SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 1, 2001 Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced that joint interoperability testing of the Cisco ONS 15540 in the IBM eServer z900 Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS) environments is in the final stages, with IBM expecting to fully qualify the Cisco ONS 15540 in September.
The interoperability test is being conducted to demonstrate that the Cisco ONS 15540, Cisco's highest-end dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system, can support the required GDPS storage and mainframe protocols over metropolitan-area fiber optics networks. Included in the testing will be support for IBM's Peer to Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) software on the IBM Enterprise Storage ServerTM (code named "Shark"). The combined high-performance DWDM and GDPS solution can offer Cisco's and IBM's mutual customers the highest availability for their mission-critical applications and minimize the impact of planned and unplanned outages.
"Continuous availability of systems and a near-transparent disaster recovery process are key features of a GDPS system" said Rich Lechner, vice president of Marketing, IBM eServer zSeries. "With its ability to transport virtually any type of networking, storage, or legacy systems traffic, Cisco's ONS 15540 combined with IBM's GDPS architecture can give our customers a powerful solution for their high-speed, high-availability networking requirements."
"Achieving GDPS qualification is a critical milestone in the roadmap for the Cisco ONS 15540," said Carl Engineer, senior director of Marketing at Cisco's Metropolitan Services Business Unit. "It demonstrates to customers that the Cisco ONS 15540 is both powerful and versatile enough to meet the stringent metropolitan area networking requirements for large systems interconnectivity."
The Cisco ONS 15540 and GDPS qualification is the latest project in the Cisco/IBM alliance, the goal of which is to deliver to customers the most comprehensive, end-to-end information technology solutions in the industry. As part of this qualification process, IBM Global Services (IGS) will provide full deployment support of GDPS systems including turnkey implementations of the Cisco ONS 15540.
About Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at www.cisco.com.
