Mythbusters: Unified Access Edition: Part 3

There’s been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what’s what, what’s required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.

In true Mythbuster fashion, let’s all discover why no myth is safe – through a 5-part series of posts. Part 1 debunked the myth that a move to Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure. Yesterday in Part 2, we showed that the Cisco Unified Access Solution will NOT negatively impact network and application performance.

Myth 3: The Cisco Unified Access solution is complex and expensive to adopt.

False. The Cisco UnifiedAccess solution is rooted in delivering One Policy, One Management, One Network to simplify the network infrastructure, how it is managed and how policies are defined and enforced.

This approach to unifiedaccess combines wired and wireless functionality into a single Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch for the same price as previous generation 3750-x switches, adding additional functionality with consistent intelligence and operations across the wired and wireless network by moving wireless controller functionality to the access switch.

The Cisco Unified Access Solution reduces operational costs by minimizing the amount of time needed to manage the environment and define policies. Cisco Prime Infrastructure reduces the number of tools and personnel required to plan, configure, deploy and optimize theenvironment. The Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) continues to improve operational efficiency by providing centralized policy definition and enforcement. Cisco ISE also shifts the process of on-boarding devices from IT to the end user while maintain security and compliance by requiring end user to accept the proper policy and approved configuration before joining the network. By reducing the amount of coaching needed by IT, personnel is freed up to focus on more strategic business driving activities.

Charles Statman, Manager, Cisco Lab Services Global Team says, “Cisco Prime Infrastructure has lowered our operating expenses by 60 percent while improving the satisfaction of our user community!”

With a conscious focus on mid-market organizations or organizations with several branches or  lean IT, Cisco is able to make simple, secure, cloud managed networks available to our global customer base through the acquisition of the Meraki cloud-based solution. The Meraki cloud-managed solution complements the Cisco Enterprise Network solution by combining performance, security, and management capabilities in an easy-to-use, cloudmanaged solution.

Ramon Moral, Burger King franchise owner, states, “I saw that Meraki’s solution was very cost-effective, and it seemed so straightforward that I could install and manage it myself.”

Paul DeBeasi recently posted a blog discussing how the agile model brought by the Meraki acquisition allows IT to deploy new software to 100’s of customers [or end users] or 1000’s of devices overnight.

As part of the overall Cisco Unified Access solution can provide organizations of every size with  – whether it’s midmarket, organizations with a lean IT staff, or large highly distributed enterprises with the platform they need to capture today’s cloud and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) transformations and enable business innovations. With new levels of flexibility, simplifiedmanagement, and policy management, this flexible and comprehensive portfolio can help IT create the right solution for the right experience and the right total cost of ownership (TCO).

Combined, Cisco Unified Access enables IT to prioritize traffic, deploy services and effectively secure the network across both the wired and wireless infrastructure. To learn more about the Cisco Unified Access Solution visit us at www.cisco.com/go/unifiedaccess

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