Cisco Champion Radio

99% of organizations use certifications to make hiring decisions. The reason is simple: Cisco certifications bring valuable, measurable rewards to certified IT professionals and the organizations that employ them.  In this episode, we’ll explore all aspects of Cisco certifications, including how Cisco certifications stay relevant in our rapidly changing landscape, insights into test-taking and the various certifications available today and in the future. Cisco certifications validate the knowledge and skills IT professionals need to connect, secure and automate today’s networks. Learn more: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/certifications?dtid=opdcsnc001469    Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ciscochampion   Cisco Champion Hosts:  Dan Kelcher, NTT Data Services, Enterprise Architecture Advisor Jonathan Mahady (twitter.com/jonathan_mahady), BHP, Wireless Specialist Technical Engineer Meredith Rose (twitter.com/mer3dithrose), World Wide Technology, Consulting System Engineer Guest:  J

Join us as we explore expansions to the Catalyst 8000 Family and the Cisco Cellular Gateway. Learn about the industry forces that drove the need to create more than just a router, including multicloud application access, remote work resiliency, and a rising secure access services edge (SASE) architecture. Kureli Sankar and Cisco Champions explore the Catalyst 8000 and Cellular Gateway capabilities, including its custom silicon, multicore X86 architecture, edge compute and storage, along with Sub 6Ghz 5G connectivity. In addition, they explore the firmware security capabilities found in each platform that verifies device integrity, a critical defensive component as the world adopts cloud-managed SD-WAN. Learn more: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/cloud-edge/index.html#/?dtid=opdcsnc001469   Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ciscochampion   Cisco Champion Hosts:  Dan Sheldon (twitter.com/SheldonClimbs), WWT, Senior Consulting Systems Engineer  David Penaloza (twitter.com/davidsamu

What is all this talk about automation? How do you get started? What resources are out there to help you tackle your automation projects? Join Cisco Champions, and DevNet Developer Advocate Kareem Iskander, as they discuss 1) the DevNet Automation Exchange, 2) its use cases around automation, and 3) a special challenge for Cisco Champion Radio listeners that can earn you some cool DevNet swag.  To register for the challenge visit http://cs.co/autochallenge. Once you register, you will be redirected to submit your DevNet Automation Exchange Use Case. Then, simply wait by your mailbox for your swag.  Follow us: twitter.com/ciscochampion Cisco Champion Hosts:  Joe Houghes (twitter.com/jhoughes), Veeam Software, Solutions Architect  Mark Sibering (twitter.com/netcicd), Devoteam, Principal Architect  Shala Warner (twitter.com/giftedlane) Guest:  Kareem Iskander (twitter.com/kareem_isk), Cisco, DevNet Developer Advocate   Moderator:  Amilee San Juan (twitter.com/amileesan1), Cisco, Technical

Today, applications are the lifeline of digital businesses and so organizations are under pressure to innovate with speed. But with an unprecedented rise in bad actors and malicious security threats, these organizations must be able to maintain speed while effectively protecting organizational and customer assets. Organizations must embrace an “application-first” approach to security that embeds security inside the application, continuously protects it, and adapts for the makeup of unique and modern applications. Tune in to this episode to see how leading organizations are leveraging app-first solutions like AppDynamics with Cisco Secure Application to: identify and manage vulnerabilities within the application in production; correlate vulnerabilities and breaches to business impact; and unify app and security teams. Learn more: www.appdynamics.com/product/application-security?dtid=opdcsnc001469   Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ciscochampion   Cisco Champion Hosts:  Artem Tkachov, GAIN

How do you know for certain that a router in your network has not been altered with since you deployed it? Wouldn’t it be great if you can cryptographically challenge your router to provide its unique identity? In addition to this, what if the underlying OS provides a secure mechanism to detect if the software has been tampered with during boot time and runtime? Tune in to this podcast to understand the aspects of establishing trust and the security features incorporated in both hardware and software to ensure the trustworthiness of IOS-XR platforms. With 5G deployments gaining traction, networks are being depended on as critical infrastructure. The new security features will ensure customers can validate the authenticity of their devices in both hardware and software. Learn more: www.cisco.com/go/spsecurity?dtid=opdcsnc00146 Cisco Champion Hosts: David Penaloza Seijas (twitter.com/davidsamuelps), Verizon Business, Principal Engineer Mark Sibering (twitter.com/netcicd), Devoteam, Principal Architect Mi

