-the-clouds/ Join Phil Calzadilla CEO of NextNet Partners, and Jac Gould Chief Technology and Information Officer of NextNet Partners, as they discuss options around cloud, hybrid and on-premise hardware. NextNet Partners knows that even though every business has different needs, the new Stratosphere seeks to bundle all cloud hybrid solutions together, improving business outcomes for clients with one driving solution.
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder of NextNet Partners, and Tiffany Quayle, Business Development Development Manager at NextNet Partners as they discuss transformational IT and how NextNet Partners provides a holistic approach to this process. Listen today and learn just how NextNet Partners will show you how to advance your business’s technology in this exciting segment.
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO and Founder of NextNet Partners, and Nate Sellers of the Converged Infrastructure Group as they answer the question "What is Converged Infrastructure?" Throughout this segment, Phil and Nate will also be covering benefits of CI to minimize compatibility issues, and simplifying the management of servers, storage systems and network devices, while reducing costs for cabling, cooling, power and floor space.
Join CEO and Founder Phil Calzadilla as he interviews Steve Greschner an industry veteran, and Business Development Manager at NextNet Partners, as they discuss the Arizona State local and education market, SLED contracts and trends in technology, cloud and how they hope to make a local impact.
Amanda Burkeen, VP of Operations for NextNet Partners joins Phil Calzadilla on Next Generation Tech-Talk to discuss the rapid growth that this company has accomplished over the past three years. Innovation in operations has been a main focus for Amanda Burkeen, building efficiencies in process and controls to help scale the business into a top rated client success story.
On this episode of Next Generation Tech-Talk, Phil Calzadilla is joined by Al Starzinksi to discuss how NextNet Partners is offering consulting and client satisfaction in the world of technology. From cloud security to data backup, NextNet Partners is able to offer clients key solutions for Tough IT Problems.
Join Phil Calzadilla CEO of NextNet Partners and Host of Next Generation Tech-Talk, as he, and the NextNet Partners team, apply industry knowledge and insight to hard hitting topics surrounding the world of technology.
Join Phil Calzadilla, CEO of NextNet Partners and Host of Next Generation Tech-Talk, and Mike Garrity, as they discuss the necessity for improving today's contact center and customer service with the use of Next Generation Technology!