Earlier this month, London played host to Cisco Live EMEAR where a key announcement was made from our switching team crossing data center, campus and service provider. Cisco’s latest switching innovations are aimed at enabling our customers to address the megatrends of video, virtualisation, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and cloud, by delivering on their scale, services, and reduced total cost of ownership requirements.
With Cisco’s Cloud Index indicating that more than 50 percent of computing workloads in data centers will be cloud-based by 2014, and global cloud traffic will grow more than 12 times by 2015, to 1.6 zettabytes per year, this is clearly a trend that cannot be ignored and one that customers are often asking for support on.
To address the scale needs, Cisco announced it has updated its switching portfolio with 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) and 40 GE capabilities, the next speed limits for networking. In doing this, Cisco has just become the most extensive provider of 1/10/40/100 Gigabit Ethernet and converged networking switching solutions.
According to Rob Soderbery, senior vice president for Cisco’s Enterprise Networking Group, “A strong network foundation is central to today’s evolving corporate IT strategies, and this period of rapid change is an exciting time to be in the enterprise network and data center switching business. Today’s industry-leading performance and services innovations demonstrate Cisco’s leadership, as we transition our customers to cloud, video, mobility, big data and virtualized infrastructures.”
Last summer, we had discussions with a number of you around the latest supervisor for the Catalyst 6500 switching line. With this latest news, Cisco is continuing to deliver investment protection to its customers by adding 40 GE performance options to its Catalyst 6500 switching line, and 40 GE and 100 GE capabilities in its Nexus 7000 portfolio for interconnecting data centers to service providers. To expand its campus aggregation and data center top of rack switching, Cisco also announced two new fixed-configuration platforms that provide high-density 10 GE switching.
Making it easy to enable new services, Cisco announced simpler network virtualization functionality for its Catalyst 6500, 4500 and Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 product lines with a new technology called Easy Virtual Network, as well as scalable virtual services with a new Nexus 1010-X appliance for the data center.
So, what do Cisco’s customers think? According to Jeroen van Ingen of the University of Twente, “We like the Catalyst 6500 platform because it’s a true workhorse with a wide range of features. With a tight budget and little advance notice of new requirements from our researchers or our administration, we prefer a flexible solution to increase performance. The new 40 Gigabit module for the Catalyst 6500 with Sup 2T supports both 10 Gigabit and 40 Gigabit Ethernet and provides a seamless upgrade from 10 Gigabit today to future 40 Gigabit to meet the growing bandwidth demands, without any network disruption and forklift infrastructure change – true to the investment protection capability 6500 is so well known for.”
Together, all of these enhancements will help businesses scale their networks, simplify operations, and continue to derive value from their existing Cisco switching investments – many of which have been deployed for a decade or longer. Next time you get asked about TCO, consider how many vendors you could say that about. At Cisco, we say that TCO is about more than cost of acquisition and this latest announcement clearly shows our on-going commitment to delivering long-term value and business benefits for our customers.
We welcome your thoughts and feedback. If you would like more detail on these announcements, additional resources are available below:
This is a day-long seminar inviting customers and potential customers to find out about and discuss the technical specifics, capabilities, and applications of Cisco’s entire switching portfolio. The seminars are being held all over the US from the end of October and through the beginning of December. Here’s a little video I put together from the day and some notes on interesting things I saw. [Sorry for the shaky video!]
As Mark Twain supposedly wrote, ‘rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated’ – a phrase that certainly rings true for Cisco’s Catalyst 6500.
With a raft of new innovations recently announced at Cisco Live, competitors that were struggling to catch-up with the last iteration of this flagship switch have now seen their goalposts shift yet again.
The latest innovations provide Catalyst 6500 customers with the capability to evolve their network infrastructure for the coming decade’s proliferation of connected devices, growth of video traffic, cloud computing business models and increasingly mobile workforces—without requiring “rip and replace” upgrades.
