Cisco honored with FCC award for designing accessibility features for the blind on its 8800 Series Phones

New software update enables a “text to speech” functionality.

A telephone is really a critical device for just about any business. Yes, you utilize it to reply to and put calls, however the display is indispensable for caller identification, call history, directory assistance, along with other tasks like call forwarding. For individuals who're visually impaired however, with such features is almost impossible and may keep huge numbers of people in a major disadvantage at work.

This is where a group from Cisco’s collaboration business unit arrived by having an innovative method to help solve this problem for numerous visually impaired people.

Dealing with the American Council for that Blind, the engineering team designed and released an application update towards the Cisco 8800 series phone, and produced a “text to speech” functionality. This selection gives individuals with vision-related disabilities audible options, allowing them exactly the same workplace abilities his or her co-workers.

“Advancements such as this assistance to remove barriers for employment for that vision-impaired,” stated Jim Brasher, a Cisco engineering product manager.  “We expect to building about this later on once we make an effort to supply the vision-impaired community exactly the same workplace abilities as men and women without disabilities.”

For that team’s efforts, the FCC awarded them the 2019 Chairman’s Awards for Advancement in Ease of access. These awards celebrate and recognition private and public ventures to talk about guidelines and solutions around accessible communication technologies.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was on hands to provide the award to Cisco and stated the award is all about “Celebrating innovators who make it easy for Americans with disabilities to make use of their gifts. Enabling individuals with disabilities to make use of today’s technologies might help them realize their full potential.”

“This award is really a tremendous recognition from the work our teams did to boost the usability of phones for that vision-impaired,” Brasher stated.

Cisco ships almost 3 million new 8800 Series phones each year, and the other 8 million are in the market. The program release can be obtained for new phones and individuals already operating.

Cisco and Global Citizen Announce Collaboration to Help End Extreme Poverty by 2030

Today, worldwide advocacy organization Global Citizen and Cisco announced a brand new, three-year partnership to power the movement to finish extreme poverty.  The organization will commit funding and technology to assist finish poverty, playing an important role for making progress for the Un Global Goals for Sustainable Development and ending extreme poverty by 2030.

Cisco’s technology partnership with Global Citizen belongs to their dedication to dealing with customers, partners, and government and community leaders, to deal with key social and economic challenges. While using network, cyber security, and collaboration technology, Cisco and it is partners are building solutions for global being homeless, supplying greater use of mental and physical healthcare, educating and developing workforces, and creating financial inclusion.

With Global Citizen, Cisco will supply the Wi-Fi technology, content, and storytelling platforms at its various festivals along with other thought leadership forums and occasions. Additionally, Cisco will give you the collaboration technology solutions accustomed to fuel Global Citizen’s business, including connecting Global Citizen with key contributors, partners, ambassadors, and festival curators. This latest partnership may also give a platform for Cisco employees to interact using the charitable causes they're enthusiastic about.

“The power technologies have compare unique car features and solve legitimate social problems like poverty is core to the identity at Cisco.  We're excited they are driving significant social impact with Global Citizen using the growth of our partnership,” stated Francine Katsoudas, Executive V . P . & Chief People Officer of Cisco.

“Global Citizen and Cisco share an interest in using innovation and technology to amplify just one voice to effect change for a lot of. We use technology every single day to upon world leaders and also the private sector to create commitments that may unlock vast amounts of dollars for that battle to eradicate extreme poverty,” stated Hugh Evans, Chief executive officer and Co-Founding father of Global Citizen. “2020 marks a vital moment within the fight for any sustainable future, with only 10 years to choose us to offer the United nations Sustainable Development Goals. Through this multi-year partnership with Cisco, we're excited to equip advocates and activists all over the world using the twenty-first century tools and skills they will have to create a significant improvement in the lives from the world’s most marginalized people.”

