Slow and Steady Doesn’t Win This Digital Business Race

When I talk to network professionals, I routinely ask them about the one part of their job that keeps them up at night. The thing that consistently comes up is their network speed required for delivering a consistent reliable user experience: or specifically, the lack of it. They usually follow up this admission by saying that their network is not always slow, but the rate at which the business introduces new applications and new ways of leveraging technologies is definitely trending towards the network not being able to keep pace.

I know exactly what they’re talking about. Unfortunately, with the way things are trending, going with the idea of, “It has always worked, why change it?” is becoming less of a viable solution.

In the coming years, thanks to the accelerated pace of BYOD/CYOD and IoT adoption, this trend will be extremely important for IT to address. In fact, according to the Virtual Mobile Networking Index, wireless traffic will increase ten-fold by 2019. Not only will more devices be connecting to the network, but also they will access a lot more business critical applications requiring performance, reliability, and user experience than ever before.

Sorry network pros, but your legacy network’s performance and reliability are going to be scrutinized more than ever.

The good news is: help is on the way. With the baker’s dozen of products introduced by Cisco today, establishing the right network foundation for demanding networks will be easier than ever before. Whether your network is in a large enterprise or one that’s on the smaller side of things, Cisco offers a number of next-generation products for both our on-premises managed and cloud-managed solution.

Cisco Aironet 2800 and 3800 Access Points: The industry’s most versatile access points can meet any use case the business throws at you. Not only does it adhere to the 802.11ac Wave 2- standard, but the brilliant engineers at Cisco have built on the latest standard to improve network efficiency and end-user experience. With groundbreaking innovations such as: Flexible Radio Assignment that automatically adapts to changes in the environment, and smart antenna ports that automatically recognize and configure antennas the Cisco Aironet 2800 and 3800 makes management of the wireless network easier. These are added to the existing High Density Experience (HDX) functionality including optimized roaming, Cisco CleanAir and Cisco ClientLink which have been updated to support upcoming 802.11ac Wave 2 devices..

Cisco Catalyst Supervisor 6T for Catalyst 6K Series and Catalyst Supervisor 8L-E for Catalyst 4K Series: a new supervisor for existing 6K deployments that delivers twice the performance of our existing product this allows our Cisco Catalyst 6500 and 6800 customers to realize the full potential of those systems with the most throughput ever available. The Catalyst Supervisor 8L-E provides higher performance for existing 4K and is an upgrade to 6L-E and 7L-E within Cisco largest number of deployed platform

Cisco Catalyst 3650-Mini: with the same functionality as the 3650 family of switches, the 3650 Mini is lower depth form factor, 24/48 port GE PoE wired/wireless switch. Proving that speed is not just for larger companies, this is the perfect choice for organizations that operate in smaller spaces. This is also a logical upgrade to our widely successful 3570v2 switch with a similar form factor, but adds the addition of Gigabit speed ports and converged access functionality.

ASR 1006-X and ASR 1009-X: with the influx of bandwidth-intensive apps such as cloud/SaaS and HD videos and the proliferation of mobile devices stressing the network edge, elastic scalability and speed are of top considerations. Cisco ASR 1006-X and ASR 1009-X provide 99.999-percent network availability in a fully redundant and modular design with up to 100Gbps in a 6RU form for mid-and-large enterprises and 200 Gbps in a 9RU form for service providers. These x-chassis come with a true pay-as-you-grow licensing – meaning when more throughput is needed, simply activate the appropriate software license. Software upgrades are done in-service. No hardware upgrade needed. No scheduled downtime. The x-chassis goals: high availability and resiliency.

Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) Cloud: CMX Cloud is an easy-to-use cloud-delivered mobility solution to help you get more value out of your wireless network. It’s a simple way to instantly gain customer insights and deliver customer engagement with minimal upfront CAPEX cost.

WAAS software release 6.2 (W6.2R): for uncompromised user experience, application experience is key. Not just on-prem apps, but also apps via Direct Internet Access (DIA). W6.2R introduces enhanced HTTPs optimization, including Apple iOS updates (read Apple and Cisco partnership), Windows updates, Google Plays, and YouTube videos and encrypted SMBv3 via local caching at the branch. Highly distributed enterprises can scale Akamai Connect up to 6,000 connections without the associated CapEx costs with W6.2R new single-sided deployment capability.

New from our Meraki Cloud-Managed Offering:

Meraki 802.11ac Wave 2 Access Point: high-end, cloud-managed access point that is the first cloud-managed AP that supports the 802.11ac Wave 2 standard. With a Wave 2-compliant access point, you’ll be able to meet the growing demand for faster network speeds.

Meraki New MS Switches: two stackable, 1 Gb/s fiber aggregation switches that features 16+2 or 32+4 1Gb/s ports as well as hot swappable power supplies and fans.

Meraki New MX Security Appliance: The MX65 and MX65W have 12 Ethernet ports—including two ports with built-in PoE+. Easy to deploy and manage, the MX65 has more ports than its predecessor and with the PoE capability allows for more flexibility.

Meraki New System Manager Features: these features provide functionality enhancements to Android, Mac OS X and Windows 10 platforms. The Android version ads app containerization and all three platforms receive more configurable restrictions and software app installers.

With these new solutions all aiding the reliability and performance of your network, the next time I ask a network administrator about the part of their job they dislike the most, perhaps the answer will be: “Everyone keeps forgetting to refill the coffee pot.”