Cisco Systems officials over the past few months have built out the
capabilities of their Borderless Networks initiative in such areas as mobility,
security and management. Now the networking giant is looking to extend the
reach of the strategy into branch offices.
At
Interop 2011 this week in Las Vegas,
Cisco officials are showing off their new Flex 7500 Series Cloud Controller and
new Integrated Services Router Web Security products for the ISR G2 branch
router. The products are part of Cisco’s efforts to meet the demand from
businesses that are looking to bring such key capabilities as management and
security out of the branch offices and back into main headquarters, according
to Prashanth Shenoy, senior manager of Borderless Networks marketing.
“Since
data centers began consolidating about a decade ago, a lot of things have been
moved out of the branch offices and into the central data center,” Shenoy said
in an interview with eWEEK, adding that IT departments are being asked to grow
the level of services they offer while seeing their staffing being reduced.
Despite
that consolidation, businesses still need to offer the same level of service
and user experience to their employees in the branch offices, he said. With the
new products announced May 10, businesses will be able to consolidate more of
their IT infrastructure in the central data center—a move that will help drive
down capital and operational costs—without hurting the operations of the branch
offices, and deliver their services through the increasingly popular cloud
computing model.
The
Flex 7500 Series Cloud Controller is housed in the data center, letting IT
administrators remotely manage up to 500 branch offices from a central
location. They can remotely wireless policies, manage the branch offices and
offer security settings without the time and expense of having to physically go
to the offices, Sylvia Hooks, senior manager of mobility marketing at Cisco, said
in an interview.
The
new WLAN (wireless LAN) controller can
control up to 2,000 WiFI access points—twice the number currently supported—and
more than 20,000 clients from the data center, Hooks said. A goal was to “allow
the branch office to be independent” while still getting the technology
capabilities they need to do their jobs, she said.
The
controller is available immediately, starting at $47,955.
In
addition, Cisco in July will start shipping the ISR Web Security software,
which extends the company’s ScanSafe Cloud Web Security to branch offices by
putting centralized Web protection and malware detection onto the ISR G2 branch
router.
According
to Cisco officials, the new software will not require businesses to buy more
hardware. Instead, the software is in the router, enabling branch offices to
use local Internet access capabilities, which will save users time, money and
resource that otherwise would go toward hardware deployments.
The
software can be delivered via the cloud, while the management is done
centrally, they said.
Cisco
is aggressively building out its Borderless Networks efforts, which revolve
around the idea of getting access to a company’s network anytime, from anywhere
and through any device.
Cloud Computing News & Reviews 
