SAN JOSE, Calif., December 4, 2001 - Cisco Systems, Inc., the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet, today announced the successful completion of the first phase of interoperability testing between the Cisco ONS 15540 Extended Services Platform and the IBM eServer z900 Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex (GDPS*) system, which will provide customers with high availability for transactional data and mission-critical applications over metropolitan area-based optical networks.
Based on this testing, IBM has qualified the Cisco ONS 15540, Cisco's metro dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) platform, as fully capable of supporting connectivity between two GDPS sites at distances up to 40km over optical networks that do not utilize optical amplifiers. Additional Cisco and IBM joint testing is in progress to evaluate interoperability at greater distances in amplified DWDM networks.
Cisco announced the qualification as part of the Cisco COMET (Complete Optical Multiservice Edge & Transport) initiative, which Cisco also announced today (see press release at http://newsroom.cisco.com/). Cisco COMET is the next phase of the Cisco IP+Optical strategy and defines Cisco's leadership and innovations in four optical networking realms: photonics, packets, protocols, and provisioning.
IBM's Parallel Sysplex* technology, hardware, and automation software provides customers with a high-availability solution where multiple mainframe processors are tightly coupled, thus providing seamless failover at the application level. GDPS extends the Parallel Sysplex technology over dark fiber, adding distance separation to further enhance customer demand for continuous operations. The Cisco ONS 15540 is a high-performance, protocol-independent DWDM system that can transport a wide range of data, legacy, and storage networking traffic over metropolitan-area fiber optic networks.
"From the IT consumers' perspective, successful interoperability tests involving multiple vendors are an important consideration in most or all purchasing decisions," said Chris Nicoll, vice president at Current Analysis, a networking industry research firm. "For something as business critical as IBM and Cisco's GDPS/DWDM solution, it's essential that technology vendors prove that it can pass the rigors of a real-world deployment and deliver the features as promised."
The overall goal of this ongoing Cisco and IBM GDPS/DWDM integration testing program is to create a fully tested, end-to-end, high availability e-business solution that both enterprises and service providers can deploy in their network infrastructure. As part of the phase one tests, Cisco and IBM sought to establish mainframe channel requirements and technical guidance to properly design ESCON* and FiCON* interfaces for the Cisco ONS 15540. Other specific components and features involved in the tests included the IBM Sysplex Timer* (ETR/CLO), Inter System Coupling (ISC1 and ISC3), Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy (PPRC) and Extended Remote Copy (XRC) software.
"The success we've shown so far in our joint testing indicates that Cisco and IBM are well underway in delivering powerful business continuity solutions," said Rich Lechner, vice president of Sales and Marketing, IBM eServer zSeries. "We are working closely together to offer high availability for mission-critical applications through advanced optical networking and advanced technology for redundant systems, minimizing the impact of planned and unplanned network outages."
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. By combining Cisco ONS 15540 capability with IBM Networking Services for optical networking, customers will benefit from reduced costs by allowing integrated operations for disperse data centers in a secure and reliable manner across a metropolitan area network.
"This successful qualification exemplifies the value of Cisco's close working relationship with IBM," said Carl Engineer, senior director of marketing for Cisco's Metropolitan Services Business Unit. "This is not merely a test of two point products to make sure they work together. Cisco and IBM are paving the way in building resilient optical networks that incorporate the very best technologies and expertise of our respective companies."
About Cisco's Complete Optical Multiservice Edge and Transport Portfolio
The Cisco Complete Optical Multiservice Edge and Transport (COMET) product line offers maximum service velocity, density, variety, and capacity, building the foundation to accelerate IP+Optical networking. Supporting TDM, Ethernet, IP, Storage, and Wavelength services over SONET and DWDM with integrated bandwidth management and end-to-end provisioning, the Cisco COMET portfolio offers efficient, unprecedented flexibility and capacity. With the Cisco COMET portfolio, enterprises and service providers drive profitability and accelerate IP+Optical networking.
*The IBM eServer brand consists of the established IBM e-business logo with the following descriptive term "server" following it. The IBM e-business logo, zSeries, z900 , GDPS, FiCON, ESCON and Parallel Sysplex.are trademarks or registered trademarks of the IBM Corporation.
