There’s no doubt Cisco’s Unified Computing System has achieved significant momentum since its introduction just over three years ago. One of the key contributing factors to our growth has been the strength of our open partner ecosystem strategy. While many of our data center competitors have chosen to build rigid vertical stacks, Cisco has embraced a broad ecosystem of partners—and as a result provided unparalleled flexibility for customers to choose from best-of-breed storage, hypervisor and application vendors.
Today, we’re further expanding our unified data center ecosystem by deepening our winning partnership with NetApp. Cisco and NetApp have been partners for more than a decade and over the past two years our alliance has flourished with the introduction of the FlexPod converged infrastructure solution. In fact, Cisco and NetApp now boast more than 2,100 FlexPod customers, with deployments in 35 countries and supported by more than 700 joint channel partners.
Building on that vote of confidence from our customers and partners, we are expanding our partnership to deliver deeper integrated solutions for a range of use cases ranging from data center to branch to service providers. Specifically we’ll collaborate in the following four areas:
Deeper technology integration across the FlexPod architecture
A new FlexPod solution for cloud-scale service providers
Extending ExpressPod into the branch office
Expanded FlexPod application validation
I invite you to learn more about today’s announcement and share your thoughts on our expanded partnership with NetApp.
Today, I am pleased to announce Cisco’s intent to acquire Intucell, a privately held company headquartered in Ra’anana, Israel for $475 million in cash and employee retention incentives. Intucell provides software platforms for Self-Optimized Network (SON) that support mobile carrier networks worldwide.
This acquisition will allow Cisco to extend network intelligence and tightly align different software elements across our product portfolio. It also reinforces our commitment to service provider customers and strengthens our expertise in mobility. In addition, the acquisition of Intucell furthers our long-standing commitment to cutting-edge innovation based in Israel.
The proliferation of connected mobile devices, faster network speeds, and growing demand for high-bandwidth applications and services are driving greater network traffic and complexity. As mobile service providers continue to face increased end-user demand, the need to dynamically manage network bandwidth, usage and services is increasing. Intucell’s SON software platform addresses these challenges by examining the network, identifying issues, and intelligently managing network traffic in real time. This capability brings enormous value to service providers and their customers.
The Intucell team’s deep expertise in software, radio management and optimization technologies have made it a global leader in solving some of the most complex challenges faced by mobile service providers.
Intucell’s product portfolio will be integrated into our Service Provider Mobility Group. The team will report into the Software and Applications Group led by Shailesh Shukla.
Being recognized by Corporate Knights as a company that takes sustainability very seriously is a nice reflection of the values that our 66,000 global employees hold. We certainly want to be a successful company and a measure of that success includes operating in a sustainable and responsible manner. Cisco strongly believes in creating shared value for the communities in which we operate as well as our business.
Tae Yoo, Cisco’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs commented, “We are very proud of our inclusion on the Global 100 list. Cisco is deeply committed to corporate social responsibility and utilizing the power of people and technology networks to multiply our impact on society, the environment and our business.”
Commenting on this year’s Global 100, Toby Heaps, Corporate Knights CEO, remarked, “the Global 100 are leading a resource productivity revolution, transforming waste into treasure and doing more with less. They are steering our civilization away from ecological overshoot and back to a place of balance with our planet.”
The visibility and importance of service provider WiFi solutions have grown tremendously in the last year or so, based on a growing realization of the benefits. And it’s not just for offload. WiFi is a valuable tool in helping operators optimize their networks, monetize various applications, and handle the explosion in devices people use to connect to the Internet.
Cisco has been a mover and leader in the WiFi arena, and two recent customer deployments – Virgin Media in the UK and PT Telekom in Indonesia – further underscore the momentum.
Cisco and Virgin Media have collaborated on a Wi-Fi network that would bring mobile broadband to passengers of the London Underground subway system. Working with Transport for London, the transportation authority for all London mass transit systems, Cisco and Virgin Media designed and built a Wi-Fi network that would not only bring a reliable broadband signal to London Underground’s stations, but would be robust and durable enough to withstand the less-than-ideal environment under the streets of London. Read More »
The Cisco Aironet 3600 features the Highest 802.11n performance with Cisco CleanAir™ technology and is the industry’s first 4 x 4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) access point with three spatial streams. It has add-on options for 802.11ac or Wireless Security and Spectrum Intelligence (WSSI) Module and standard 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) .
All right. Who is still awake? Show of hands?
One of the challenging things about working for a technology company is avoiding getting lost in the details. There’s a time and place for technical specifications, to be sure. But I believe that most people really want to know “How will all this technology make my life better?”.
