As the world’s largest maker of switches and routers prepares for a change in leadership after 20 years, the company is upping its game in three of the hottest areas in wireless: SDN, “Internet of Things” and Wi-Fi.
This week at Cisco Live, the company announced an update to its application centric infrastructure platform. For service providers, the update includes the ability to provision virtual private networks across a larger set of Cisco’s Nexus switch portfolio. Enhancements include a common programmatic approach and standards-based automation.
Cisco has already staked its claim with carriers that are working to virtualize network functionality. Verizon Wireless and AT&T have both named Cisco as a partner in their respective SDN/NFV initiatives.
Also at Cisco Live, the company unveiled new cloud software and partnerships with 35 independent software vendors to help customers leverage the Internet of Things. The company says its intercloud fabric has already won more than 100 customers and 65 partners worldwide.
Wi-Fi was also in the spotlight at Cisco Live. Cisco is the world’s leading vendor of Wi-Fi access points.
Cisco said it is seeing broad enterprise adoption of 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, which is deployed in the 5 GHz spectrum band. The company said that education has been the lead vertical, but that all enterprise sectors are seeing the need for robust and seamless connectivity solutions. Cisco said its new Wave 2 solutions are designed to help enterprise handle the demands of multiple devices at once.
MU-MIMO is a key feature of Cisco’s new access points. The company also has added two new service controllers and two new switches, one of which includes a programmable data plane, enabling the deployment of software-defined networking services.
