Ron Sege President and Chief Operating Officer of 3Com discusses its worldwide strategy, value proposition and how it plans to gain share and compete in the large enterprise market. 3Com has an entirely refreshed product line that spans switching, routing, security, wireless and unified communications that’s been tested in large enterprise customers. 3Com is differentiating this product with cost advantage, total cost of ownership and services. Ron explains how 3Com survived the crash and is positioned to lead in the recovery as IT leader’s buying patterns have shifted. It’s a fascinating discussion, enjoy. Nick

As businesses grow across borders, a new era in branch office IT is emerging born out of systemic business efficiency planning prompted by business leaders efforts to reduce corporate spending as revenues declined during the market crash of 2008. To assist business and IT leaders reduce operational spend, get closer to customers, automate new streamlined business processes and position their firms for the current economic recovery, Cisco has launched the second generation of Integrated Services Routers or ISR G2, their flagship branch office solution for Borderless Networks. Shashi Kiran Senior Manager Network Systems and Security of Cisco Systems discusses macro business trends and explores how these trends are creating a new era in Enterprise Networks.

We live in an ever-increasingly connected world where our workspace is with us constantly, independent of geographic location and user device. The days of boundaries or obstacles to access information that location, applications and devices would erect are limited and dwindling. These boundaries are being torn down by business necessity, personal preferences and technical innovations. Joel Conover, Senior Marketing Manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss a new Cisco network architecture that addresses today's most complex IT challenges called Borderless Networks.

This short Lippis Vidcast is on Cisco’s Borderless Networks architecture and its ISR G2 launch.

Avaya Aura is being extended to the mid sized enterprise market by simplifying its packaging into a single server solution loaded with unified communications and contact center applications. The Mid Market is typically characterized as 100 to 250 employees with revenues of $50M to $1B dollars. These Line of Business (LoB) managers seek to increase revenue and improve customer experience while differentiating against larger competitors. Their IT issues include older and dead ended communication technologies, limited IT and contact center agent staff and the need to rapidly reduce cost. To make LoB and IT ends meet, the Avaya Aura solution for Mid-Size Enterprises is offered for businesses with up to 2,400 users and 250 locations. Bruce Mazza Director of Unified Communications Market Solutions for Avaya joins me to discuss the mid enterprise market challenge.

Zeus Kerravala of Yankee joins me to discuss the post Great Recession IT industry structure. Our industry has dramatically consolidated over the past year and as the economy improves a new concentrated order is emerging filled with winners, losers and dark horses. Layer on top of macro economic caused shifts is new IT buying patters plus a new technology wave of virtualization and cloud computing which promises to alter IT delivery. We discuss Cisco, Nortel, Avaya, 3Com, Siemens, HP, IBM, Juniper, Force 10, Brocade, Arista Networks, Alcatel Lucent, Ruckus Wireless, Enterasys the potentially new JV between Cisco and EMC plus many others in this jam packed extended edition podcast. You may want to load this onto your ipod and listen to you coming or going to work. Enjoy.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported over 182,166 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 influenza virus with 1,799 deaths. In June, 2009 the WHO raised the pandemic alert level to six, signaling a pandemic of this influenza is underway. If the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, is in full pandemic force during the fall and winter months of the flu season then an estimated 40-to-50 percent of the workforce could be affected. To assist business and IT leaders develop strategies to mitigate the impact of pandemics and other natural or man made disasters I asked Samantha Ma Security Solutions Manager at Cisco Systems to be my guest as she’s an expert in business continuity preparation.

Mixed vendor network environments increase complexity and complexity is not reliability’s best friend. In the following 3-minute Lippis Report podcast, Nick Lippis discusses network complexity and the disruptive outcomes it creates via two examples; the US Customs and Border Protection Agency at Los Angeles Airport and global Skype VoIP service. Enjoy, Nick

The system that provides electricity transmission, commonly called the electrical grid is under intense scrutiny to make it smarter. Today’s electrical grid was designed decades ago without optimization and information flow of electricity consumption beyond local utilities leaving businesses, homeowners and utilities blind to how electricity is being consumed. The Smart Grid adds intelligence from energy source to consumption end points so that businesses and homeowners can view their consumption and control their usage while utilities can better manage electricity demand and delivery. The building of the smart grid is an estimated market of $20 B/yr over the next five years with governments passing legislation, mandates and partial funding to build it. For perspective, Smart Grid networks have the potential to be much larger then the internet! The building of highly scalable and secure IP networks is Cisco’s core competency, making them uniquely qualified to supply it. I talk with Inbar Lasser-Raab Senior Director, Network Systems and Smart Grid Solutions at Cisco about Cisco’s Smart Grid architecture and initiative. It’s the best down to earth discussion of Smart Grid on the plant. Enjoy

The word Gestalt means a structure or configuration of elements so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by the summation of its parts. IT can create greater security defenses by approaching security as an integrated system of its siloed security tools and appliances. The Gestalt approach is a way to make sure that every device is contributing to the security of the corporation by being able to share information and work collaboratively to defend against increasingly sophisticated exploits through increased visibility and control. The best example of the Gestalt approach is Cisco SAFE, a security architecture and framework to network existing security devices so they work in unison and thus deliver a higher level of IT defense. I talk with Bill McGee, of the Security Technology Marketing group at Cisco Systems about Cisco’s new SAFE security architecture.