Cisco Tech Stories - ep 21 - It's a Hard NOC Life

This is a special episode recorded live at Cisco Live EMEA Amsterdam with the NOC team digging into how they deploy a network in a matter of days.

SMB is an entirely partner-driven channel, and yet so many manufacturers miss the mark when it comes to scaling through their partners. Marketing has evolved, yet strategies have not. How do we ensure our partners are getting the right content and resources to effectively create awareness and demand? To answer this question, and dig into trends shaping channel marketing, Ian is joined by Alex Whitford and Efe Senel from Channext who also cohost the Partnerships Unrivaled Podcast. Learn more about Cisco's marketing solutions for partners to market to SMB customers: https://ebooks.cisco.com/story/cisco-smb-partner-campaign-kit/ Check out Channext here: https://channext.com/partners

Go under the hood of recent service disruptions at X, Workday, and Mastercard—and explore why it’s so important to quickly (and accurately) identify the root cause of an outage. ——— CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro 00:59 X Outage 07:08 Workday Outage 11:00 Mastercard Service Disruption 14:48 By the Numbers 16:05 Get in Touch ——— For additional insights, check out The Internet Report’s latest blog: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-service-disruptions-x-workday-mastercard?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q3_internetreport_q3fy25ep4_podcast And to learn more about how to deliver seamless digital experiences in a distributed IT landscape, read this eBook: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/guide-to-next-generation-assurance-ebook?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q3_internetreport_q3fy25ep4_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X. ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report

I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that AI has been steadily changing the world, but did you know that optics is a key part of its hardware infrastructure? To explain it, fortunately we have a seasoned product manager who knows both the switching side and the optics side. Lucky for us, he sits next to me at the office and agreed to chat about it. In Episode 61, we continue our conversation with Paymon Mogharabi, Senior Product Manager at Cisco’s Optics team, also known as the Transceiver Modules Group. We go into more detail about AI datacenter hardware architectures and Ethernet. Paymon Mogharabi is a networking industry and Cisco veteran of nearly three decades with Electrical Engineering degrees from UC Irvine and USC. After starting at Cisco as a Technical Assistance Center engineer, he became a Technical marketing Engineer for Cisco's Catalyst switches. He then took product management positions for Cisco's Edge Services Router, Nexus data center switches, and UCS server products. He is now a Senior Product Manager in Cisco's Transceiver Modules Group and has sat next to me for the past 7 years, focusing on data center applications. Related links Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/ Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/ Additional resources Cisco Optics Podcast: https://optics.podcastpage.io/ Blog: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com

Dive into the recent Slack outage and disruptions at Microsoft 365, Grafana Cloud, and Otter.ai—plus, explore key takeaways for ITOps teams. ——— CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro 00:48 Slack Outage 06:55 Microsoft 365 Outage 11:44 A Pair of Otter.ai Outages 14:21 Grafana Cloud Disruption 15:55 By the Numbers 17:58 Get in Touch ——— To learn more about how to deliver seamless digital experiences in a distributed IT landscape, read this eBook: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/guide-to-next-generation-assurance-ebook?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q3_internetreport_q3fy25ep3_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X. ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report

AB sits down for a fun, informative, in-person chat with Kelly Jones, Cisco’s Chief People Officer, to discuss a variety of topics ranging from empathetic leadership to wellbeing in the workplace to future trends that could transform the HR landscape in 2025.

In this episode, we interview Jonathan Slenders, lead python developer at Cisco who takes us on adventure along his automation tools developped before and during his Cisco tenure. We discuss how terrible networking engineers are at coding and how we can reconcile both worlds.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that AI has been steadily changing the world, but did you know that optics is a key part of its hardware infrastructure? To explain it, fortunately we have a seasoned product manager who knows both the switching side and the optics side. Lucky for us, he sits next to me at the office and agreed to chat about it. In Episode 60, we continue our conversation with Paymon Mogharabi, Senior Product Manager at Cisco’s Optics team, also known as the Transceiver Modules Group. We get into data center hardware architectures and traffic patterns for AI applications. Paymon Mogharabi is a networking industry and Cisco veteran of nearly three decades with Electrical Engineering degrees from UC Irvine and USC. After starting at Cisco as a Technical Assistance Center engineer, he became a Technical marketing Engineer for Cisco's Catalyst switches. He then took product management positions for Cisco's Edge Services Router, Nexus data center switches, and UCS server products. He is now a Senior Product Manager in Cisco's Transceiver Modules Group and has sat next to me for the past 7 years, focusing on data center applications. Related links Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/ Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/ Additional resources Cisco Optics Podcast: https://optics.podcastpage.io/ Blog: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com