Today’s announcement marks extra time of Cisco’s ongoing partnership with Global Citizen.  Cisco continuously support Global Citizen’s Youth Leadership Prize that honors youthful individuals aged 18-30 who've made significant contributions towards ending poverty.  This past year, with an investment prize of $250,000 from Cisco, Wawira Njiru, the Founder and Executive Director of Food 4 Education, a company dealing with vulnerable children in Kenyan public schools to supply subsidized school lunches, could create “Tap2Eat” a wristband that tracks students’ lunch money so that they do not have to hold cash or supplying free meals for families who can't afford the subsidized costs. After piloting the wristbands with 300 students across three schools, they'll soon scale as much as 20 schools to achieve 10,000 students.

Cisco makes impactful technological commitments towards ending extreme poverty.  At 2018’s Global Citizen Festival Mandela 100 in Gauteng, Cisco announced that it is Networking Academy helps to produce possibilities for individuals all over the world through training that can help train people with important twenty-first century skills. Cisco dedicated to preparing ten million students worldwide to operate and thrive within the digital economy within the next 5 years. Presently, greater than 9 million students in 180 countries have took part in Cisco Networking Academy with the aim of doubling this within the next 5 years with this particular new commitment.

Cisco Securely Connects Harsh Environments and Remote Locations at the IoT Edge

Chemical plants, oil refineries and mines represent probably the most challenging work environments on the planet. During these industries, connectivity and knowledge are business-critical, with production downtime impacting the conclusion and worker safety. Today, Cisco is presenting new networking technology purpose-created to withstand the pains from the harshest of environments while supplying IT and OT teams with intent-based networking abilities to scale and accelerate IoT projects.

Cisco IoT innovations include:

• Ruggedized Access: Catalyst Durable switches and access points are made to withstand extended contact with dust, water along with other extreme ecological conditions. These IP67 rated goods are managed by Cisco DNA Center, supplying universal management, network assurance, and segmentation across campus, branch and operational technology (OT) environments.
• SD-WAN for IoT Edge: The brand new Cisco Industrial Router now supports Cisco SD-WAN abilities to safely connect remote locations and elevate applications performance. This marks the very first SD-WAN solution designed for industrial IoT customers.
• Securing OT environments: Cisco lately announced its intent to get Sentryo to supply unparalleled visibility into OT devices, allowing IT teams to collaborate and secure these sensitive systems. Including devices running critical infrastructure from electric utilities and oil refineries to manufacturing operations and distribution warehouses.

“A secure connection may be the foundation for each IoT deployment,” stated Liz Centoni, senior v . p . and gm, IoT at Cisco. “By extending intent-based networking towards the IoT edge, we're helping IT and OT teams interact to lessen operational complexity, boost the conclusion, and improve worker safety.”

Intent-based networking represents a simple shift in the manner systems are made and managed. Leaving the manual, time-intensive methods through which systems are typically managed, these modern systems capture business intent and translate it into network policy. By getting intent-based networking to IoT customers, organizations gain the opportunity to scale within an automated way and also the versatility for connecting their legacy and future infrastructure, for example with 5G, all while safely connecting everything with built-in and layered on protection.

Ecosystem innovation

For that gas and oil industry, better insights mean improved machine uptime, predictive maintenance, and reduced risk for workers. That is why Cisco and Emerson will work together to create to promote some pot solution that mixes condition-of-the-art wireless networking with industry-leading process control systems.

“By integrating the brand new Cisco durable entry way with Emerson’s next-generation WirelessHART gateway, we could leverage sensor data from critical assets to get rid of blind spots, and improve productivity and safety of the operations,” stated Bob Karschnia, v . p . and gm of wireless for Emerson’s Automation Solutions business.

Because the network becomes more and more programmable, Cisco’s ecosystem of partners and developers is vital they are driving innovation. Cisco’s developer program, DevNet, features some developer tools to release innovation in the IoT Edge. Ecosystem partners are in possession of a regular method to build and manage applications in the edge and let the additional versatility customers have to enable better business outcomes. The IoT Developer Center is finished with learning materials, developer tools and support sources so partners can begin building solutions and applications today.

Cisco Collaboration Simplifies Your Work Life and Gives an AI Boost to the Tens of Millions of People Who Use Jabber to Chat

Whether you have to create a call, enroll in a meeting, send an IM or solve an essential trouble with all of your team, Cisco includes a device or application for your. Better still, we build the planet-class network that may run everything. When you are responsible for the hardware, software, devices, and network, as it happens wonderful things are possible. We’re using the friction from your collaboration experience, so that your team can move faster. You want to provide you with “magic moments” making it fun to operate together.

