Over the past few months I have been blogging about Cisco UCS in the context of various trends in the IT industry.

1. Cisco UCS in an industrialized world
2. Cisco UCS in a world with lotsa data
3. Cisco UCS in the world of open source computing
4. Cisco UCS in a world with windows
5. Cisco UCS in a converged world
6. Cisco UCS is a cloudy world
7. Cisco UCS in a social world
8. Cisco UCS in a mobile world

One thing is clear -IT world is changing and at a pace much faster than we have ever known.  It seems appropriate to culminate the series in the world of applications.  All entities, big and small ultimately want their data center infrastructure to run applications.  They could be collaboration applications for internal use or with partners.  The applications could be developed in house or could be commercial off the shelf (COTS). Some of the applications can provide the firm a competitive edge in the market -think recommendation engine used by Amazon.  At the end of the day the application is providing a valuable service.  With the advent of the Internet of Everything (IOE), there are many sources of data and connections that applications have to consider while delivering the service.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJSjbttGaVM

Imagine the Amazon recommendation engine taking into account your location and the temperature from a gauge near you.  Assuming that application services are delivered from a data center, the application must also be cognizant of the different access mechanisms, desktop computers, laptop computers, tablets and mobile phones. The rate of change in these new technologies is brisk.  As these rapid changes take place, Cisco offers Application centric infrastructure to ease the transitions.  Read Cisco CTO, Padmasree Warrior's blog on this.

Cisco UCS with SingleConnect technology provides the compute platform for Application Centric Infrastructure. We plan on bringing you a series of events around Cisco UCS Management to leverage the intelligence in the network fabric to meet the demands of today's dynamic applications.. These events could take the form of user community meetings, virtual community meetings or trade shows and roadshows. These events will show you how UCS Management lets you accomplish data center infrastructure initiatives and application initiatives.  It could be basic server management to disaster recovery, for infrastructure initiatives. It can range from UCS management for a simple web server application to UCS management for a complex mission critical SAP deployment.  Let us know what is top on your mind and we will help in any way we can.

We started with a google hangout introducing the Cisco UCS Management portfolio including the UCS Manager, UCS Central and UCS Director.  On Sept 5 at 8 AM Pacific we will air a hangout on tips and tricks for managing UCS Infrastructure with Microsoft PowerShell.  If you have an installation of Microsoft tools and applications in your data center you do not want to miss this.