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CIOs take to Twitter to crow about Apple-Cisco deal

Francesca Sales
Site Editor

Last week, the Apple-Cisco deal barely got a rise out of the analysts I spoke to. This is the partnership between Apple and Cisco aimed at assuring enterprise IT professionals that both companies are serious about making sure employees using iOS devices for work purposes will be fully supported on corporate networks. The industry experts I spoke with for last week’s Searchlight column were decidedly lukewarm about the deal, citing the announcement’s glaring lack of specifics, particularly where customer benefits were concerned.

Any mention of user benefits the announcement did contain, according to Forrester’s Andrew Bartels, was little more than “marketing hype” — a predictable move by Apple to fuel enterprise demand for its devices.

While Bartels and other analysts were unconvinced of the enterprise benefits of the deal — at least until more details are released — some of the CIOs I contacted on Twitter see the pair-up as a big step forward for iOS use in the enterprise.

Paul Kerekfy, CIO at King Sigismund Business School in Budapest, believes that the Apple-Cisco partnership will address the misperception that Apple devices don’t play well with corporate networks:

He added that this myth-busting couldn’t come at a better time, considering the popularity of iOS devices among business workers:

David Chou, CIO at University of Mississippi Medical Center, couldn’t agree more:

Teresa Devine, CIO at Serta-Simmons Bedding Co. in Atlanta, was excited about the possibilities around payments:

Bartels himself granted that if there was one specific benefit to be gleaned from the Apple-Cisco announcement, it’s that both companies do plan to improve Cisco products that already support Apple devices.

“There already is a WebEx for iPads or iPhones; they’ll probably work out to enhance that so it is easier to use [and] make it simpler. … Cisco Spark and TelePresence are areas they’re probably working on, too,” he told me.

Check out the Searchlight column to learn more about the Apple-Cisco partnership.

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nope. we should be teaching SDN at this point in universities.
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It is never too early to start something emerging
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It can be taught as it stands today! Almost all technologies evolve now and then.
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We plan to offer SDN as a 3rd year degree subject at Box Hill Institute, Australia, in about 2 years when we think the market will have settled down enough to give a stable course
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Most university degree programs struggle to teach basics to their students within the limited time that faculty has. The basics are more important than advanced concepts. Sure, a small chapter on SDN would be nice to include in the standard networking text-books (just to give students the conceptual idea). Understanding moving targets like the OpenFlow API may be overwhelming the students.
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I think it is too early.
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It has there for half a decade already. It is too late for you to post this !!
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I would say, we are living with old infrastructure , even though other technologies are growing day by day ( EX : Cloud/Virtualization, etc..)
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was it to early to teach tcp/ip back in the '80's
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No standardization, no basics, no vision and no industry justification to put time, $$$ and thought into something that isn't even showing up in job posts.

Universities should be stressing logic, critical thinking, math, programming, scripting, science and practical technology application - not a hype & concept.
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SDN is just emerging and there will be lots of changes to come. Creating a curriculum this early will lead to some shortfalls.
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That is time to bring SDN to next generation of IT persons.
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Universities and colleges are environments that should promote original thought and experimentation. SDN has its origin in these environments. Now is, therefore, the perfect time for SDN courses to be instituted in colleges and universities so that good scholarship, like that which caused the birth of SDN, can influence its evolution and not just market economics, as it has done in the past.
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No. This is need of oday's industry; so to renovate network infrastrutcture the trainings and certifications should have alreadybeen in place till now.
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I like sdn .I wanna study and got a job in it.
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The SDN are the revolution in programability is the best
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To get into SDN strategy (moving target, at this point) we need internalize the basics so we can understand 5W and reasoning behind changes and evolution of SDN topology.
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SDN seems like a cool technology. Regardless of whether it will be a success or not in the future, it will be of great value to learn how one can think of networking from a different perspective. It will give scope to the students to think out of the box and know that networking is not necessarily only about dealing with and implementing a predefined set of protocols.
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