The Network is Changing the World: New Business Realities Transform Network Architecture

Understanding future demands on the network are instrumental in developing a robust and scalable network architecture. As seen below, projected growth in mobile, video, and IP traffic is staggering.

The demand for enterprise networking is extending beyond established borders of the conventional enterprise network. Existing network architectures are finding it difficult to scale, secure, and meet the demand of market disruptions such as cloud computing, mobile device explosion, and video proliferation.  Cisco IT is building a next-generation network not only equipped to handle the new business realities and demands, but also help keep IT and the company agile and competitive. We call it the Extended Enterprise Network, or E2N.  This new architecture is intelligent, dynamic, aware, secure, programmable, agile, manageable and automated.

Within Cisco IT’s E2N architecture:

Video is the new audio

Mobility is addressed in the cloud

Identity is the new corporate perimeter

User experience is paramount

And these are just some of the architecture requirements.

Security is vital in this new architecture, including:

Unified Access control (wired, wireless, remote access…)

Centralized Policy Management (Enterprise ACL Mgmt, ISE for access policy enforcement, ARBAC…)

BYOD enablement (registration, profiling, posture…)

Threat mitigation (anomaly detection, NetThreat/DDoS protection, encryption)

Granular network control (enterprise wide virtualization/segmentation, DC zones…)

Context awareness/Visibility (Deep packet inspection, Transaction Assurance, Group Tags..)

Special Purpose Networks (High Risk Environments, Next gen Extranet…)

For an overview of the E2N architecture and technology, check out this short video with Plamen Nedeltchev, principal architect of Cisco IT’s next-generation network:

To learn about the business impact of E2N, check out Cisco on Cisco: Business Impact of the Network. Or for an executive overview of E2N, see Cisco on Cisco:  Extended Enterprise Network Executive Overview.