Why Upgrade Campus & Branch Switching & Wireless Infrastructure?

Many of the existing switch and wireless infrastructures that were deployed 5 or more years ago were not designed for BYOD, pervasive mobility, advanced security, SDN and more. Let us look at these trends and the benefits of upgrading the network infrastructure to the latest switching and wireless products.

BYOD and Mobility

There are multiple dimensions in which BYOD and mobility are pressuring the existing network.  An average user now has 3x more devices. A company of 1,000 users seems like a company of 3,000 users. And, Internet of Things devices like sensors, CCTVs, and building automation are being connected to the network. Yesterday’s network cannot sustainably handle the exponential growth of these devices and applications.  Upgrade to the latest switches and wireless infrastructure will give you more performance in terms of higher switching capacity, converged wired-wireless access & more processing power to handle the growth of devices/apps. The benefits are network can scale easily to support the influx of mobile & connected devices and their applications and your users get the same excellent experience whether wired or mobile.

BYOD and mobility are also changing the way corporate resources are accessed. Previously, employees were the only users on corporate networks connecting using corporate devices. Now, employees, partners and customers share corporate networks, connect with their own mobile devices that have corporate as well as personal applications.  Many are mobile and access from corporate, public, and home networks. Allowing this type of access is difficult, error prone & sometimes impractical with existing network. The upgrade gives you context aware access by which you can manage all types of access securely & intelligently with a single policy engine.  You can stay compliant to regulations with in-built encryption, know which applications are running on the network and detect and protect against network abuse.

Emergence of 802.11ac (Gigabit Wireless)

802.11ac (also called Gigabit Wireless) is a new wireless technology for mobile devices.  Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One support 802.11ac today; in 2014, most of the mobile devices will support 802.11ac. With this technology, mobile devices create 3x more bandwidth demand than before on campus & branch infrastructure. Current wired and wireless networks would get saturated soon as traffic is forecasted to triple over next five years.  Upgrade enables you to roll out Gigabit Wireless network with 802.11ac AP’s (that also work with older clients),  access switches with higher 10G density & scale and backbone switches with 10/40/100G capacity.

Pervasive Mobility with Superior User Experience

If you are planning to deploy more wireless access points to increase reach and density for superior user experience or planning to roll out location-based services (which require 1 AP per 1,000 sq. ft. for location accuracy), then you need higher PoE/PoE+ density access switches. Upgrade gives you higher PoE+/UPOE density & advanced RF Excellence features like CleanAir for RF interference management and ClientLink for improved coverage and performance. Your users enjoy superior app experience and you can enable location services for new business opportunities.

Need for Simplification:

All the things we talked about result in increased management and operational complexity. There is a need to resolve inconsistencies between wired and wireless infrastructure in order to deliver operational simplicity, business agility and better user experience. There is a need to automate operations and explore programmability. Upgrade helps reduce management complexity with converged wired & wireless access. Upgrade also provides automation functionality and support for Software Defined Networks (SDN) to drive simplicity, business agility and lower TCO.

Trends are happening now, faster with higher stakes at hand

BYOD, 802.11ac, security and regulatory compliance needs are here today. Many companies are already riding these trends. The stakes are high for businesses to ignore these rapidly changing technology trends.  It takes time to roll out new capabilities. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Upgrade your access switches to Catalyst 3850/3650/4500E Supervisor 8-E and your backbone switches to Catalyst 6800 together with Cisco ISE and Prime, today!