Knowing that, today we announce:

- the opportunity to benefit from the same awesome experience across all of our collaboration tools.

Maybe you have rose in to the driver’s seat of the rental vehicle and wondered:  How do you switch on the headlights? Or pair my phone to hear my playlist? It’s frustrating-and distracting- when things aren’t as you would like these to be.

We don’t would like you to become frustrated or distracted whenever you switch involving the collaboration tools. Everything ought to be in which you would like it to be. Actually, it shouldn’t seem like you’re switching anything more whenever you change from an appointment to, say, a relevant video meeting in order to a group application to obtain up to date with that big project.

In a nutshell, with regards to your requirements, you will be able to place it and end up forgetting it.

We’ve been spending so much time to reach that goal. Consequently, all of our products are now on a single operating-system. And all sorts of our apps now interact fantastic. The most recent tangible evidence of this labor of affection? Jabber -our extremely popular application with millions of users-will feel and look like Webex Teams. Would you prefer Jabber as well as your boss prefers Teams?  Donrrrt worry. Type your note in Jabber and it is likely to immediately display in the Teams application, much like that.

We refer to this as a “unified experience”. Even though it’s ideal for users, it's also amazing for this teams. That’s since it enables them to transition a large number of users towards the cloud whenever it's about time, without getting to organize for many training.

- New places within our portfolio where you’ll encounter frictionless and amazing moments.

In March we announced People Insights for Webex Conferences. Consider it as being a professional assistant throughout us.  Wherever you fall around the org chart, you’ll get professional insights (according to openly available information) concerning the people and firms you’re ending up in. This should help you possess a great meeting and obtain amazing work done. We’re now getting People Insights to all of those other portfolio-calling, messaging, as well as Jabber.

“We’re likely to keep getting customers layer after layer of wealthy intelligence and context, whilst ensuring we offer the very best, most seamless experience, across our entire portfolio,” stated Amy Chang, SVP, Cisco Collaboration. “We’re delivering technology that actually works easily together and it is supported by intelligence and business insights. Our customers are likely to enjoy massively personalized encounters which will transform how they work.”

Adelboden Tourist Center Opens Co-Working Location with Cisco Technologies

Cisco announced it's labored using the Adelboden (Europe) Tourist Center to supply condition-of-the-art communication technologies for that co-working space in the new MountainLAB. MountainLAB serves both visitors and locals, offering working and meeting areas.

MountainLAB Adelboden was created in cooperation between Cisco, TALK AG (Adelboden-Lenk-Kandersteg Tourism), architecture and project management software company gutundgut and native Internet provider Adelcom. Additionally to individual workplaces with views from the Bernese Alps, innovative meeting and video conference rooms can be found.

The work belongs to Cisco's Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program for Europe. “In the very first phase of the nation Digital Acceleration program, we centered on digital skills and education, with initiatives like the Cisco Cybersecurity Academy and our cooperation with digitalswitzerland. Now we go a step further: dealing with the Adelboden Tourist Center, we wish to show how digitization can positively impact local neighborhoods and make new releases in tourism, a vital sector from the Swiss economy,” stated Christian Martin, gm Cisco Europe.

Benefits for Adelboden

Co-working spaces have popped up in recent several weeks, particularly in cities. “Modern, flexible types of work have become more and more popular for people and firms. Increasingly more organizations wish to offer employees greater freedom in the way they organize their working hrs, transforming the idea of “work-existence balance”, into “work-existence mix,” stated Joel Curado, Country Digital Acceleration lead for Digital Village at Cisco Europe.

“MountainLAB keeps our region attached to the digital economy. Because of the cooperation with Cisco, we provide way over a co-course. Visitors and locals may use the most recent, intuitive communication and collaboration technologies, and virtually meet colleagues and partners everywhere around the world in HD,” Urs Pfenninger, director of TALK AG, added.

The MountainLAB project considers two important trends. Visitors convey more choice: they are able to combine work and leisure, stay longer and relish the many activities provided by the location. For locals, co-working creates an alternative choice to lengthy commutes or relocating to towns.

