Technology Tracks

Data Centre and Virtualisation

The Data Centre and Virtualisation track offers an extensive range of technical, strategic and architectural topics. The sessions are aimed at assisting customer’s gain an in-depth understanding of next generation Data Centre and virtualisation technologies.

Today we are at an inflection point in our industry with the rapid adoption of virtualisation and cloud creating a new paradigm in Data Centre technologies and architectures.

Sessions will cover technologies such as Computing, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Data Centre Networking. Architectures such as Virtualisation Experience Infrastructure (VXI) and Virtualised Multi-tenant Data Centre (VMDC) and strategies for Data Centre interconnect will be covered in detail. Customers will learn troubleshooting techniques and implementation considerations for application networking solutions, server virtualisation, data centre design and convergence.

The Data Centre and Virtualisation track also offers insight into current data centre trends and presents solutions for common challenges such as limited floor space, power, and cooling.

Enterprise Wireless Network

The Mobility track is designed to deepen your understanding of how to design and develop a secure and scalable unified mobility platform that allows you to deliver applications that transform business operations for greater efficiency and flexibility.

Technical sessions will focus on the Cisco Unified Wireless Network but cover a broad spectrum of technology areas that make up a mobility platform. This includes unified communications, Radio Frequency (RF) design, network systems, network management, and security. Learn how to design, implement, and manage a unified wireless network with services including guest access, voice over WLAN, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and more.

Network Infrastructure & Systems

Responsible for the direction and control of the Internets data, this stream caters to arguably the most influential devices in the network, Routers and Switches. The role of these core devices is constantly evolving with newer generation platforms, architectures and protocols. Routing and Switching services underlie the operation of the entire network, they are critical to designing and managing a highly available network that supports business continuity and business objectives. Routing and Switching forms the foundation of the Cisco Borderless Architecture, which links applications, users and end-point devices.

The Network Infrastructure and Systems stream focuses on the Designing, Deployment and Operation of these devices within Enterprise Branch and Campus networks. The sessions aim to arm participants with the knowledge and vision to support today’s demands and future capabilities. Topics covered include High Availability, Network Management, Quality of Service (QoS), Virtualisation Experience Infrastructure (VXI), Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Enterprise IPv6, along with WAN and Campus Architecture sessions. The stream has dedicated sessions on Enterprise IPv6 and Enterprise network virtualisation.

This year the Network Infrastructure and Systems stream includes sessions specifically on unlocking the hidden gems that lie within the Cisco Internet Operating System, as well as a look inside the Cisco switching hardware development process and what it takes to build a Cisco switch.

The stream is tailored to Architects, Integrators and Engineers with a background in Network Infrastructure.

Security

The number and variety of client devices within an enterprise network is growing at a dramatic rate. Many employees have at least two networked devices, such as a laptop and smartphone. In some cases one or more of these devices is personally owned, however it still needs to be managed and controlled when it is connected to the enterprise network. It is no longer sufficient to base a security policy on a user login and/or an IP address – should “Joe User” get the same level of access to corporate assets no matter what device he is using, or should security policy be based on a combination of:

Who the user is?
What device they are using?
The “posture” of that device?
How they are connecting to the network (e.g. wired, wireless or remote VPN)?
What time of day it is?

At Cisco we believe the latter and for this reason identity and policy are the major themes of this year’s Security track. Attend and discover a series of strategies, design concepts and technical controls you can use to enforce granular security policies within your network.

Sessions in this track will cover:

How to integrate identity, posture and device profiling into your network.
How to deploy 802.1x and Security Group Tagging
Strategies for securing cloud-based networks
IPv6 security concepts
Security threats associated with social networking
Advanced sessions on firewall, IPS and VPN Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and Virtual Private Network (VPN)

Unified Communications and Collaboration

Unified Communications is top of mind in many organisations for the productivity gains provided through desktop, messaging, mobile and presence communications integration for collaboration inside and outside enterprise borders. Unified Communications also plays a major part in efficiencies and innovation for customer response and care.

The Unified Communications and Collaboration stream breakout sessions cover in detail the key aspects of unified communications applications integration and design.

This track is designed for technical professionals who have an interest or focus on unified communications and collaboration technologies. It will give you an in-depth explanation of current unified communications and collaboration solutions and their relevant integrations providing you with design and deployment advice and offers a great opportunity to listen to and interact with our experts.

Sessions will include the following:

In-depth sessions on unified communications applications design such as clients, dial plan, presence, messaging, conferencing and collaboration.
An insight into designing for the next generation of clients endpoints including the CIUS, Virtualisation Experience Client (VXC) Clients, presence-enabled and messaging integrated clients.
Unified communications and collaboration in virtualised environments.
Integration to 3rd party applications such as Microsoft.
Large scale communications design principles including centralised Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, federation, border controllers and session management.
Customer Contact Centre solutions design and innovation.

In addition, implementation and deployment best practices for unified communications architecture, including dialplan, security, communications cluster migrations and specific troubleshooting techniques will be covered.

Most of the sessions are aimed at an intermediate level unless stated and assume a basic understanding of voice technologies.

Video

Video communication is a critical part of an enterprise’s collaboration architecture today. The ability for an organisation to collaborate effectively using video is no longer seen as a nice-to-have, but a must-have.

At the Cisco Live 2012 Enterprise Video Stream, Cisco experts will present the latest innovation and technology that empowers organisations to deploy fully integrated video communications solutions from video phones and mobile devices, all the way to immersive systems.

Apart from using video as a communication technology, we’ll also show you how related Cisco technology such as Media Experience Engine, enables you to capture the video communication, apply video analytics to make captured video content searchable, and seamlessly integrate into an enterprise video sharing environment.

Underpinning every successful deployment of enterprise video is a critical assessment of the underlying network design. We’ll share Cisco’s deep expertise to show you advances in network technology and design techniques that takes the guess work out of deploying video over an enterprise network. Innovation such as medianet, and enterprise content delivery system are the key enablers here.

Last but not least, we also have a session dedicated to supporting and troubleshooting a video communication deployment to assist you understand the techniques required to keep a video network operating smoothly.

See you at Cisco Live 2012 Video Stream. Instead of saying hello, let’s see hello!