Just like Cisco supports users, network engineers too want access in real-time, whenever and wherever they need it. It was well reflected in its annual Networkers Conference 2006.

Though Cisco supports its networkers well beyond its reach, but needs access in some pretty surprising locations, under fairly unusual circumstances.

While adressing the gathering of more than 500 networkers, Rangnath Salgame, president, India & SAARC region, Cisco Systems in his keynote emphasized on some major concerns of today's business leaders. He said there's a fundamental shift in focus taking place in the business scenario. From globalization, the focus is now shifting to customer empowerment to digitization to interactions.

He said that Cisco's technology vision revolves around customer segment architectures. For enterprises, he laid stress on service oriented network architecture. He said it would help organizations develop and deploy service-oriented applications on grid computing architecture, integrate services into enterprise business processes, and secure and manage services, applications, and data in heterogeneous environment. It would also provide dynamic workload management, clustering, and automated backup and recovery.

Jayshree Ullal, senior VP, Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Cisco Systems

On the comercial front, the company has smart business communication architecture and smart communication services which help organizations reduce cost and build customer initmacy.

Service provider is one segment where Cisco has been focusing more. As service providers are eyeing IPTV as their new growth area, Cisco will continue the momentum on its leadership in delivery of video and IPTV services over its IP Next Generation Network (IP NGN) reference architecture. “We have been addressing fundamental challenges in carrier IP networks and the connected home. Our IP NGN gives service providers the solutions required to guarantee end user quality-of-experience,” Salgame added.

Cisco Systems, after the acquisition of Linksys and Kiss Technologies, has become one of the leading providers of VoIP, wireless and networking hardware for home, SOHO and small business environments. “As more and more entertainment content is delivered over the Internet and as consumers demand access to digital entertainment inside and outside of their home networks, networked entertainment devices will become an integral part of consumer electronics. Cisco plays a major role in this,” Salgame added.

The heartbeat of any organization is in the data center. Employees, partners, and customers rely on data and resources in the data center to effectively create, collaborate, and interact. Over the last decade, the rise of Internet and Web-based technologies has made the data center more strategic than ever, improving productivity, enhancing business processes, and accelerating change. Data centers are the strategic focus of IT efforts to protect, optimize and grow the business.

On data center challenges, Jayshree Ullal, senior VP, Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group, Cisco Systems said that the rise of Internet and Web-based technologies has made the data center more strategic than ever, improving productivity, enhancing business processes, and accelerating change. “Data center managers face several challenges in fulfilling these goals. Most enterprise data centers grew rapidly to meet the explosive economic growth of the previous decade. Consequently, applications commonly stand alone in underutilized, isolated infrastructure silos. The disparate infrastructures supporting different application 'islands' are difficult to change or expand and expensive to manage, integrate, secure, and back up. The Cisco data center network architecture allows IT organizations to achieve lower TCO, enhanced resilience and greater agility by evolving data center infrastructures through consolidation, virtualization, and automation,” Ullal added.

Laurent Philonenko, VP/GM, Customer Contact Business Unit, Cisco Systems		Rangnath Salgame, president, India & SAARC, Cisco Systems

Speaking on Cisco's communications deployment, Chuck Trent, VP, CIO Asia Pacific and Japan Cisco Systems said that Cisco uses its own products and architectures as an example to its customers. “Cisco's IT goal is to support secure and reliable Intranet access to Cisco employees wherever they are located.  Wired connectivity and remote access VPN is critical to this, but a third requirement is that Cisco supports a robust wireless infrastructure,” he added.

Intelligent information networking (IIN) is Cisco's vision for the future of networking. It describes a network that is continually aware of the changing service and resource needs of each application and user. Jangoo Dalal, senior VP Cisco Systems India & SAARC said, IIN achieves three goals simultaneously, which include making sure that all applications and users get the communications services and resources when they need. Secondly, it minimizes communications services, resource waste and cost. Thirdly it provides centralized control of the network, communications services and resources. This allows the network administrator to create and instantly apply new policies and new services with different levels of service whenever they are needed.

Cisco also showcased its latest technologies and an array of networking products and solutions on a single platform. These include architectures and solutions for data centers and unified communications. These address the needs of enterprise, service provider and small and medium businesses. The forum also provided intensive technical training on key networking technology areas through live and hands-on demonstrations to customers and partners.

Rahul Gupta
rahulg@cybermedia.co.in