enterprise networks

Guest Blogger: Pratap Pereira, Distinguished Engineer, Enterprise Networking Group. Pratap sets the long-term engineering direction for IOS and IOS-XE at Cisco. He was a founding engineer of IOS-XE and has seen it grow from the first commits of a new foundational infrastructure for routing platforms…

There was a time when the network was thought of as a bottleneck to innovation. It is the weakest link in the chain. Its rigid, inflexible and labor-laden infrastructure inhibits growth for the business, productivity for its workforce, and diminishes the experiences for customers. Those days are lon…

Virtualizing your network functions and decoupling them from specific hardware can help you simplify operations, automate service delivery, and make money more quickly. Find out how to do it the right way in our latest Fundamentals installment. At one level, NFV (Network Function Virtualization) is…

What comes to mind when you hear the term Network Functions Virtualization(NFV)?  Until recently, at least in my mind, the answers were ‘Service Providers’, ‘vCPE’, ‘Cloud’. If you don’t know what NFV is, read this blog post first and come back. But why does NFV have to be exclusively for service pr…

As a long time networking veteran, I’ve watched our industry change and respond to a wide variety of disruptive changes. I remember PictureTel ISDN videoconferences on the IBM PC. Then came  IP video conferencing in the early ’90s.  Things picked up 1991, when Microsoft launched Windows Media…

It’s no secret, networks, in general, are more challenging to manage than before. As networks increase in complexity to embrace new business innovations, they may require more supporting devices, which, in turn, can result in even more alerts to manage. If you’re a network manager or security office…

Interop is just around the corner. I am sure there will be plenty of thought provoking content about how to transform IT, compelling demos, and SDN everywhere. But let’s not forget the reality of most IT organizations today. The majority face the fact that digital innovation is overwhelming their en…

Do you recognize this situation? The network is growing and becoming more complex, but it is managed by a collection of narrowly focused management tools that can’t keep up. This is the situation we faced in Cisco IT. Our previous network management systems were a mixed bag: A few Cisco products her…

I’m very excited and proud to announce that Gartner has placed Cisco into the Leaders quadrant in the Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization. We believe this accomplishment reflects the substantial progress Cisco has made in developing and executing on its vision for the Cisco Intelligent WAN (IWAN) wi…