Cognitive Collaboration brings together intelligence and context throughout all collaboration experiences. Bridging AI and ML capabilities with insight and the context of the meeting or customer interaction creates more meaningful experiences and outcomes. Cognitive Collaboration fosters human relationships, enhances customer interactions, and builds high-performance teams across boundaries, enabling smarter and faster decisions.   Tune into this episode to learn more about the four pillars of technology that comprise the collaboration landscape: relationship intelligence, multimodal bots and assistants, audio and speech technologies and computer vision.   Learn more: https://www.webex.com/the-future-of-work.html ?dtid=opdcsnc001469   Cisco Champion Hosts: Amr Nasher (twitter.com/Amr_Nasher), Twaasol, BDM and Solution Architect David Macias (twitter.com/dmacias), Contact Center Consultant Sebastian Leuser (twitter.com/sleuser), Deutsche Telekom Business Solutions GmbH, System Engineer Sijbren Beukenkamp (

We are excited to launch Cisco Live as a truly worldwide event for customers and partners around the globe, from the Americas to EMEAR to APJC. This combined global digital event, Cisco Live 2021, will be held on March 30 - April 1, 2021, replacing Cisco Live EMEAR (February) and Cisco Live (June). With events and conferences continuing to be digital for a large part of 2021, we've reimagined the Cisco Live experience for our customers and partners. Without the barriers of physical location and time, one combined global event enables us to be more inclusive and to reach new audiences, wherever they are.   Join the Cisco Live experts and Cisco Champions as they discuss Cisco Live 2021 and gain insights into how it will bring:   More Expertise: Bringing the best from the regions together, and points of view from all over the globe More Choice: This global model will allow audiences to choose from a variety of sessions and attend at times which suit them Bigger Impact: Cisco will be combining a wave of global

Cisco Fastlane+ is a co-developed solution with Apple that significantly improves the experience of any Wi-Fi 6 capable iPhone or iPad connected to a Cisco Catalyst 9130 Access Points. Cisco’s existing Fastlane solution has provided an enhanced user experience on iPhones, iPads, and Mac devices with optimized QoS prioritization of time-sensitive applications.   Tune into this episode to learn how Fastlane+ builds upon this success by enhancing Wi-Fi 6’s powerful OFDMA scheduler,enabling iOS 14 and above Wi-Fi 6 capable Apple devices to stream high-quality voice and video content efficiently under congested RF environments. Together, Fastlane+ and Fastlane ensure users will have the best possible voice and video application experience on Apple devices when connected to a Cisco wireless network.   Learn more: https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/solutions/global-partners/apple.html?dtid=opdcsnc001469           Cisco Champion Hosts: Ben Story (twitter.com/ntwrk80), Hospital Sisters Health System. Senior Network Secur

How do you create exceptional customer experiences? Contact centers play an essential role in shaping a company’s direction and have become a strategic imperative to driving customer loyalty, innovation and business growth. No other part of your organization touches customers more closely.   Tune in to this episode to learn more about Cisco Contact Center and hear how the next-generation contact center platform was built for the future of customer experience. Learn more: cisco.com/go/cc?dtid=opdcsnc001469       Cisco Champion Hosts: David Macias (twitter.com/dmacias), Contact Center Consultant Sijbren Beukenkamp (twitter.com/sijbrenb), 3Corners, UC Cloud Architect Amr Nasher (twitter.com/Amr_Nasher), Twaasol, BDM and Solution Architect  Guests: Vinod Muthukrishnan (twitter.com/vinod_cc), Cisco, Chief Growth Officer, CCBU    Moderator: Amilee San Juan (twitter.com/amileesan1), Cisco, Technical Influencer Marketing and Cisco Champion Program

Intersight Workload Optimizer is an exciting new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that helps customers solve the critical problem of assuring workload performance while maximizing infrastructure utilization, both on-premises and in the public cloud.   Tune in to this episode to learn how Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer simplifies application resource management across complex, hybrid cloud environments to deliver an exceptional user experience; how it integrates with Cisco and 3rd party solutions such as AppDynamics and Amazon Web Services (AWS); what problems it solves; how it leverages and analyzes telemetry data from a broad third-party ecosystem; executes specific recommendations to assure performance and/or improve utilization (either manually or automatically via policies); and plans for changes to the environment such as adding new workloads, refreshing hardware, or moving given workloads to the public cloud.   Learn more: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/cloud-systems-management/intersi