Following a effective launch from the MountainLAB in Adelboden, the idea might be extended with other regions together with local Tourist Centers along with other public venues.

Outfitted with Cisco Webex

Cisco technologies help enable fast and secure data transmission and extend the co-working concept to meeting participants in areas. "Webex Collaboration cuts distances - as though everyone was within the same room," adds Joel Curado. This really is thanks to co-creation devices for example Cisco Webex Boards and interactive video with Cisco Webex Conferences. Visitors can take part in virtual conferences, share content and presentations. Additionally, they are able to make use of the whiteboarding options that come with the Webex Board, working on a single white board or document instantly from multiple locations. Interaction with remote participants is rapidly and simply established in HD quality. The secure wireless network serves multiple users.

Cisco Intends to Acquire Acacia Communications

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Acacia Communications (NASDAQ: ACIA) today announced they've joined right into a definitive agreement to which Cisco has decided to acquire Acacia. A current Cisco supplier, Acacia designs and manufactures high-speed, optical interconnect technologies that permit webscale companies, providers, and knowledge center operators to satisfy the short-growing consumer calls for data.

Underneath the the agreement, Cisco has decided to acquire Acacia for $70.00 per be part of cash, or roughly $2.6 billion on the fully diluted basis, internet of money and marketable securities. As Cisco and Acacia get together, Cisco intends to support Acacia’s existing customers and new clients that are looking industry-leading coherent optics, digital signal processing / photonic integrated circuit modules, and transceivers to be used in networking products and knowledge centers.

“By innovating across software, plastic and optics, Cisco is reinventing every domain from the network with this intent-based architectures,” stated David Goeckeler, executive v . p . and gm of Cisco’s networking and security business. “With the explosion of bandwidth within the multi-cloud era, optical interconnect technology is becoming more and more proper. The purchase of Acacia will let us develop the effectiveness of our switching, routing and optical networking portfolio to deal with our customers’ most demanding needs.”

Cisco provides a full portfolio of optical systems to aid webscale, company, enterprise, and public sector customer segments. These optical systems address performance, power, and price needs. Acacia’s technology will enrich Cisco’s optical systems portfolio. It will likewise permit the growing quantity of customers transitioning from chassis-based systems to pluggable technology to simplify operations and lower network complexities.

“Coherent technology is a game-changer for optical networking and is constantly on the evolve using the deployment of pluggable coherent optics,” stated Raj Shanmugaraj, president and ceo, Acacia. “Upon close, Cisco and Acacia continuously serve and support existing Acacia customers. By integrating Acaciatechnology into Cisco’s networking portfolio, we feel we are able to accelerate the popularity toward coherent technology and pluggable solutions while accommodating a bigger footprint of consumers worldwide.”

The purchase is anticipated to shut throughout the other half of Cisco’s FY2020, susceptible to customary closing conditions and needed regulatory approvals. When completed of the transaction, Acacia employees will join Cisco’s Optical Systems and Optics business inside the networking and security business under David Goeckeler.

Cisco Webex Brings the Apollo Team Back Together to Mark the 50th Anniversary of Historic Lunar Landing

Half a century ago in a few days, a Saturn V rocket launched the Apollo 11 and also the world never was exactly the same. To mark the momentous occasion that brought to man’s steps around the moon, the Apollo 50th Gala will occur on This summer 16 in the legendary Apollo/Saturn V Center in the Kennedy Space Center Customer Complex.

The majority of us recall the names of Neil Lance armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, however it required an enormous group of 400,000 to create Apollo 11 successful. A unique panel presentation will occur throughout the gala to create a lot of team together again to reconnect, reminisce and think about the working together that got man around the Moon. Cisco Systems, Corporation. uses its Cisco Webex technology to maximise the breadth and depth from the panel.

And due to Webex, you, too, can view the reunion live. Visit cisco.com beginning at 8:45 pm eastern time This summer 16. You may also see it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube in those days.

Webex will connect the next astronauts, mission control personnel, satellite trackers and recovery specialists:

Apollo astronauts in the Kennedy Space Center.

