Cisco has announced the release of Cisco Borderless Access. Part of the company’s Borderless Networks architecture, these products and services aim to enable seamless and secure wired-wireless communications, sophisticated businesswide energy management, and the optimized delivery of video applications.
Read more ChannelPro-SMB coverage of the announcement here.
As part of the Borderless Networks architecture, Cisco is introducing a new series of fixed-switching product lines, called the Cisco Catalyst 3560/3750-X Series and 2960-S Series. This suite of products is offered alongside services, flexible pricing options, and lifetime warranties that should attract SMB clients. In addition to its switching lines, Cisco announced new routing innovation in the areas of advanced security and performance.
The announcement builds on the Cisco Borderless Networks vision, which was introduced in October 2009, and the Cisco Secure Borderless Networks that was launched earlier this month. The Cisco Borderless Networks architecture is designed to enable businesses to connect anyone to anything, anywhere, and anytime in a highly secure, reliable, and seamless environment.
Cisco delivers this architecture through video, energy management, and secure networking services that are embedded across its routing, switching, wireless, and security platforms to form a comprehensive borderless networking solution. Some of those networking services include:
- EnergyWise–Cisco EnergyWise harnesses network intelligence to help customers proactively control energy consumption and lower operating costs and carbon footprint. Cisco has announced a forthcoming release of this technology that features Cisco EnergyWise Orchestrator, which extends power management to PCs and laptops in addition to Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices. The company has also released EnergyWise SDK, available through the Cisco Developer Network, which enables third-party developers to implement EnergyWise support in their products.
- Cisco TrustSec–Cisco TrustSec is a security solution that enables customers to deploy security policies across all access technologies, whether wired, wireless, or virtual private networks. It combines identity and policy to help protect both customer and employee transactions anywhere on the network, and it helps ensure users are authenticated and given access to network services based on identity. Cisco announced today that Cisco TrustSec is now available on the Catalyst 3560/3750 product portfolio.
- Medianet–This technology enables the detection and optimization of video and video endpoints as well as the allocation and prioritization of network resources. With its prioritization features, Medianet also enables video to be delivered from one type of device, such as a Cisco TelePresence unit, to another type, such as a laptop or mobile phone. Medianet 1.0 is now supported on the new Catalyst fixed switches and Cisco ISR G2 routers.
The new fixed-switching products provide SMBs with a number of infrastructure enhancements. Here are a few of the product highlights:
- Cisco Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X–The flagship of the Cisco fixed-switching portfolio, these enterprise-class stackable and standalone switches deliver high-performance switching with 10 gigabit Ethernet, full PoE on all ports and a flexible smart uplink module. In addition to StackWise Plus, which provides high availability to the data path, Cisco has now introduced Cisco StackPower , an industry-first, power-interconnect technology that brings power resiliency to a stack of Catalyst 3750-X Series switches The Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Series switches also ship with Cisco Smart Operations a set of tools and capabilities allowing for zero-touch deployment and installation in a borderless network.
- Cisco Catalyst 2960-S–With solutions packaged and priced to meet SMB scalability, resilience, and security needs, the Catalyst 2960-S delivers FlexStack stacking for increased availability and performance, 10GE uplinks, full PoE on every port plus support for PoE, and the full Cisco EnergyWise capabilities. Additionally, the 2960-S platform has been highly optimized, resulting in as much as 50 percent savings in power
New routing product highlights include:
- Cisco Integrated Services Router G2 3900 E-Series–Introduced in October 2009, the Cisco ISR G2 is designed to better enable rich-media applications, service virtualization, and energy efficiency, all with industry-leading security. Now, Cisco has announced that it has tripled the performance of the ISR G2 router line and extended the delivery of high-performance video applications, service integration and cost savings to remote businesses.
- Cisco ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers Software Release 6–Building on the award-winning capabilities of the quantum-flow ASIC, the latest release for the ASR-1000 family of routers delivers new security, unified communications, and management capabilities to enable customers to deliver borderless services over the WAN. Additionally, the ASR 1000 Series now includes the Smart Call Home feature, which increases platform reliability.
