ANAHEIM, CALIF. – Cisco Systems Corp. threw the industry a curve ball Tuesday at the Networkers at Cisco Live conference.
As the industry was looking to the San Jose, Calif.-based company to announce more elements to its unified communications strategy in response to Microsoft’s salvo into the market, instead Cisco told more than 10,000 technical implementers and channel partners at the event its vision for the data centre of the future.
Called Data Center 3.0, this new vision, to be delivered over the next 24 months, contains new products lead by the VFrame line of networking and storage infrastructures. VFrame offers policy-based engines for automating resource changes and a data centre Web services application programming interface. Another integral part of Data Center 3.0 is Wide Area Application Services or “Trusted” WAN optimization software.
Peter Castaldi, vice-president of Kovarus Technology Solutions Inc., a systems integrator and reseller specializing in enterprise storage and networking, said with this new technology and the move to virtual SANs in the marketplace there will be big demand for this WAAS service.
He added that solution providers such as Kovarus, which is a Cisco Premier Certified Partner, can make money in year one of Cisco’s new data center vision and the margin potential can be between 15 and 20 per cent, depending on the customer situation.
“Cisco has really come to play in each area of virtual storage and virtualization and with its deal registration program we are already see it (profits) and it is big enough of us,” Castaldi said.
Jayshree Ullal, senior vice-president of the switching and security technology group for Cisco, said her company’s journey into the data centre did not happen overnight. IT is transforming from a cost centre to a strategic asset in a highly virtualized infrastructure. Data Center 3.0 intends to bring real time orchestration of infrastructure services for customers comprising virtual servers, storage networking resources and collaboration application services, she said.
“Many times we think of virtualization as virtual machines, but mapping that is important,” said Ullal. “At the heart of this is a unified fabric that brings together the best of Ethernet, storage, fibre channel and infiniband.”
Cisco’s main challenges in the data centre space are business empowerment and operational limitations. Ullal said response times at the data centre need to be improved dramatically if customers want to reach productivity goals. Furthermore, IT operations are limited by power consumption.
Armin Heinlein, the head of IT competence center NORAM and vice-president of Panalpina of Morristown, N.J., was one Cisco customer who faced these two challenges. Panalpina has six major data centers one of which is situated in Toronto, and two other minor data centers. The company wanted to bring them all together to hopefully work faster.
Heinlein said that every time a new application was introduced to the company it meant a new server had to be installed and with that there needs to be a fall back system. That in turn brought on more switching and routing equipment.
“We needed to do something to bring it together with server virtualization and reduce the cost. WAAS help(ed) me do some cost reduction and improve service,” Heinlein said.
WAAS software enables IT teams to deploy WAN optimization across the environment, while preserving branch security. It also provides tight integration with NetQoS application monitoring products.
Panalpina saved approximately $1 million, increased its bandwidth and moved out between 20 to 30 per cent of its physical servers, Heinlein said.
Data Center 3.0 also includes Cisco application control engine (ACE) XML gateway software, MDS 18/4 multi-service module, and 9222i multi-service modular switch, 9134 multi-layer fabric switch, Data Mobility Manager, storage media encryption, N-port Virtualizer, Smart Call Home, a data centreassurance program and two channel partner specializations.
