06 December 2016
Cisco has expanded its Cloud-Scale Networking platform to help service providers transform central offices.
According to the company, Cloud-Scale Networking enables large-scale automation for provisioning and network changes in minutes as opposed to hours.
It features software extensibility for modular and rapid service deployment, as well as real-time visibility and control through streaming telemetry.
Cisco’s new solutions are delivered through its IOS XR software.
It claims this offers half the total cost of ownership and double the efficiency and performance over five years, compared to present mode of operation.
Utilising data centre DevOps principles and techniques to offer new levels of agility, efficiency and simplicity, Cisco says it is extending the benefits of Cloud-Scale Networking beyond the traditional network and into the central office.
By creating a unified Network-as-a-Fabric across central office, metro, core and data centre environments, the firm says Cloud-Scale Networking enables transformation through simplification, automation and virtualisation.
Cisco’s enhanced IOS XR now supports several new capabilities, including an Ethernet VPN. This provides separation between the data and control planes, creating a unified, centralised overlay control plane based on border gateway protocol and industry standards.
There’s also segment routing end-to-end which, says Cisco, creates a unified, common-forwarding underlay to further simplify network operations
A third capability is model-driven telemetry. The firm says this delivers increased, granular, real-time visibility via native, open, common data models for automation and efficient operation of physical and virtual resources.
Cisco is participating in a variety of working groups in the Internet Engineering Task Force, leading or helping to advance key vendor-neutral projects including segment routing and streaming telemetry.
It says the ongoing work with these groups, along with close ties to the OpenSource DevOps community, is enabling it to provide cloud-scale networking solutions to its customer base spanning the globe.
Yvette Kanouff, SVP of service provider business at Cisco, reckons the firm’s continued progress with the Cloud-Scale Networking platform is proof of its commitment to NFV and SDN solutions for open, programmable and automated networks.
“Central office transformations are part of our customers’ top priorities worldwide, and we are in a unique position to help them with easy upgrades to their existing routing platforms using the IOS XR software,” she says.
