With tremendous growth in campus networks, companies now need to target richer, interactive and more collaborative applications. This has been driving lot of new innovations in the networking space. Cisco recently introduced a revamp of its venerable Catalyst 6500 Virtual Switching System (VSS) and 4500 E-Series LAN switches to better support peer-to-peer and real-time applications. During the launch , Walt Blomquist, senior director, Marketing, Internet System Business Unit and Tata Rao, senior VP - System Engineering, India & SAARC from Cisco spoke with Biztech2 about the latest updates to the solutions and the emerging trends in the networking space.

How will the new solutions boost network performance?

Blomquist: The Catalyst 6500 VSS provides network system virtulisation, the ability for two switches to act as one switch providing seamless high availability and enhanced scalability. VSS simplifies and doubles the overall performance of the network while at the same time cuts the management overhead and increases operations efficiencies. Catalyst 6500 with integrated 10 Gig E uplinks garners great performance, which enables support to converged and rich applications.

Catalyst 4500 E-Series Supervisor 6-E with CenterFlex Technology provides four times the bandwidth per slot to enable services such as unified communications. It provides greater performance to latency sensitive apps like voice and video.

What are some of the major challenges faced by CIOs on the networking front?

Blomquist: Rich applications like video and voice convergence are putting a lot of pressure on networks. The peer to peer (P2P) traffic which can be business critical or recreational is also taking up lot of resources of the network. These P2P and/or IPV6 apps can expose the enterprises to multiple security threats that cannot be detected using traditional mechanism. Thus a greater need of app recognition has been recognised. The growing concept of green strategy has also forced CIOs to optimise the performance of their network through initiatives like virtualisation. Thus, CIOstoday are looking forward to make their networks scalable and flexible to support Web 2.0 apps.

Rao: One of the major challenges has been the transition of application from older generation to the current generation. With the onslaught of all the collaborative and bandwidth hungry applications, network designs have to be constantly revised. CIOs are looking forward for the networks that can offer transparent flow as well as manage things like latency, security, bandwidth, etc.

What are some of the latest global trends in the networking space?

Rao: New innovations will continue in the LAN and WAN segment. In case of LAN, we started with 10mbps and then went on to 100 mbps and now we are talking about Gigabit Ethernet. Again there have been constant advances in types of applications. Now, we are talking about video conferencing, IPTV, VOIP which needs higher network capacities. Today, providing convergence in LAN has become a key issue for various enterprises. Thus the innovations will continue to support these bandwidth hungry, rich applications. Similarly in case of WAN, wireless, 3G, optical networks are some of the remarkable innovations. To sum it up, the collaborative applications will bring lot of new innovations in the networking field.

Blomquist: The advent of IPV6 as a standard for the network is a significant development in the networking field. Several regions like US, Asia Pacific, Australia, China, Japan etc are driving IPV6 as a standard for next generation network. The shift to 10 GB/s is probably driven in part by video apps on Web 2.0. Data centre consolidations, uplink wiring closets are also shifting to 10 GB/S. All of these are some of the noteworthy trends that are shaping the network architecture.

In which verticals do you see network playing a major role as a business enabler?

Rao: ITes, manufacturing, banking, service providers segment and SMB will extensively exploit the network infrastructure to scale their businesses. In case of services like call centres, the data outsourcing, knowledge outsourcing, the fundamental requirement is network and connectivity. All the major banks are moving towards disaster recovery and are setting up plans in distant areas, where I see huge opportunities for networks. The collaborative applications like mobile banking that banks are keen to provide will also require sophisticated networks. Without basic networking, I can not imagine businesses to grow.