As I author this, I am in my hotel room in Chicago and its Thursday evening. Ourcore Cisco Big Data team has been here for the past two days focused on planning our worldwide 2017 activities. One thing that is stuck in my mind now after our meetings is the phrase "Infrastructure is Cool!"-it's a phrase that was repeated often during our meetings where we discussed Cisco; our Data Center solutions for Big Data leveraging products such as UCS, Nexus, and Cisco Management software; and our customers Data and Analytic needs.

Cisco is a proven and recognizedleaderin Big Data infrastructure solutions. Offering customers broad choices for their Hadoop environments covering Cloudera, Hortonworks, IBM, and MapR. We extend as well into the world of Analytics with solutions from Splunk, SAP, and SAS.  All of theseofferingsare applicable to your Red Hat ecosystem, too.

Our "cool"factor is apparent in many areas... First,performance and speed. Here Cisco has led the way inBig Data benchmarks. We are#1 in several TPC-H benchmark areas.  Second,ROI and TCO,helping to make the most of your budgets. Our UCS platform is a proven contributor to positive ROI and TCO measurements. The Analyst firm IDC reports on UCShere. Third,productivity, people working faster and smarter. Our Big Data solutions, as recognized by many customers, drive increased productivity -be it for the I.T. staff (300% improvement in cases) or Data Scientists (30% improvement). Read Forrester's report onCisco and UCS.

Next week we will be at the Red Hat Summit in San Francisco. Cisco's technologies and solutions will be there, including Big Data & Analytics. As is typically the case at trade shows, our Cisco booth at will be active with theatre presentations running throughout the show and cool prizes available to win. So, stop on my booth#401 to learn and maybe win something, too!

From a speaking session point of view check out Cisco's Duane DeCapite's session onHot Topics in Containers, OpenStack, and Hadoop:

• Date:Tuesday, June 28th
• Time:10:15am-11:15am
• Location:Moscone Center West, Level 2 | Room| Room #2009
• Abstract:Containers, OpenStack, and Hadoop are three of the most talked-about topics in the industry today. This session will highlight some of the hot topics related to the convergence of containers and OpenStack, including projects Magnum, Kolla, and Calico. Join us and learn about new communities and products, including Open Container Initiative (OCI), Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), Cisco NFVI, and Mantl / Shipped. This session will also feature a deep dive on how Hadoop can be deployed on OpenStack with the Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) Cisco Validated Design (CVD).

To learn more about Cisco's Data and Analytics solutions for the Data Center, please visit ushere.