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Last week at our global Partner Summit event, at a press conference in front of global press and analysts, Cisco unveiled its Digital Network Architecture (DNA) to help customers on their journey to digitization.

The response from industry reporters has been extremely positive, as journalists highlighted the industry-wide benefits with CRN headlining that it’s going to “Change the DNA of the Channel.” Several articles also noted the importance of Cisco’s introduction of Enterprise NFV with the new DNA solutions, calling it a “game changer for the enterprise.

Highlights from the DNA press coverage include:

eWeek: “Cisco’s goal with DNA is to make it easier by offering an architecture that integrates the key networking software—virtualization, automation, analytics, cloud service management and open and extensible programmability.”

CRN: “Cisco is opening the door to an array of new professional services that its channel community can offer customers with the launch of its service-centric Digital Network Architecture (DNA).”

Light Reading: “DNA is an open, software-driven architecture Shenoy says. ‘We’re known as a hardware-centric platform and closed system, with hardware and software running hand and hand for customers.’ DNA changes that fundamentally…The change is driven by enterprise need to innovate, achieve faster time to market, empower their workforces and personalize customer experience.”

Network Computing: “NFV has focused on making it easier and cheaper for service providers to launch new services by decoupling network functions from the underlying hardware. Cisco said it aims to provide the same kind of flexibility and ability to enterprises rolling out new branch services.”

Network World: “Cisco says it has over 100 customer deployments of the enterprise SDN, and that a single APIC-EM instance can support up to 4,000 devices…As customers digitize their business operations ‘it’s imperative to start this transition’ to the DNA architecture, says Rob Soderbery, Cisco senior vice president of Enterprise Products and Solutions.”

SDxCentral: “At its Partner Summit 2016 conference today, Cisco delivered a set of combination punches designed to knock several competitors off balance by making it simpler and cheaper for IT organizations to standardize on both Cisco networking and servers employing software-defined architectures.”

TechTarget: “Cisco’s goal for Enterprise NFV goes beyond its hardware. ‘Ultimately, Cisco wants to certify this software to run on any [Intel-based] x86 server,’ [Shamus McGillicuddy, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates Inc] said. Doing so will likely take some development work using the tools Intel provides for building white box switches powered by its chips, he said. But if Cisco does that, Enterprise NFV will be ‘truly open and independent of hardware.’”

ZDNet: “While Cisco billed its DNA “as the most significant change” in its enterprise networking model since being founded, the larger takeaway is that the company is building out its portfolio applications.”

eWeek: “DNA and its focus on software represents a significant realignment of Cisco’s approach to the network, and is a nod to the rapid changes businesses are undergoing. Trends like cloud, mobile computing and a massive growth in data volumes are creating a greater demand for automation, security and compliance in enterprise infrastructures.”

Want to read more? Here are some of the most notable articles from last week’s announcement: