SAN JOSE, Calif., - March 17, 1997 - Cisco Systems today announceda technology roadmap and several products that allow large corporatecustomers to enable Web access to legacy applications on mainframecomputers.
The new CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap, outlines Cisco's plan for developingtechnology that provides secure, flexible and highly efficientconnectivity between corporate intranets and data center applicationsfor IBM's System Network Architecture (SNA). Cisco's intranet roadmap isbased on customers' growing requirements for Internet and intranetapplications.
"The goal of companies evaluating Internet-ready host access solutionsis to enhance the dissemination and use of host-based informationwithout sacrificing reliability, security and manageability," said CindySantisario Borovick, industry analyst from International DataCorporation. "Cisco's strategy provides corporations with a foundationto integrate the mainframe with the Internet."
The CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap outlines the development of futureproducts as well as enhancements to existing products in three majorareas:
Security -- End-to-end encryption and network-based authentication,authorization and single policy for secure logon to access new andexisting legacy applications on mainframe systems;
Scalability -- Enhanced network protocols which provide more efficientuse of network endpoints and mainframe through offloading certainfunctions;
Fault Tolerance -- Load balancing and redundancy in the network and atthe mainframe to provide resiliency to failures of a single component.
"Many of our SNA customers feared they would have to spend millions ofdollars to port the functionality of SNA applications to intranetcapable platforms," said Nick Francis, director of marketing for Cisco'sInterWorks Business Unit. "With our new intranet roadmap, Cisco has astrategy that changes IBM internetworking. Now we can deliverapplications to the desktop, rather than just delivering data."
New CiscoBlue Products to Market
Cisco is announcing several new products, WebAccess for S/390 and CiscoIOS(TM) software for S/390. WebAccess is a product family that includesOC://WebConnect and OpenVista.
OC://WebConnect is a software product that provides superior, secureconnectivity from a Web browser to a mainframe through any Java capablebrowser. This software recently won both Interop's Best of Show productin April 1996 and Data Communications, Hot Product of the Year inJanuary 1997.
OpenVista is an integrated visual development environment. It providesa new, Web-style graphical user interface that is more visuallyappealing for the end user than the traditional "green on black screen"for intranet applications. WebAccess for S/390 is a result of analliance between Cisco and OpenConnect Systems.
Cisco IOS software for S/390 provides TCP/IP applications to run in thedata center with the same reliability and security of existing SNAapplications. It includes features of Cisco IOS software together withTCP Assist, which moves functions out of the TCP/IP stack and on to thechannel interface processor (CIP) card in a Cisco 7000 family router toreduce host mainframe cycles. Cisco jointly developed Cisco IOSsoftware for S/390 with Interlink Computer Sciences.
Applications of CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap
Corporations can use CiscoBlue intranet technologies to enable theirmainframe to support Internet applications such as networked commerceand networked customer support. Additionally, with CiscoBlue intranettechnologies, corporations can deploy existing legacy applicationsthrough the intranet, without any disruption to the application. Sometypical intranet applications that improve employee productivity includeon-line registration for medical benefits, job training and job posting.
The CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap complements the CiscoBlue ConvergenceRoadmap, announced in 1996, that focused on converging SNA and LANnetworks. When combined, the two roadmaps provide a vision for thefuture and a phased migration from the current enterprise network to thecorporate intranet without major equipment changes.
New Network Management Solutions
Cisco also announced CiscoWorks Blue Internetwork Performance Monitor(IPM), which isolates performance problems, locates bottlenecks,diagnoses latency and performs trend analysis within an IBMinternetwork. IPM provides proactive network management to increaseoperator productivity, ease problem determination, and increase networkavailability.
An updated release of CiscoWorks Blue Mapsand SNA View are also nowavailable. Maps and SNA View provide SNA and TCP/IP network managementfrom a single console. The new release offers enhanced features such asa Web browser interface, Year 2000 compliance, usability enhancementsand additional platform support.
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News andinformation are available at http://www.cisco.com.
Cisco IOS and Cisco Systems are trademarks, and Cisco and theCisco logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. All othertrademarks, service marks, registered trademarks or registered servicemarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respectiveowners.
