Cisco Systems says it has updated its Catalyst 6500 family of switches (shown above) for 40 GB Ethernet and 100 GB Ethernet. (Photo: Cisco)

At Cisco Live 2012 London Cisco Systems (CSCO) announced it has updated its switching portfolio with 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) and 40 GE capabilities, the next speed limits for networking. These new capabilities provide a holistic architectural approach across campus, data center and service provider environments.

A 40 GE option is available for the Catalyst 6500 switching line and both 40 GE and 100 GE capabilities are available for the Nexus 7000 portfolio.  Two new M2-Series modules for the Nexus 7000 are available: a 2-port, 100GbE Module delivers up to 32 100GE ports and the M2-Series 6-port 40GbE Module provides 96 non-blocking 40 GE ports.

The new Nexus 3064-X switch supports a variety of 1/10/40 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity options as a high-performance, high-density, ultra-low latency Ethernet Switch. A new Nexus 1010-X Virtual Services Appliance offers a dedicated hardware platform for scalable deployment of services critical to virtualization infrastructure.

Providing investment protection for the Catalyst 6500 Series, Cisco is also offering a new 40 Gigabit Ethernet Interface module to help customers prepare their networks for transitions to 40 GE. The Catalyst 6500 E Series chassis are now validated to support full 160 gigabits per slot throughput in active/active mode.

Aimed at space-constrained environments the new Catalyst 4500-X switch is a fixed aggregation 1 RU switch. Cisco also announced simpler network virtualization functionality for its Catalyst 6500, 4500 and Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 product line 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.

Operational Efficiencies

To compliment accelerating Catalyst and Nexus switches to 40 GE and 100 GE options Cisco introduced solutions to help simplify network virtualization and enhance network monitoring, troubleshooting, and management.   New features in Cisco NX-OS software inclue  PowerOn Auto-Provisioning and Python scripting to customize network behavior based on events as they happen, simplify configuration, and harness network intelligence. A Data Center Network Manager (DCNM) simplifies Unified Fabric management and provides a converged LAN and Storage operational dashboard, bringing visibility and advanced diagnostic capabilities into the virtualized data center or cloud.

“Network virtualization is becoming more important as enterprises seek to address security and regulatory concerns without the expense of overlay networks,” said Dominique Massoni, Network Engineering Operations Manager at EDF Group.  There are a number of available solutions, with varying degrees of scalability and complexity. We found Easy Virtual Network to be the right solution for us. It is simple, easy to replicate between sites, and is fully compatible with the solution we have been using, so we didn’t have to redo the work we’ve already done.”

There are two reasons for considering the Unified Data Center (UDC). First is the bottom line, a single approach will certainly strengthen both capital and operating expenses. Second is developing an agile, flexible network that will be serviceable well into the future to better meet business objectives.

Currently most IT professionals need to invest heavily into maintaining systems to keep them as they currently perform. However, business goals are constantly evolving and it becomes difficult dealing with silos rooted in the status quo that are inefficient, incompatible, and deliver poorly. Enter the Unified Data Center. A business/IT strategy that is built for optimal performance and growth while considering reduced business and resource costs. The ultimate goal is for the data center to grow and propel business objectives through a three prong approach; unified computing, fabric and management.

There are many integrated, converged, and smart architecture solutions on the market but the difference is that through an ecosystem of partners the Cisco Unified Data Center delivers next-generation performance and cloud flexibility through open standards and third-party applications and products. Read this brief overview to learn more on the power and promise of a unifed data center strategy or click here to watch the video.

This graphic from Cisco Systems shows the customer growth for the company's Unified Computing System servers and switches.

In two years, Cisco Systems‘ entry into the blade server arena has won it a 12.2 percent share of the x86 server market. This week Cisco (CSCO) announced that it has surpassed 10,000 customers worldwide for its Unified Computing System (UCS), which brings servers, storages and switches together in a converged data center infrastructure.

