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Celebrating the 20th anniversary of Cisco Systems on Tuesday morning, CEO John Chambers laid out an ambitious strategy for technology innovation, beginning with the companys most powerful router, the CSR-1, which will be available this summer.
Ciscos goal is to become the product leader not only in the service provider and enterprise markets but in the commercial and home markets as well, Chambers told an audience of customers, partners and reporters at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.
“In simple terms, what were attempting to do is lead in all categories,” Chambers said.
The next generation of routing is not an evolution of the existing technology but instead a new system designed from the ground up, Chambers said. Designed to be highly reliable and highly scaleable, the CRS-1 was built to last.
“Once we put it in place, we dont want to move it for one to two decades,” Chambers said.
The major selling point behind the new router is to give service providers the means to roll out new, differentiated services.
The telecommunications industry is facing increasing competitive challenges, and service providers are looking for ways to drive greater usage without dramatically increasing their capital and operating expenses.
The next generation of routing products will provide 100 times the capacity and four times the speed of existing technology, Chambers said, adding that Cisco Systems Inc. will unveil more innovations over the next two months than it has over the past few years.
Further product innovations will be rolled out not only in routing technology, but also in switching, storage and wireless technologies.
The aim is to enable not only faster networking, but more intelligent and more lasting infrastructure, with products designed to work together seamlessly over all kinds of networks, Chambers said.
At the heart of the CRS-1 is a new, modular version of Ciscos IOS operating system. Cisco IOS XR was built specifically for the CRS-1, said Tony Bates, vice president and general manager of the Routing Technology Group at Cisco in San Jose, Calif. But he said some of its advanced features may find their way into other IOS versions later.
The software provides granular control of resources and separates control, data and management planes for flexible provisioning, and upgrading and maintenance without service interruption. Advanced security features can detect threats such as DDOS attacks, he added.