Cisco closes in on the datacentre

New technology and services announced at its annual partner conference

Network infrastructure giant Cisco has renewed its commitment to the datacentre with the launch of a new series of switches, a new channel strategy and the announcement it will fully acquire datacentre solutions provider Nuova Systems.

The Cisco Nexus 500 Series, which was developed in tandem with Nuova Systems, is designed to boost firms' capabilities in critical areas such as operational continuity, transport flexibility and scalability, according to Cisco.

It features low latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching and is designed to support firms' multicore, virtualised environments, Cisco added. It can also connect to Cisco Nexus 7000, Cisco Catalyst 6500, or to SAN fabrics built with the Cisco MDS 9000 platform.

Cisco also announced it is updating its Data Centre Networking Infrastructure (DCNI) initiative, which recognises Specialised Partners who are able to provide their customers with high quality datacentre skills and have a proven heritage in selling and deploying datacentre solutions.

In addition, the networking giant launched Cisco Services – a new services offering for the datacentre comprising expertise in architecture, server performance, storage and virtualisation, said Cisco.

Finally the firm announced it is to purchase the remaining 20 per cent of Nuova Systems, which hitherto has been operating as a majority-owned subsidiary of Cisco.

"We expect the Nuova team to make significant contributions toward the realisation of [Cisco's datacentre] vision through products and technology that help enable data center consolidation and virtualisation, while protecting customers' current data center investments," said Nuova president, Mario Mazzola.