The Foundation for a Business Relevant Network

With the growing influx of new mobile devices, connected things, bandwidth intensive applications and more data, the network is more relevant to business success than ever before.  Back in June of 2012, Cisco saw that we needed to move away from multiple network systems loosely linked together to an agile and simple infrastructure, streamlined policy and centralized management would be needed to support new business demands. We called it Cisco Unified Access and we aligned the solution to three pillars: One Network, One Policy and One Management.

For the last few years, we have focused on delivering new products and functionality under this Unified Access model. Below is a timeline of products released as part of the Unified Access framework. Cisco lead the way in delivering gigabit 802.11ac Wi-Fi., converged wireless control in access switches and through the acquisition of Meraki – a complete cloud-managed network solution.

The timeline above doesn’t represent every feature and function we have delivered, but it shows Cisco’s commitment to this Unified Access model, both from a cloud-managed and on-premise solution perspective.

Today, Cisco is announcing a number of new products and new functionality to existing products that will help mobilize the workforce, secure the business and increase IT agility. The announcement includes the following:

One Network: Mobilize the workforce with an expanded indoor and outdoor gigabit Wi-Fi portfolio

Cisco Aironet 1700 Series Access Point delivers business ready 802.11ac functionality to small to medium businesses

Cisco Aironet 1570 Series Access Point delivers the most powerful outdoor 802.11ac access points to the market with HDX technology

One Policy: Protect the business with secure, streamlined guest, BYOD and VPN access

Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) v1.3 streamlines the administration, management, and deployment of both Guest Access and BYOD with the ability to easily customize in minutes the look and feel to better align with your organization’s brand and workflow.

Cisco AnyConnect 4.0 allows IT to control VPN Bandwidth and minimize risk by enabling per application VPN to selectively choose which applications and application traffic are tunneled through the corporate network.

One Management: Making IT more Agile with better visibility and control

Cisco Prime Infrastructure v2.2 provides more efficient workflows with network topology visualization, a centralized view of multiple Cisco Prime Infrastructure instances with the new Cisco Prime Infrastructure Operations Center, and expanded Day One lifecycle management that includes the new ISR/ASR portfolio and WLAN devices

Cloud-Managed: Increased management and control of mobile devices

Cisco Meraki System Manager Enterprise e is a cloud-based solution for Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM). Seamlessly integrate mobile devices into data-sensitive networks while maintaining ease of use and simplified device management. Business-critical features built into Systems Manager Enterprise include security compliance, network policy integration, mobile data security, and integration with Cisco ISE

These new products and additional functionality are designed to meet the needs of today’s fast IT by simplifying the network while increasing performance, easing how access policy is deployed and providing granular visibility into the network, the applications and user devices. For more on the Unified Access solution, visit www.cisco.com/go/unifiedaccess.

For more on the latest launched at Interop New York 2014:

Launch Portal

Blog: Purpose-built for the Intelligent WAN: Get a First Look at the New ISR4K Series

Blog: Enabling the Branch for the Mobile Cloud Era