SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - January 28, 2008) - Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today introduced innovative new solutions that continue to help customers realize the Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision for next-generation data centers. The culmination of this is the introduction of the network platform for Data Center 3.0, the Cisco Nexus® Family of data-center-class switches, and the expansion of the Cisco Catalyst® Family. This new infrastructure is the next step in helping customers to design and build data center architectures that meet the stringent operational continuity, transport flexibility and scalability requirements of the next-generation data center.

"With its Data Center 3.0 vision, Cisco is transforming the data center into a virtualized environment that revolutionizes how organizations adopt new IT strategies and respond quickly to changing business needs," said Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Services Group. "The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is the result of significant and pioneering internal innovation. Combined with the 10 Gigabit Ethernet portfolio that the flagship Catalyst 6500 Series offers, Cisco provides customers with a smooth migration into a new era of data center networking."

Today's new offerings build on Cisco's data center switch market share leadership, more than 15 years of Catalyst switch innovation and an architectural approach specifically designed to unify all components of the data center. Over the next 18 months, Cisco will continue to invest in its data center efforts by adding significant new products and capabilities to help customers architect next-generation data centers.

Cisco Continues to Enhance the Flagship Catalyst 6500 Series: 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module and Catalyst 6509-V-E Chassis

To address the evolution from Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit Ethernet for data center access, Cisco now offers a data-center-optimized 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module that provides up to 130 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet per Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and 260 ports per Catalyst 6500 Virtual Switching System. This new module increases the architectural scalability of the Catalyst 6500 which can help reduce power consumption by up to 50 percent per port. The new module doubles the 10 Gigabit Ethernet port density of the Catalyst 6500 and will help enable high-performance campus local area network (LAN) aggregation, so customers can scale bandwidth for video, mobility and other collaboration applications.

"With the rapid growth of real-time communication and collaboration applications, our customers are seeking a solution that both protects their existing infrastructure investment and provides them with the flexibility to quickly shift to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network when their business requirements demand," said Toru Arai, managing director, Net One Systems Co., Ltd. "The new 16-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet Module is an ideal fit for our customers as in addition to providing double the port density on the Catalyst 6500, it also helps reduce power consumption which is increasingly more top of mind with companies globally."

To simplify data center operations and offer the highest level of investment enhancement, Cisco also introduced the Cisco Catalyst 6509 Enhanced Vertical Chassis (V-E) as part of the Cisco Catalyst 6500-E Series Switches. The Catalyst 6509-V-E chassis offers nine vertical slots with front-to-back airflow, which is a requirement for the hot-aisle/cold-aisle designs in modern data center and service provider co-location deployments. As a part of the Catalyst 6500-E Series Switches, the Cisco Catalyst 6509 Enhanced V-E will support up to 80 gigabit per second (Gbps) per slot for future supervisor engines and modules, delivering architectural investment protection and the ability to meet increasing bandwidth requirements for years to come. Today the Catalyst 6509-V-E supports the Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine 720 and 32 Families as well as associated LAN, wide-area network (WAN) and other services modules for superior customer investment enhancement and lower total cost of ownership.

High-Performance Top-of-Rack Switch: Cisco Catalyst 4900M Series

The Cisco Catalyst 4900M Series is designed and optimized for the data center rack-server aggregation. Ideal for data center deployments that require the ultimate in flexibility, the Catalyst 4900M Series offers transport flexibility with optimized buffering for top-of-rack switching and mixing 10/100/1000 and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports with up to 40 10/100/1000 ports or twenty-four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The Catalyst 4900M is a 320-Gbps, 250 million packets per second (mpps), two-rack-unit (2RU) fixed-configuration switch that provides operational continuity with redundant power and fans and investment protection for easy migration to 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

"We have evaluated the Cisco Catalyst 4900M as a solution for demanding high-end media network applications and are impressed with its 10 Gigabit throughput and media-type flexibility," said Bill Moren, senior product manager, storage and networking at Avid, a worldwide leader in tools for film, video, audio, 3D animation, gaming and broadcast professionals. "The Cisco Catalyst 4900M Series addresses our customer requirements for high-speed performance and quality, and has long served as key component for our digital media creation products."

Cisco Brings Virtualization to its Catalyst Blade Switches

As a solution to address scalability and consolidation requirements within the data center, many enterprise customers are increasingly turning to blade servers, a server architecture that houses multiple server modules, or "blades" in a single chassis. Today Cisco announced that the Cisco Catalyst Blade Switches will be available for Dell's new PowerEdge M1000e blade server enclosure. This will provide customers with consistent network security, high availability, and quality of service with Gigabit Ethernet performance from the server edge out to the clients at the network edge.

On the new Catalyst Blade Switch, Cisco also introduced Virtual Blade Switch (VBS) technology that allows up to eight switches to be managed as one logical switch for reduced infrastructure complexity. This innovation is the foundation of the blade switches' ability to deliver performance and resilience while simplifying data center design, operations and management. The VBS technology provides unprecedented 160-Gbps upstream performance while doubling the bandwidth to a server at the same time. This is especially important for emerging Web 2.0 applications that generate increased inter-server communications.

The Foundation for Data Center Transformation: Cisco Nexus 7000 Series

The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is the first series of switches specifically designed to meet the requirements of data centers and scale to industry-leading 15 terabits per second (Tbps). Purpose built to meet the requirements of the most mission-critical data centers, it delivers significant performance and density for continuous system operations and has the transport flexibility to support emerging protocols to prepare for migration to a unified fabric in the data center. Building on Cisco's proven storage area network (SAN) operating system and Cisco IOS® Software, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series introduces the Nexus Operating System (NX-OS) which delivers real-time system upgrades with exceptional manageability and serviceability. Cisco also introduced a comprehensive and centralized administration solution, Cisco Data Center Network Manager (DCNM), to simplify data center network operations. Please see "Cisco Unveils Nexus 7000 Series Data Center-Class Platform" for more detailed information (http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_012808b.html).

Cisco Data Center Assurance Program Additions

The Cisco Data Center Assurance Program (DCAP) is a solution-level testing program involving all the components necessary in data center infrastructure. The DCAP program benefits customers by enabling faster deployment, reducing risk, improving end-to-end stability, reducing downtime, and enabling faster, more reliable technology upgrades. Cisco DCAP has been extended to include Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE), VMware ESX Server, VMware VMotion and other areas.

Additional information and resources on the Cisco data center vision and products announced today can be found at http://newsroom.cisco.com/DataCenter_3.

Pricing and Expected Availability

Product                      US List Price        Expected
                                                  Availability
                             -------------------  -------------------------
Cisco Nexus 7000 Series      Starts at $75,000    Orderable globally now.
                                                  General availability
                                                  expected in 2QCY08.
                             -------------------  -------------------------
Cisco 16-port 10 Gigabit     Please contact       Q2CY08
 Ethernet Module             your Cisco Sales
                             Representative
                             -------------------  -------------------------
Cisco Catalyst 6509-V-E      $9,995               Now
 Chassis
                             -------------------  -------------------------
Cisco Catalyst 4900M Series  Starts at $22,000    Now
                             -------------------  -------------------------

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Contact Information: Press Contact: Lee Davis Cisco (408) 526-6530 leedavis@cisco.com Investor Relations Contact: Marilyn Mora Cisco (408) 527-7452 mariross@cisco.com Industry Analyst Contact: Amal Nichols Cisco (408) 526 6493 amnichol@cisco.com