In this installment of the "We're Listening" blog series, Sheila Jordan discusses how our technical investments make a difference in your cisco.com experience.  Sheila is Cisco's Senior Vice President of IT Communication and Collaboration.

 By Guest Contributor Sheila Jordan
 
"That was faster than I expected." How often has this popped into your mind during an online session? Probably not often enough, and the bad experiences tend to stick.

We heard your message: Make sure online applications are "always on" and run faster. To do that, we've invested in the technological muscle to respond, notably the Cisco Metro Virtual Data Center (MVDC). Here's a quick look under the hood.

The Virtual Powerhouse

Simply put, the MVDC pairs two physical data centers, located within 50 optical miles, into a single virtual powerhouse. Dual synchronicity assures automatic recovery -even if an entire data center is lost -and safeguards uptime.

Since mid-2012 the MVDC has enabled Cisco to respond to you on several fronts, including -

• Downloads: Cisco moved from central servers to globally distributed, cloud-enabled software delivery. This change helped boost download speed worldwide by four times (for example, averagetime savedis about 75% in India, 90% in the U.K.).
• Cisco.com Availability: In 2013 alone, Cisco.com application outages have decreased by close to 50%. Because MVDC downtime is near zero, "always on" is now an achievable goal.
• Business-Critical Services: Service ordering, case creation, and tracking are now more accessible and quicker because the MVDC assures operational continuity.

As a Cisco.com user, you can expect MVDC capabilities to simplify your life online in other noticeable ways.  Stay tuned...

Have questions or feedback? Please email us at [email protected].