Cisco's 'Empowered Branch' Drives Business Productivity, Collaboration, Operational Simplicity With New Routing and Switching Platforms

Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today marks the next evolution of its Empowered Branch framework with the introduction of new products and service innovations designed to enable greater business productivity and operational efficiency in enterprise branch offices. Collectively, the new products and services allow customers to standardize their branch architecture on a consistent set of security, unified communications, application acceleration and wireless services while optimizing branch performance and cost. Designed to facilitate interoperability, these additions enhance the overall branch experience to help lower the barriers to entry for wide service adoption in the branch and reduce the total cost of operations. These new innovations enhance Cisco's successful branch offerings as demonstrated by the Cisco Integrated Services Router and Cisco Catalyst® 2960 Series Switches reaching worldwide sales milestones of 3 million and 1 million, respectively.

Today's new Cisco Empowered Branch offerings include:

-- Cisco 1861 Integrated Services Router (ISR). Offers a compact all-in-one unified communications solution and highly secure routing platform enabling anytime, anywhere access to business-critical information resulting in more effective communications and collaboration.

-- Cisco Catalyst® 2960 Series Switches with LAN Lite Cisco IOS® Software. Reduces the network total cost of ownership by simplifying the migration from non-intelligent hubs and unmanaged switches to fully scalable managed switches with entry-level security, quality of service (QoS) and availability.

-- Cisco Intrusion Prevention System Advanced Integration Module (IPS AIM). Scales security performance and threat-prevention, helping branch offices defend critical business processes against attack and disruption while protecting privacy and supporting policy and regulatory compliance.

-- Cisco IOS Performance Routing (PfR) and High-End Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Network Module. Accelerates business-critical applications and minimizes WAN bandwidth expenses with application-aware routing and WAN traffic optimization.

-- Wireless LAN Controller support for IEEE 802.11n. Ensures smooth migration path to new wireless technologies and services, while preserving existing investment.

-- Cisco Unified Messaging Gateway. Cost-effectively scales Cisco Unity Express, Cisco Unity and legacy voice messaging services to very large organizations.

"With the emergence of new business applications and a more collaborative global business environment, our customers are putting a greater emphasis on their remote offices," said Marie Hattar, senior director of network systems at Cisco. "Cisco Empowered Branch allows them to take advantage of new business opportunities by providing them with a network platform that addresses all their application and service needs today, yet continuously evolves to provide service innovations required for the future."

Enhancing Communications Capabilities to Enrich Business Productivity and Collaboration

The Cisco 1861 Integrated Services Router is a simple, easy-to-manage platform specifically developed for small enterprise branch offices. It combines Unified Communications and a highly secure router solution for up to eight users. Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express 4.2 and Cisco Unity Express 2.3 and Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) 4.2 are options for the Cisco 1861 ISR helping streamline operations and lower total operating costs.

The Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series Switches with LAN Lite Cisco IOS Software combines scalable and simplified management with entry-level security, QoS and availability features. These allow for reliable Fast Ethernet connectivity for small wiring-closet and branch office networks. The new Cisco Catalyst 2960 LAN Lite switches lower the network total cost of ownership by simplifying network configuration, monitoring, and troubleshooting through capabilities and tools such as time domain reflectometry, Cisco Network Assistant, and CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution while enabling an easy migration path to full Cisco IOS capabilities, as needed.

Integrating Advanced Security into the Cisco ISR

With the ever-increasing complexity and sophistication of security threats, every point in the network can be at risk. The Cisco Intrusion Prevention System Advanced Integration Module (IPS AIM) for the Cisco modular ISR is designed to identify, classify and help stop malicious traffic to protect remote branch networks from threats originating from the Internet and to reduce wide-area network (WAN) link overload from infected hosts at the branch. Also recently announced was the Network Admission Control (NAC) network module for Cisco 2800 and 3800 ISRs which allows smaller branches to enforce security policies. Together, these advanced security modules help growing businesses future-proof their networks.

Accelerating Applications and Minimizing WAN Bandwidth Expenses with Application Intelligence

Businesses that use multiple WAN connections face complex implementation challenges when trying to optimize traffic across multiple WAN links, while maintaining maximum network availability and application performance. The new Cisco Performance Routing (PfR) software allows organizations to intelligently optimize network routes by monitoring the Internet traffic, performance bottlenecks and overall conditions and match them to application needs. The new high-end Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Network Module (NME-WAE 522) for the Cisco 3800 Series Integrated Services Router enables customers to consolidate costly branch servers and storage into data centers, and deploy new applications centrally while still offering LAN-like performance for remote users. Used together, these two new solutions take applications and network optimization to a new level.