Cisco used the milestone as an opportunity to highlight its progress in the server market, where it has made inroads into the dominance of the two leaders, HP and IBM. Most of those gains appear to have come primarily at the expense of IBM, whose market share has slipped as Cisco’s has gained, according to quarterly data from IDC (see chart below).

Major Progress vs. Big Expectations

When it was introduced in 2009  by Cisco CEO John Chambers  the new UCS architecture was touted as an “inflection point” for virtualization that would transform the data center. At the time, DCK described it as “the latest step in a larger battle for the data center, with Cisco seeking to position its technology at the heart of a virtualized infrastructure doing business on the Inter-Cloud of the future.”

There’s no question that Cisco raised expectations by throwing the full weight of its considerable marketing might behind UCS. Has Cisco’s progress met those lofty expectations? Since then UCS has gained 10.8 percent in the worldwide market share of x86 blade servers and 16.9 percent in the United States, according to the IDC data. That’s a meaningful presence in a sector that is growing faster then the broader server market.

Battle for the Data Center

Ciso’s entry into the server market also shook up many of the vendor relationships within the larger data center ecosystem. HP and IBM have since taken steps to bolster their networking and converged computing offerings to provide alternatives to Cisco. The impact of Cisco’s push into blade servers will likely be best measured on a longer time frame and broader scale. But today’s announcement reinforces Cisco’s status as an increasingly important player in the server market.

The Unified Computing System brings together hardware – including the B-Series blade server and network adapters – that seamlessly connect with storage systems over a high-speed unified network fabric powered by Cisco’s Nexus family of switches, enabling virtualized assets to move seamlessly across the data center and the Internet. UCS is part of Cisco’s larger vision for the combined Unified Data Center, along with its unified fabric and unified management framework.

The UCS family portfolio has had additions made to it and a number of enhancements while it evolved and gained market share. At Cisco Live 2011 while talking about UCS updates Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior s explained that the network of the future will focus on programmability, virtualization and configuration/automation.

A Cisco graphic highlighting its market share gains in the x86 server market, where it has built the third-largest market share after HP and IBM.e

Data Center Knowledge’s John Rath contributed to this story.

Verizon nets $186 million contract with US Postal Service.  Verizon (VZ) announced that the United States Postal Service has selected Verizon as a prime contractor in the Postal Service’s Telecommunications Integrated Postal Services (TIPN) contract. The $186 million contract extends a long-standing relationship between the two orgnaizations and has Verizon continuing to plan, design, install and manage a private, converged Internet protocol communications network based on multiprotocol label switching (MPLS). “The Postal Service’s operations are among the most far-reaching and complex in the world, and Verizon is helping them keep the mailing public connected every step of the way,” said Susan Zeleniak, group president for Verizon Federal. “Whether it’s tracking Express Mail, selling stamps on usps.com or linking more than 31,000 postal facilities, we’re delivering the communications backbone that helps keep the mail on time in a modern world.” Verizon will continue to manage the Post Office network 365 days a year, from Verizon’s dedicated network operations center in Cary, North Carolina.

Cisco Videoscape products launched at CES.  Cisco (CSCO) used the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to launch new Videoscape products and to show how major service providers have selected Videoscape to deliver their next generation video services. Videoscape is Cisco’s TV platform for service providers that combines digital TV and online video content with social media and communication applications. New offerings in the product will enable “video in the cloud” services that will drive new revenue streams for providers. Built on the Unified Cloud Services platform, new Videoscape cloud components include Voyager Virtual, Cisco Conductor back-office technology, Cisco Media Processor and Transcode Manager and Videoscape Content Delivery Network (CDN) analytics. Videoscape is uniquely designed as an open software-based platform that provides a migration path to an all IP-based video infrastructure, with cloud, network and client components working together to allow video experiences to move, pause and resume across all of these devices.  ”Service providers are looking for ways to bridge the gaps to IP and cloud migration and offer consumers quality video experiences that follow them anywhere,” said Greg Ireland, research manager at IDC Consumer Video. “Cisco’s Videoscape brings an array of capabilities to the table, allowing service providers an opportunity to leverage some or all of its features to enable compelling experiences across multiple screens.” Videoscape was selected by such service providers as Rogers Communications of Canada, YES of Israel and Numericable of France.

