Cisco Refreshes Its Enterprise Networking Franchise to Empower Business and IT Innovation

Cisco Live!, ORLANDO, Fla. – June 24, 2013 – As cloud and mobile trends continue to heighten the demand for more sophisticated applications and services, Cisco is evolving its networking portfolio to provide greater network intelligence, performance and simplicity that will accelerate application and service innovation while lowering IT total cost of ownership.

Today the company took another significant step in the evolution of its networking portfolio, introducing new and updated Cisco Catalyst® switching and Integrated Services Router products that provide high-performing, fully programmable enterprise networking solutions. The products are part of the new Cisco® Enterprise Networks Architecture, which enables applications to get the networking information they need to offer more innovative services to end users with less hands-on administration from IT professionals.

The architecture expands the scope of Cisco’s Open Network Environment (ONE), a portfoliowide strategy that applies software programmability to ASICs, operating systems, networking functions, and services across the data center, WAN and LAN. Cisco is updating its entire service provider and enterprise networking portfolio to become open and programmable, and today’s news addresses the campus and branch portion of that transition.

The Enterprise Network Architecture positions Cisco’s enormous routing and switching franchise and much of the company’s customer base for the future of networking – a future that features increasing synergy between applications and network services software, and hardware networking functions. It helps prepare Cisco’s customers to capture the vision of the Internet of Everything, providing the network infrastructure for an ever-diversifying set of applications that run businesses and people’s lives.

The new and updated products include new platforms for the campus and the branch portions of corporate networks. For example, theCisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches are the highest-performing Catalyst® switches to date, and are built for campus backbone 10/40/100 Gbps services. They feature network programmability and investment protection through compatibility with the widely deployed Catalyst 6500 Series Switches. For branch deployments, Cisco is growing the most widely deployed routing family on the planet with the new Cisco ISR 4451-AX, the most significant performance breakthrough with service availability in integrated branch services since the introduction of the Cisco ISR in 2004.

With these innovations, Cisco is helping IT organizations make an impact on the business by quickly enabling new business models and accelerating service deployment. Cisco is also helping IT organizations better take advantage of technology transitions like mobility, cloud and the Internet of Things, while accelerating the rollout of applications by providing a services-rich, open and programmable architecture.

Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture

Cisco ONE is Cisco’s portfolio that addresses SDN and, more broadly, incorporates programmability across the network infrastructure to enable innovation, investment protection and lower operating expenses. Within the enterprise, the Cisco ONE Enterprise Network Architecture brings openness and programmability to the campus and branch, making them more agile, high-performance, and application-savvy, all while adding value to existing network resources.

A key element of the Cisco ONE strategy is the onePK API toolkit, which allows developers to create networking applications that help business applications. Cisco will support onePK across its entire enterprise routing and switching portfolio within the next 12 months, beginning with the ISR 4451-AX and ASR 1000-AX routers announced today, which will support onePK in Q1 CY14.

This open API combined with the control services layer, allow application developers to view the network as a single entity, so they can write applications once and run them across multiple network environments whether wired or wireless, with consistent application performance. This means a consistent and innovative user experience, positioning organizations to more quickly capture new business opportunities.

Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture is a foundational element in enabling the “Internet of Everything,”intelligently connecting people, clouds and things. It ultimately allows organizations to introduce user services that are enabled by network wide visibility, intelligence and scale.

Cisco Enterprise Networks campus and branch innovations include the following:

• Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL modular switch for the next-generation campus backbone, optimized for 10/40/100 Gbps, sharing the DNA of the Catalyst 6500 for investment protection and operational consistency. The Catalyst 6807-XL is a 7-slot, 10-rack-unit modular chassis with up to 880 Gbps per slot capacity and 11.4TB per port switching capacity.
• Cisco Catalyst 6880-X semi-fixed switch enhances Cisco’s midmarket portfolio with 10 Gbps advanced services for smaller and mid-size campus deployments. The Catalyst 6880-X is a 3-slot, 4RU switch with 16 fixed 10 Gbps port Supervisor engine and four half slots for optional 10 Gbps or 40 Gbps line cards, supporting up to eighty 10 Gbps ports or twenty 40 Gbps ports.
• Cisco Catalyst 6800ia Instant Access switch provides programmable, one-touch deployments for simplified Catalyst 6000 campus operations. The Cisco Catalyst 6800ia simplifies campus network IT by virtually consolidating access switches across multiple locations into one extended switch, and includes all the feature richness of the Catalyst 6800 and 6500 switches for access networks.
• Cisco 4500E Supervisor Engine 8E brings Cisco Unified Access™ to the most widely deployed modular access switch, allowing customers to preserve their wired infrastructure investments by extending common features, resiliency and granular QoS to wireless. The fully programmable Cisco UADP ASIC, introduced in January with the Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch, will be featured in the new Cisco Catalyst 4500E Supervisor Engine 8E, extending wired and wireless convergence to chassis-based switches.
• Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) 4451-AX addresses the needs of the largest, most demanding branch offices, extending the branch router portfolio up to 2 gigabit forward performance with native services and pay-as-you-grow purchase model. ISR 4451-AX enables IT professionals to deploy application services in minutes and includes native WAN optimization with a services aware data plane for LAN-like experience at the branch.
• Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000-AX provides application services for WAN aggregation by integrating Application Visibility and Control and AppNav with Virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS) into the most popular customer configurations.

Product Availability

The Cisco ISR 4451-AX is available now; the ASR 1000-AX and 4500E Supervisor Engine 8E are scheduled to be available in July; and the Catalyst 6800 Switch Series are scheduled to be available in November 2013.

Supporting Quotes

“The network is more important than ever before in enabling the user experience in today’s applications.  Network intelligence, simplicity and innovation will be the key factor in unlocking new business opportunities and competitive differentiation for our customers.”  said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “Today’s launch of the Catalyst 6800, Catalyst 4500 Supervisor 8E, ISR 4451-AX and ASR1000-AX demonstrate how Cisco’s Enterprise Network Architecture is delivering against these promises.”

“Regardless of your organization size, as an organization leader, you must align your network strategy with your top business initiatives so that poor technology planning doesn’t delay project execution,” said industry analyst Nick Lippis, President & CEO, Lippis Enterprises, Inc. “The most successful IT and business professionals are those who acknowledge that fast decision-making within the enterprise is directly tied to the readiness of the network. Cisco’s announcements today will help IT leaders ensure that their network is ready for whatever their business needs from them.”

Supporting Resources

• Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture
• Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches
• Cisco Catalyst Instant Access
• Cisco 4500E Supervisor Engine 8-E
• Cisco ISR 4451-AX Router
• Cisco ASR 1000-AX Router
•  Read more on the Cisco Global IT Impact Survey
• Follow Cisco Enterprise and Cisco_Mobility on Twitter
• Cisco’s view of the “Internet of Everything”
• Cisco Identity Services Engine
• Cisco Prime Infrastructure

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About Cisco 
Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO, news, filings) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. For ongoing news, please go to http://thenetwork.cisco.com.

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