So, once again, Cisco continues to deliver business-enhancing innovation and investment protection for its customers – and with a platform that many had wrongly assumed was dead. Amongst the enhancements announced were:
- Yet another ‘industry first’ with seamless IPv4 and IPv6 support from the switch’s hardware platform
- New network virtualisation capabilities
- A comprehensive set of L4-7 integrated services modules and new application performance and visibility monitoring through a revamped implementation of NetFlow.
The real key though is the introduction of the highly anticipated Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Supervisor Engine 2T, a 2-terabit card that unlocks 80 gigabits per second per slot, new feature-rich 10-gigabit and 10-Gigabit Ethernet line cards, and next-generation borderless services that provide customers with new mobility, security, network analysis and load balancing capabilities.
The new supervisor engine provides a threefold increase on throughput capability. It can also quadruple the number of devices or users that can connect to a network. For example, a single Catalyst 6500 can now support up to 10,000 mobile devices.
All new line cards and the 2 Tbps supervisor are compatible with all Cisco E-Series chassis models, offering minimal intervention to the existing Catalyst 6500 E-Series infrastructure. This compatibility prevents rip-and-replace upgrades that jeopardize a customer’s network uptime and require additional personnel, expenses and time.
The video below features Kumar Srikantan, Cisco’s VP of Marketing for the Scalable Networks Business Unit, as he talks about the latest updates to the Catalyst 6500, why Cisco and our customers are so excited about them and what it means for the broader industry. Enjoy!
Today, Cisco introduced the Cisco® Catalyst® 3560-C and Catalyst® 2960-C Compact Series (C-Series) switches. With these switches, Cisco continues to deliver on its commitment to innovation in its core technologies.
These C-Series switches are aimed at helping customers deliver network services in locations that pose unique wiring, space or power challenges which would otherwise require disruption of business operations.
Another industry-first: Power over Ethernet (PoE) pass-through technology
With Cisco’s industry-first Power over Ethernet (PoE) pass-through capability, the C-Series Switches eliminate the need for power outlets and dramatically reduce cabling complexities and overall infrastructure requirements. PoE pass-through technology powers IP devices in locations without access to power outlets. Cisco C-Series Switches can draw power from an upstream (PoE+/PoE-capable) switch or a router in the wiring closet, to power itself and to drive power downstream to the IP devices connected to it.
Cisco EnergyWise gives the switches the capability to monitor, manage, and reduce energy consumption of the devices connected to the switch. Devices can be turned off and powered down when they are not needed, allowing businesses to generate additional cost savings.
Other key features of the C-Series Switches include: - Simple Setup and Unified Network Management > Including Cisco Catalyst Smart Operations for “zero touch” setup and quick troubleshooting and Cisco Auto SmartPorts for automatically configuring the switch based on type of devices that connect to it.
- Unparalleled Security with Cisco Trustsec > For more info on Cisco Trustsec, please click here.
- Dramatically reduced cabling costs and flexible device placement > The C-Series Switches do not require expensive individual cable drops and can be deployed up to 100m away from the wiring closet. The flexible device placement makes them particularly suited to non-traditional networking environments and their sleek, fanless design makes them a good fit for locations including check-out kiosks in retail stores.
For full details on today’s announcement, please click here. For more information on Borderless Networks, please visit the site here.
I welcome your feedback and comments on this announcement.
Today’s Power of Participation launch delivers new innovations in Borderless Networks for video, energy management, security, and mobility.
Yes, that’s right! Cisco is introducing new products and services across all the functional elements of its Borderless Network Architecture—routing, switching, wireless, and security portfolios. Notable additions include our highest-performing Adaptive Security Appliance firewall, Catalyst switch, and compact ASR 1000 router in their classes, new entry-level 802.11n wireless access points for smaller businesses, and offerings that accelerate application performance physically and virtually across networks.
Of course, as channel partners, you may be wondering, how can you take advantage of these new offerings? Watch our video with Wenceslao Lada (VP Partner Sales and Practice Management, Borderless Networks) as he explains the news and what it means for partners.