QTS selected by cloud provider eApps.  QTS (Quality Technology Services) announced that private cloud provider eApps is expanding its presence into the QTS Richmond Data Center. Previously hosted in QTS’ Suwanee Data Center, eApps desired to add multi-data center connectivity and this led the company to select an additional QTS facility to host its growing private cloud services. ”Expanding into Richmond is a natural next step as we continue to grow our infrastructure and serve our customers,” said Richard Lingsch, president – eApps.  ”The redundancy, security, service and collaborative nature of our partnership with QTS has been an asset to our business.  We look forward to growing and deepening that relationship in this new state-of-the-art facility.” The expansion is eApps’ fourth with QTS in past 10 months.

This white paper from Cisco details the benefits of providing IT as a service (ITaaS), such as speed and agility, leveraging virtualization to enable cloud computing and unified, converged infrastructures.   It goes on to discuss the required building blocks for the cloud computing era and the need for new operating models that resemble service care provider environments rather than an enterprise.  Lastly, it offers Cisco’s solutions which all focus on transforming IT to be delivered as a service.  These services are offered as either standalone or fully integrated solution, which include Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud and Cisco Converged Infrastructure.

Learn the importance of delivering IT as a service to improve business agility.  Click here to download this whitepaper on the benefits of ITaaS and the Cisco solutions helping to standardize and automate IT environments to accelerate the change to cloud computing.

Equinix selected by inContact.  Equinix (EQIX) announced that global call center service provider inContact has chosen to expand its offering in Europe with Platform Equinix. inContact will serve its fast-growing European customer base through Equinix’s Frankfurt and Munich IBX data centers. The move follows a recently announced global distribution agreement between inContact and unified communications leader Siemens Enterprise Communications, which meant inContact needed to expand rapidly in Europe with no impact to performance. “Organisations are increasingly looking to the cloud for business-critical infrastructure platforms and software applications, and cloud-based contact center solutions are one of the fastest growing areas,” said Dick Theunissen, CMO, Equinix EMEA. “The fact that a market leader like inContact selected Equinix for such a latency-sensitive platform is testament to the high application performance and the quality of user experience that can be delivered through the Platform Equinix ecosystem in Europe.”

Cisco powers Woodstock medical-grade network.  Cisco (CSCO) announced Toronto, Ontario-based Woodstock Hospital (WH) has selected a Cisco Medical-Grade network for its new facility, providing a highly resilient, innovative and economical solution to improving health services and advancing patient care. Highlights of the WH project included 1,000 IP phones, a 802.11n wireless network to support applications and real-time Location Based Services with RFID tracking, and Cisco products such as Catalyst 6500 series switches, Virtual Switching System 1140, firewall and packet inspection modules and Cisco Aironet 1142 wireless access points. “We applaud Woodstock Hospital’s use of an advanced medical-grade network, allowing them to drive enhanced clinical workflows while delivering the right information with a high degree of security to the right people at the right time, saving time for the staff and speeding up the delivery of care for patients,” said Brantz Myers, director, Healthcare Business Development, Cisco Canada. “Working with our ecosystem partners EllisDon and FlexITy, we are bringing together building design, construction and technology to build a leading-edge facility to advance patient care.”