Machine Reasoning is a new category of AI/ML that you will soon hear a lot about. It saves your IT team time by automating complex and tedious networking tasks. It can also bridge the skill gap by providing automated workflows that empower your newer engineers to perform complex troubleshooting. Cisco is proud to demonstrate industry leadership with these advanced capabilities in our Enterprise network management system and controller, Cisco DNA Center. Tune in to this episode to learn how machine reasoning can automate complex networking management tasks and create workflows for complex processes and how the groundbreaking technology in Cisco DNA Center empowers inexperienced engineers and saves time for seasoned IT pros. Learn more: https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/machine-reasoning-is-the-new-ai-ml-technology-that-will-save-you-time-and-facilitate-offsite-netops?dtid=opdcsnc001469 Cisco Champion Hosts: Michael van Kleij (twitter.com/mvankleij_nl), Axians NL, Technical Consultant Shai Silberman (

Data helps businesses make sound decisions, and Meraki MV smart cameras have made it easy for organizations of any size to derive additional value from their smart camera deployments. But as powerful as these cameras are, with machine learning technologies and rich analytics, there are simply some physical attributes - like temperature or humidity - that cannot be easily determined by the camera. Lack of visibility can lead to a variety of issues, including premature equipment failure, and network downtime that can lead to costly outages.   Enter Meraki MT sensors. With a unique, simple, and scalable architecture, these new sensors provide organizations with useful information to help them better understand their physical environment. Together, with the visual insight from Meraki cameras, organizations have the information they need to make better decisions, react to events faster, and or take proactive action before an issue arises.   Tune in to hear from Cisco experts and Cisco Champions as they discuss Mer

Traditional approaches were not designed to handle the data volume, velocity, and variety that occurred with the rise of digital transformation. The advent of big data created a need for a different kind of infrastructure architecture. Hadoop distributions became ubiquitous as the volume of data continued to soar.   Now more than a decade after the big data trend started, the market has consolidated behind Cloudera. As part of this big data evolution, the advent of AI and machine learning—as well as the ubiquity of object storage—has shifted architecture demands for big data. New offerings such as Apache Ozone have begun to emerge to meet this need, but infrastructure challenges remain.   Tune in to hear from Cisco experts and Cisco Champions as they discuss 1) how Cisco’s extensive experience with big data infrastructure led to the introduction of the Cisco Data Intelligence Platform to address the evolution of big data, and 2) how Cisco Intersight, a SaaS based hybrid IT operations platform, is reducing the

Cisco Champion Radio will be on a holiday break until we return to kick off Season 8 on Monday, January 4. We wish you a relaxing and safe holiday season.

For organizations to thrive in this new reality, they need to be resilient enough to enable growth and innovation in a dynamically changing world. Unfortunately, with cyberattacks on the rise, and more people are working away from the office—stressing digital infrastructures, the need for a secure workplace and workforce has never been more critical.  In this episode, we’ll explore how Cisco is reimagining security with our new SecureX platform, and how Cisco Business Critical Services enable secure workplaces and workforces.  Learn more: https://www.cisco.com/c/m/en_us/customer-experience/perform-transform/business-critical-services.html#~expert-views?dtid=opdcsnc001469  Cisco Champion Hosts: Matt Ouellette (twitter.com/mattouellette), Presidio, Systems Engineer Mark Sibering, Devoteam, Lead Architect   Guest: Nagendra Murthy (twitter.com/nagenmur) Cisco, Product Manager  Sam Stratchan, Cisco, Solution Architect   Moderator: Amilee San Juan (twitter.com/amileesan1), Cisco, Technical Influencer Ma