I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that AI has been steadily changing the world, but did you know that optics is a key part of its hardware infrastructure? To explain it, fortunately we have a seasoned product manager who knows both the switching side and the optics side. Lucky for us, he sits next to me at the office and agreed to chat about it. In Episode 59, we begin a new conversation with Paymon Mogharabi, Senior Product Manager at Cisco’s Optics team, also known as the Transceiver Modules Group. We begin with his start in Cisco and the history of data center hardware architectures. Paymon Mogharabi is a networking industry and Cisco veteran of nearly three decades with Electrical Engineering degrees from UC Irvine and USC. After starting at Cisco as a Technical Assistance Center engineer, he became a Technical marketing Engineer for Cisco's Catalyst switches. He then took product management positions for Cisco's Edge Services Router, Nexus data center switches, and UCS server products. He is now a Senior Product Manager in Cisco's Transceiver Modules Group and has sat next to me for the past 7 years, focusing on data center applications. Related links Cisco Optics-to-Device Compatibility Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/ Cisco Optics-to-Optics Interoperability Matrix: https://tmgmatrix.cisco.com/iop Cisco Optics Product Information: https://copi.cisco.com/ Additional resources Cisco Optics Podcast: https://optics.podcastpage.io/ Blog: https://blogs.cisco.com/tag/ciscoopticsblog Cisco Optics YouTube playlist: http://cs.co/9008BlQen Cisco Optics landing page: cisco.com/go/optics Music credits Sunny Morning by FSM Team | https://www.free-stock-music.com/artist.fsm-team.html Upbeat by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com

Outages connected to configuration mishaps were a common theme last year, and we’ve continued to see incidents like these in 2025. Configuration changes triggered two consecutive Asana outages in early February, and configuration or update-related issues may also have contributed to recent disruptions at Barclays, ChatGPT, Jira, and Discord. Tune in to hear The Internet Report’s Mike Hicks unpack these incidents and discuss ways ITOps teams can guard against similar issues. ——— CHAPTERS: 00:00 Intro 01:06 Asana Outages 11:40 ChatGPT Disruption 19:34 Barclays Outage 21:57 Jira Outage 22:59 Discord Outage 24:31 By the Numbers 30:15 Get in Touch ——— For additional insights, check out The Internet Report’s latest blog: https://www.thousandeyes.com/blog/internet-report-configuration-mishaps-asana-outages?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q3_internetreport_q3fy25ep2_podcast And to learn more about how to deliver seamless digital experiences in a distributed IT landscape, read this eBook: https://www.thousandeyes.com/resources/guide-to-next-generation-assurance-ebook?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=fy25q3_internetreport_q3fy25ep2_podcast ——— Want to get in touch? If you have questions, feedback, or guests you would like to see featured on the show, send us a note at [email protected]. Or follow us on LinkedIn or X. ——— ABOUT THE INTERNET REPORT This is The Internet Report, a podcast uncovering what’s working and what’s breaking on the Internet—and why. Tune in to hear ThousandEyes’ Internet experts dig into some of the most interesting outage events from the past couple weeks, discussing what went awry—was it the Internet, or an application issue? Plus, learn about the latest trends in ISP outages, cloud network outages, collaboration network outages, and more. Catch all the episodes on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform: - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-report/id1506984526 - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5ADFvqAtgsbYwk4JiZFqHQ?si=00e9c4b53aff4d08&nd=1&dlsi=eab65c9ea39d4773 - SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/ciscopodcastnetwork/sets/the-internet-report