Jamcracker and KPN partner.  Cloud Services Brokerage company Jamcracker and Dutch IT provider KPN announced they are partnering to create a cloud services aggregator platform for enterprise customers. Delivering on the KPN services aggregator strategy, the platform encompasses Jamcracker’s cloud services brokerage platform, enabling KPN to provide value-added services for their customers. This technology and business partnership is underpinned with a strategically important contract between the two companies. ”The KPN cloud aggregation and delivery platform leverages our telecommunications and IT expertise to help us deliver on our strategy to converging information, technology and telecommunications and to optimize opportunities for our customers,” said Steven van Schilfgaarde, CEO KPN Corporate Market. “By partnering with Jamcracker, we are able to work together on this vision and utilize the JSDN to quickly deliver a platform that sets a standard among enterprises.”

The Cloud has revolutionized the internet. Now organizations of different sizes and missions can take advantage of computing power that seemed well out of reach in the not so distant past. However there are many Cloud choices such as public or private, hybrid, hosted or shared. There are also many questions around whether to customize or work from a turnkey solution and what investment strategy to consider.

With insight from a panel of industry leaders including Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior and Cloud CTO Lew Tucker this event will cover the important trends in cloud computing and new technology advancements from Cisco.

Register today to discuss how we are moving to a world of many clouds. This is a world where choice combines with intelligence in the network, power of the data center, and flexibility of applications, allowing you to customize your environment to meet your business needs.

VCE Teams with SAP.  VCE announced Monday that it has become a SAP global technology partner, through which it will cooperate with SAP AG to help customers deploy the latest virtualization and cloud technologies to simplify and automate their mission-critical applications. Running on VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms VCE will work closely with SAP to provide services and support for customer SAP applications. “SAP and VCE are working together to help our mutual customers optimize their SAP solutions on the VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform to transform business processes,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, senior vice president, Business Development and Strategic Alliances at SAP.  “This global technology partnership provides a framework for a variety of collaborative efforts designed to bring together the cloud and virtualization technologies enabled by VCE converged infrastructure with SAP software and applications to help customers be more efficient and lower costs.”

Mexico’s Alestra uses VCE Foundation.  At Cisco Live! Mexico IT and telecom company Alestra announced it will offer cloud services to Mexican customers based on VBlock Infrastructure Platforms, which integrate best-of-breed technology from Cisco, EMC and VMware into a highly automated and standardized IT infrastructure. The cloud computing capabilities will allow Alestra to expand its value-added services portfolio, to include an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) solution for virtual computing, storage  and disaster recovery capabilities through its Enterprise C-Computing service. ”Cisco has been providing technology for Alestra since its first MPLS and IP network  deployment, and now Cisco is able to support it to enhance its  portfolio with a new line of business at the same time we still supporting its network to ensure reliability, capacity, flexibility and resilience to Alestra end customers,” said Alejandro Ceballos, from Cisco Mexico. “The  VBlock platform will help Alestra accelerate its ability to realize the benefits of pervasive virtualization and private cloud infrastructure.” Alestra’s infrastructure includes two VBlock interconnected platforms, one  to be deployed in  Monterrey and one  in Guadalajara.

Juniper selected by WI-Manx.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that Wi-Manx, an Isle of Man communications and IT solution provider, has selected Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches and MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers as the backbone for its new state-of-the-art data center and IPv6 Network. ”This data center is critical to our strategy of building on international success and becoming a truly global player in the data center market, enabling us to offer the very latest technology at a competitive rate,” said Joe Hughes, chief technical officer, Wi-Manx. From the new data center, Wi-Manx will launch a comprehensive range of hosting services including dedicated servers, co-location solutions, virtual servers, cloud hosting, complex hosting, domain-name and e-mail services.

Alcatel-Lucent and China Unicom partner.  Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and China Unicom, one of the country’s major communications service providers, have announced plans to launch one of the largest fiber broadband access networks to date in China. The Alcatel-Lucent Gigabit Passive Optical Networking (GPON) platform will be used to ensure future capacity and speed demands are met. With this deployment, China Unicom will be able to offer subscribers speeds of up to 100 Megabits-per-second, all with guaranteed quality of service levels providing great flexibility to a wide range of consumer and business services including IPTV, video on demand, and voice over IP (VoIP). “This project represents another major milestone in the rapid expansion of broadband in China. It also demonstrates our strong and growing leadership position in the FTTx market as we help accelerate availability of superfast broadband throughout China,” said Rajeev Singh-Molares, President, Asia-Pacific at Alcatel-Lucent.