SecureX is a cloud-native, built-in platform experience that connects our Cisco Secure portfolio and your infrastructure. It is integrated and open for simplicity, unified in one location for visibility, and maximizes operational efficiency with automated workflows. It radically reduces threat dwell time and human-powered tasks to stay compliant and counter attacks.   Tune in to hear from the Cisco experts and Cisco Champions as they discuss the newest SecureX capabilities — including 1) ribbon, which maintains security context and threat intelligence across your products, and 2) orchestration, which automates workflows and reduces manual tasks.  Learn more: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/securex/index.html?dtid=opdcsnc001469 Cisco Champion Hosts: Evan Mintzer (twitter.com/evanmintzer), Ashfield Healthcare, Manager Information Security Ben Story (twitter.com/ntwrk80), RedEye Network Solutions, Senior Network Security Engineer   Guests: Ben Greenbaum (twitter.com/secintsight), Cisco, T

The COVID-19 pandemic set a new high bar for organizations and their need for increased business resiliency. When the pandemic hit, thousands of organizations around the world found themselves forced to rethink how to keep things running while keeping their employees safe and serving customers and the community. Cisco was one of them.  When work-from-home policies took effect in March, Cisco sent home virtually its entire workforce of 100,000—plus employees, contractors, and partners almost overnight.   Tune in to this episode to hear from Distinguished Engineer, Brian Christensen, and Cisco Champion hosts as they discuss how Cisco continues to enable its workforce to connect and collaborate securely and how it plans to enable a return to the office and hybrid work experience. Learn more: https://blogs.cisco.com/perspectives/businessresiliencyplan?dtid=opdcsnc001469  Cisco Champion Hosts:  Michael Rhoades (twitter.com/ciscomikey), North American Hoganas, Manager Information Technology  Sijbren Beu

Identifying who and what is on the network is a challenge for many organizations. Incomplete visibility makes it difficult to implement advanced security policies and recommendations, and unknown endpoints can increase the threat surface. There is growing evidence that bad actors are taking advantage of these weaknesses. Cyber-attacks on IoT devices surged by over 300% in 2019, and over 75% of vulnerabilities discovered in 2019 were from IoT devices. It’s clear that organizations must build in the appropriate security as they deploy IoT devices at scale. Tune into this episode to learn more about Cisco AI Endpoint Analytics and how it provides the insights that administrators need to segment and secure their networks—how it helps identify and verify all devices on the network and builds complete profiles. Learn more: https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/to-secure-your-organization-begin-at-the-end?oid=pstetr022946?dtid=opdcsnc001469 Cisco Champion Hosts: Ben Story (twitter.com/ntwrk80), Redeye Network

Join this episode, featuring three Cisco partners, as they discuss the ins and outs of DevNet Specialization for partners.   DevNet Specialization is a catalyst for Cisco’s ecosystem partners to build and enhance their software development practices, with a focus on automation and application development with Cisco platforms and APIs. Achieving this Specialization recognizes their expertise and ability to support customers with the right people, tools, and processes.   Listen in and hear experiences from current DevNet Specialized Partners, how new skillsets are changing the networking landscape and how you and your company can get started. Hint: Go get DevNet Certified!   Learn more: https://developer.cisco.com/partner/specialization/?dtid=opdcsnc001469    Cisco Champion Hosts: Matyas Prokop (twitter.com/maty0609), Natilik, Principal Architect Paul Giblin (twitter.com/dreamlessod), Presidio, Distinguished Engineer   Guests: Chuck Stickney (twitter.com/chuckstickney), Cisco, Business Development Architect, De

As networks become more complex, automation can tame the complexity and provide agility to meet business requirements for connectivity.  ngena provides this agility and simplicity in deploying Cisco SD-WAN for the as-a-service market.    Tune in to learn how the ngena solution delivers end-to-end automation, and the impact that they can provide for your SD-WAN services, in addition to other services.  We cover overall best practices on how you can successfully implement this agile and automated solution when using Cisco SD-WAN.    Learn more: https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/how-to-quickly-capture-share-of-the-sd-wan-managed-services-market?dtid=opdcsnc001469  Cisco Champion Hosts:  Amr Nasher (twitter.com/Amr_Nasher), Twaasol, BDM and Solution Architect David Peñaloza Seijas (twitter.com/davidsamuelps), Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Lead Network Consulting Engineer  Paul Campbell (twitter.com/paulmc3), Quaversal, CEO & Founder Guests:  Inigo Alonso, Cisco, Principal Architect  Madhu Somu (twitter.c