Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure Gains Customer Momentum, Extends Policy Model to Existing Infrastructure, Adds Platform Support and Introduces ACI-Ready Integrated Infrastructure
SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - May 16, 2014) - Cisco (
Selected to represent a range of company sizes, industries, and workloads, over 70 customers and partners have been actively trialing ACI, with enthusiastic results. Cisco Nexus 9000 switches and the Cisco ACI solution now include over 1000 customers in the sales pipeline. For those attending Cisco Live, Cisco's annual IT and communications conference, in San Francisco this year, there will be a data center technology keynote on Wednesday, May 21 featuring a panel of customers to talk about their experiences with ACI.
Customers Comment on ACI
"Symantec is an early adopter of Cisco's Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), leveraging the technology within our own Agile Data Center," said Jon Sanchez, director of Data Center Services, Symantec. "Cisco ACI brings the scalability and efficiency we need while enabling us to truly bring next generation networking capabilities to our customers."
Ranked among the top 100 most-visited websites in the world, UOL is the leading Internet services company in Brazil since 1996, providing content and an extensive Web services and products portfolio. UOLDIVEO, a full IT outsourcing company within the same group, is Brazil's largest IT data and infrastructure provider, targeting the enterprise market with a broad range of infrastructure and services products, including its cloud computing initiative, UOL Cloud: which aims to be the most flexible and complete platform in Brazil. "The growing customer demand for immediate, reliable, secure, scalable, robust, and high-performance infrastructures drives us to search for the world's best-of-breed technologies to build a state-of-the-art cloud computing system that gives our customers all the power and flexibility they need," said Eduardo Maldonado Rosa, CTO, UOLDIVEO. "We fulfill all of our clients' necessities, and network connectivity is one of their top priorities. UOL Cloud is collaborating with Cisco to deploy the ACI solution in all our UOL Cloud data centers as the best solution to deliver data center network architecture, automation, operations, reliability and the flexibility requirements that we face in a daily basis."
Extending ACI Support to Traditional Cisco Networks
Investment protection is a hallmark of Cisco's technology strategy, and a major contributor to creating Cisco customer loyalty. Cisco continues that commitment by enabling interoperability and a migration path for customers to deploy ACI in their existing data centers based on Cisco Nexus 2000, 3000, 5000, 6000 and 7000 network switches and ASR 9000 routers. In addition, ACI ecosystem members such as F5 and Citrix with Layer 4-7 services can be deployed in either existing Nexus fabrics or the ACI mode without a hardware upgrade. Investment protection options include:
UCS Director 5.0: Support for ACI
Cisco UCS Director is designed to automate every step necessary to provision the network, compute, and storage resources, both physical and virtual, that are required to support an application. This greatly reduces the time needed to deploy infrastructure, resulting in IT agility, faster response time to business requirements, and lower operational costs. Version 5.0 of UCS Director now supports ACI and Nexus 9000 Series switches, in addition to a wide range of compute and storage vendors' products, and Cisco's traditional data center product portfolio. With a single point of management, both physical and virtual resources can be provisioned within minutes, and the deployment process is consistent and reliable across all infrastructure.
UCS Director provides an extensible platform with a software developer kit and an open Application Programming Interface (API), allowing third-party vendors to establish a connector that will snap their hardware or software into the Cisco UCS Director provisioning and management model. With this enhanced support, UCS Director extends its capabilities across a broader matrix of infrastructure and systems management tools to increase operational efficiency and enable organizations to shift their IT staff from time-consuming manual activities to developing service innovation.
"ACI-Ready" Integrated Infrastructure Solutions
Cisco's industry-leading integrated infrastructure solutions, FlexPod Solutions with NetApp and Vblock Systems with VCE, are integrating Cisco ACI to accelerate application delivery and streamline operations.
Expanded ACI Ecosystem
With the addition of Nutanix and Radware, Cisco expands its ecosystem of ACI supportive vendors. Working closely with Embrane, Cisco will provide full lifecycle management solutions for customers deploying virtualized L4-7 services with ACI including licensing, provisioning, decommissioning, upgrades and overall capacity management of such services.
Hardware Innovation
Cisco is innovating across its Nexus switch portfolio to expand deployment options and help ensure investment protection as networks evolve from traditional deployments to cloud deployments.
Portfolio additions include:
New Cisco Services for ACI
Cisco ACI enables IT organizations to rapidly scale existing applications, meet business demands for new applications and redeploy IT resources when applications are no longer required. This drives faster business processes and improves bottom line results. Available now, the new Cisco Services for ACI are designed to help customers achieve their business and technical objectives, while reducing risk:
Blogs and Videos
Read Cisco blog: Delivering Policy in the Age of Open Source
Read Cisco blog: The Countdown Begins! Cisco customers and partners prepare to roll out ACI
Read NetApp Blog: Cisco and NetApp Integrating ACI into FlexPod
Read blog from VCE: Stepping on the Gas with VCE and Cisco ACI
Watch webcast: New Applications Are Knocking: Is Your Data Center OPEN for Business?
Watch VCE video: VCE Demonstration of VCE Vblock and Cisco ACI
Additional Resources
Learn more about Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI)
Learn more about Cisco UCS Director for ACI
Learn more about Cisco Services for ACI
Contact Cisco Services for ACI at: as-aci-support@cisco.com
Learn more about Cisco's Open Source Efforts
Learn more about Cisco data center solutions
About Cisco
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Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. This products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.
Forward-Looking Statements
This release may be deemed to contain forward-looking statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements include, among others, statements regarding Cisco's delivery of Application Centric Infrastructure, new professional services and an open partner ecosystem and the expected benefits for customers, Cisco's expansion of its Nexus switching portfolio, and Cisco's intention to acquire the remaining interest in Insieme Networks. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results due to a variety of factors, including, among other things, the ability of Cisco to successfully introduce and to achieve the expected benefits of its application centric infrastructure and related services and partner ecosystem, the potential impact on the business of Insieme Networks due to the uncertainty about the acquisition, the retention of employees of Insieme Networks, the ability of Cisco to successfully integrate Insieme Networks and to achieve expected benefits, business and economic conditions and growth trends in the networking industry, customer markets and various geographic regions, global economic conditions and uncertainties in the geopolitical environment, overall information technology spending, the growth and evolution of the Internet and levels of capital spending on Internet-based systems, dependence on the introduction and market acceptance of new product offerings and standards; increased competition in Cisco's product and service markets, including the data center, and other risk factors set forth in Cisco's most recent reports on Form 10-K filed on September 10, 2013. Any forward-looking statements in this release are based on limited information currently available to Cisco, which is subject to change, and Cisco will not necessarily update the information.
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