Gartner: PaaS to reach $707.4 million in 2011.  Gartner announced that Worldwide platform as a service (PaaS) revenue is on pace to reach $707.4 million in 2011, up from $512.4 million in 2010.  According to Gartner’s research, the market will experience consistent growth with worldwide PaaS revenue totaling $1.8 billion in 2015. As products in the market expanded to include other middleware capabilities as a service, PaaS enterprises took notice and the application integration and middleware (AIM) market expanded. ”When application infrastructure is deployed on-premises, organizations can take a best-of-breed approach and integrate all acquired components in their data center. When middleware services are acquired in the cloud from different PaaS providers – the services remain in different data centers and resist optimized integration. Mainstream users of PaaS services will likely look for providers that deliver comprehensive and integrated PaaS functionality suites – forcing the specialist offerings to consolidate,” said Yefim Natis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. Gartner analysts predict a rapid aggregation of PaaS offerings into suites of functionalities, providing users with well-integrated and optimized platform services (from the same or different suppliers), co-located in the same data center to provide appropriate levels of performance, security, manageability and availability.

Cisco Evolves WAN Optimization Appliances.  Cisco(CSCO) introduced the next generation of its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) appliances – the Cisco family of WAN (wide area network) optimization solutions. The WAAS appliances improve the user experience across their entire network infrastructure by providing up to five times the bandwidth and supporting up to three times the users than the previous generation. The appliance models are split out among the deployment types they serve: branch offices, large branch offices, and an organization version that is integrated as an on-demand WAAS on the Cisco Integrated Services Router Generation 2. Cisco is also announcing Cisco WAAS v4.4 software, which brings together application and network optimization with the industry’s first context-aware DRE (Data Redundancy Elimination).  “Today’s enterprise networks are experiencing increased bandwidth-heavy applications such as video, virtual desktops and cloud services,” said Rohit Mehra, director, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure at IDC. “The momentum behind this trend will only grow as cloud applications take center stage in the enterprise. WAN optimization and application delivery solutions like Cisco’s WAAS appliances provide IT and network managers with a compelling solution that scales and improves application performance across the network.”

HP and SAP partner to accelerate the cloud.  HP and SAP AG announced an agreement for HP Enterprise Services to provide cloud-based delivery of SAP applications that enable enterprises to deploy applications in a scalable and affordable manner. The first SAP application to be delivered by HP Enterprise Services via its cloud platform is the SAP Customer Relationship Management rapid-deployment solution. As a SAP-certified provider HP brings their global data centers to the partnership with secure processing capacity, with security and privacy policies that can rapidly adjust to meet each client’s specific needs. “Cloud delivery models are becoming a top priority for clients due to their quick deployments, cost-effectiveness and overall flexibility,” said Eric Clark, vice president, Enterprise Application Services, HP Enterprise Services. “In collaboration with SAP, HP is empowering clients to dramatically increase the availability and speed of business information via the cloud, paving a flexible path toward future growth.”

Citrix updates NetScaler MPX and SDX.  Citrix Systems (CTXS) unveiled four new additions to its leading Citrix NetScaler MPX and SDX product lines, delivering the unprecedented performance and virtualization that businesses require in the Cloud Era. The new NetScaler MPX and SDX platforms, including the 50 Gbps SDX 21550 appliance, provide the right networking footprint to tackle large-scale network consolidation initiatives with the flexibility to scale without additional hardware. The new SDX appliances integrate virtualization directly into the network fabric to support up to 40 completely independent NetScaler instances for large-scale consolidation projects. “Citrix continues to demonstrate a relentless focus on improving the performance of virtualized, cloud-delivered applications, including at the network infrastructure layer.  This new set of NetScaler capabilities represents an aggressive move to leverage both virtualization and hardware advances to elevate the state of the art in Application Delivery Controllers,” said Jim Frey, Managing Research Director, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