Greater than 500 visitors will attend the gala celebration. The next Apollo legends are presently slated to look in the gala and will also be linked to Australia and also the USS Hornet via Cisco Webex:

• Mike Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut. His second spaceflight was because the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11. As they remained in orbit round the Moon, Neil Lance armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left within the Apollo Lunar Module to help make the first crewed landing on its surface.
• Charles Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut. As Lunar Module Pilot for Apollo 16 in 1972, he grew to become the tenth and youngest person just to walk around the Moon. Duke has logged 4,147 hrs flying time, including 3,632 hrs in jet aircraft and 265 hrs wide, plus 20 hrs and fifteen minutes of extravehicular activity. He's presently chairman from the board of company directors from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.
• Rusty Schweickart, Apollo 9 astronaut. Schweickart was the Lunar Module Pilot around the 1969 Apollo 9 mission, the very first manned flight test from the lunar module, which he performed the very first in-space test from the portable existence support system utilized by the Apollo astronauts who stepped onto the Moon.
• Gerry Griffin, Apollo flight director. Griffin would be a Flight Director in Mission Control and offered within this convenience of all Apollo manned missions. He was Lead Flight Director for 3 lunar landing missions: Apollo’s 12, 15 and 17. Throughout the flight of Apollo 13, Griffin was scheduled to guide the lunar landing team in Mission Control. Once the landing was canceled following the oxygen tank explosion, he brought among the groups of flight controllers who have been accountable for the safe return from the astronauts.

Satellite Trackers in Canberra Australia.

To make sure NASA could still talk to the Apollo crew because the Earth rotated, it needed three radio telescopes around the planet. One of these simple is at Australia, and also the team there's most well-known to be those who received and relayed around the world the very first historic TV pictures of astronaut Neil Lance armstrong setting feet around the Moon on This summer 20, 1969. They of “trackers” there visited great lengths to obtain that signal - battling very challenging local storms can provide relief.

The next people from the 1969 Australian crew are slated to look in the gala via Webex:

• John Saxon. John supported all of the Apollo missions in the primary Operations Console coupled with the initial experience with speaking to astronauts John Youthful and Charles Duke around the lunar surface during Apollo 16.
• Mike Dinn. As deputy director, Dinn was positively involved with Apollo missions 7 through 14.
• Hamish Lindsay. Author of Tracking Apollo towards the Moon, Lindsay focused on timing, voice communications and varying throughout the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions.

Recovery specialists aboard the USS Hornet in Bay Area Bay.

The USS Hornet retrieved the Apollo 11 astronauts in the Gulf Of Mexico after their splashdown on This summer 24, 1969.

The next people from the USS Hornet recovery crew are slated to look in the gala via Webex:

• John McLachlan, Underwater Destruction Team (UDT) swimmer. McLachlan participated like a go swimming team member within the splashdown recoveries from the Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 missions. For that Apollo 11 recovery, McLachlan’s helicopter and UDT team was the very first unit in this area from the bobbing spacecraft, that was inside a stable-2 position (upside lower). His team carefully monitored the righting situation to make sure everything went well and it was ready to jump in to the water if problems came about. His team then provided lifeguard responsibilities as look out onto the eventual astronaut recovery team.
• Ray Silva, USS Hornet Sailor man. Throughout the Apollo 11 recovery Silva was selected for special duty using the ABC news camera crew on the airplane deck. He could watch the appearance and departure of President Nixon’s helicopter, along with the astronaut and spacecraft recovery procedures from that standpoint.
• Sergeant Joe Holt, USS Hornet Marine. Sergeant Holt provided to safeguard President Richard Nixon as they was onboard for that splashdown event.  This incorporated securing the flight deck for that helicopter arrival and departure from the President and the entourage. Holt was later area of the detail that provided to safeguard the Apollo 11 spacecraft and astronauts throughout the voyage to Gem Harbor.

“Fifty years back, this massive team collaborated against enormous odds to understand among the finest achievements in history. There wasn't any internet. No cellular devices. No pcs,” stated Aruna Ravichandran, Cisco’s v . p . of promoting for collaboration.  “With the incredible tools we've currently available-including Webex-heaven is usually the limit.”