What if you could increase your cloud knowledge-in a substantial way-without having to lift a finger? No downloading whitepapers, no registering for webinars, no traveling to distant conferences, no scouring the Internet for relevant articles.

It would be cool, wouldn't it?

Well, I'm here to tell you that the dream is real. Starting today, Cisco is launching a new podcast series called Cloud Unfiltered. Hosted by Cloud Evangelist Niki Acosta and Software Solutions Architect Vallard Benincosa, it will be a series of interviews with the people that are working to move cloud technology and implementation forward. This includes everyone from engineers and open source project leads to IT executives, industry analysts, and cloud users. In these interviews we'll talk about different cloud architectures, management models, and deployment strategies. We'll discuss platform compatibility, the culture changes required for cloud success, and the complimentary technologies (open source and otherwise) that are making cloud more powerful with each passing day.

And all you have to do is sit back and listen. You can stream it during your commute, during your workout, while you walk the dog-whenever. You can subscribe to the RSS feed here. And you can also find it on SoundCloud, iTunes, and YouTube any time you like.

Will we interview people from Cisco? Of course. But we'll be talking to just as many from outside our company as well. Case in point: Our very first guest, Rikki Endsley. She's an editor at opensource.com, the driving force behind the Open Source Yearbook, and a Red Hat employee. She shared all sorts of interesting insights with us about who can publish what on opensource.com, why she created the open source yearbook, how she got into tech, and what she does to stay relevant in a constantly changing, hyper-competitive industry.

You can see our interview with Rikki on YouTube by clicking here, you can hear it on SoundCloud by clicking here, or if you haven't done enough reading for the day, you can settle down with a full transcript of the discussion by clicking here.

Thank you so much. We hope you enjoy the podcast.