EMC’s Greenplum Modular Data Computing Appliance.  EMC introduced the Greenplum Modular Data Computing Appliance (DCA), the industry’s first complete Big Data analytics platform. The DCA enables enterprises to combine a shared-nothing MPP relational database with enterprise-class Apache Hadoop in a single, unified appliance to achieve structured and unstructured data coprocessing. Deployed in quarter-rack increments, the approach to capacity management and scaling is based on processing performance or storage needs. The Greenplum DCA is a scalable data-warehousing appliance module that architecturally integrates database, computing, storage and network into an enterprise-class, easy-to-implement system. ”We are the only company enabling data coprocessing, the fast, bidirectional sharing of structured and unstructured data between relational and Hadoop modules within a single appliance, to allow each system do what it does best and achieve a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts,” said Scott Yara, vice president of products of Greenplum, a division of EMC. “That’s why data coprocessing is so important and so powerful, and it is the new modularity of our DCA that provides this opportunity for enterprises to get the benefits of Big Data analytics from whatever kind of data they’re working with.”

Cisco and Microsoft collaborate.  Cisco (CSCO) and Microsoft (MSFT) announced a collaboration for delivering data center virtualization solutions designed to provide improved scalability and operational control of Microsoft Windows Server “8″ virtual environments. Advanced Cisco networking features will be constant across both virtual and physical networks with the Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch and the Cisco UCS with Virtual Machine Fabric Extender (VM-FEX) capabilities and Windows Hyper-V hypervisor.  VM-FEX collapses the physical and virtual networking layers into one virtual infrastructure, improving traffic engineering, visibility and troubleshooting capabilities for VM traffic. ”Cisco Unified Computing System scalability and memory density make it an ideal system for customers as they explore the many new virtualization features of Windows Server 8 and Hyper-V,” said Jackie Ross, vice president of Server, Access, and Virtualization Technology Group for Cisco.  “Together, Nexus 1000V and VM-FEX with Windows Server Hyper-V will provide the advanced controls and consistency with simplified management to help accelerate customers’ journey to the cloud.” The Cisco Nexus 1000V and VM-FEX solutions for Hyper-V will be available when Windows 8 Server is released to the market.

Nimsoft announces SAP monitoring.  Nimsoft announced Nimsoft Monitor for SAP, an automated solution that enables customers to optimize service levels across physical, virtual and cloud environments while reducing their technology ownership costs. As a component of the Nimsoft Monitor, it features a built-in knowledge base of key performance indicators (KPIs) and associated best-practice thresholds to help administrators proactively address potential issues and quickly identify and resolve problems before they impact service levels. “Enterprise SAP environments have become highly dynamic due to both increasingly volatile business conditions and today’s extensively virtualized IT infrastructure,” said Chris O’Malley, Nimsoft CEO. “The SAP monitoring application and Nimsoft Monitor empower customers to stay on top of these dynamic SAP environments so they can achieve superlative service levels while driving down management overhead.”

Blue Coat updates PacketShaper.  Blue Coat Systems (BCSI) announced a new version of operating software for its Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances that adds an intelligent structure to auto-discovered applications and Web content categories, making it easy to instantly understand application usage. Version 8.7 of the PacketShaper operating software adds an automated hierarchical grouping of applications and content to quickly monitor and control social media, business-critical applications, business data, Web threats and other groupings. “Application visibility and control is increasingly critical now that typical Web usage consumes over 50 percent of a company’s network, and video and aggressive applications can easily incapacitate business-critical applications,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, Blue Coat Systems. PacketShaper 8.7 is available now as a software upgrade for all customers with a current support contract for a PacketShaper appliance.