BARCELONA, Spain, Cisco Networkers - January 22, 2008 - Cisco® today announced new products and services that extend its Application Network Services (ANS) portfolio to enable end-to-end application delivery networks. The company also announced that it has validated enterprise software application performance over these networks with the support of industry-leading software vendors, including Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. The new offerings make the network a highly efficient platform for application delivery -- accelerating and securing business-critical applications while dramatically improving end-user application experience and productivity. Application delivery networks mark the next milestone in Cisco's Data Center 3.0 initiative (http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/prod_072407b.html), which extends the benefits of the data center to the connected enterprise.
Announcements today include:
- A new Cisco Data Center Assurance Program for Applications (DCAP for Applications) that tests and validates industry-leading enterprise software applications over Cisco application delivery network infrastructure. For commentary on Cisco's application delivery network strategy from executives at Microsoft, Oracle and SAP: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/ekits/exec_commentary.pdf
- New ANS products and services, including the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) 4710 Appliance, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Mobile, Cisco ACE XML Gateway Release 5.2, and Cisco Advanced Services for application delivery.
"The intelligent network continues to grow as the platform for application delivery," said George Kurian, vice president and general manager for Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit. "Cisco's application delivery networks will drive significant productivity gains, and transform the role of the network in enabling applications to deliver bottom-line returns for customers."
Cisco ACE: Virtualized Application Switching and Acceleration for Data Centers
The Cisco ACE 4710 Appliance is a powerful application delivery and optimization solution for today's data centers. The appliance helps ensure business continuity by enhancing application availability, improves end user productivity by accelerating applications, and reduces operating costs by helping to minimize data center power and cooling needs, contributing to "green" data center initiatives. Like the ACE Module, the ACE 4710 Appliance uses a unique, virtualized architecture to isolate application and server farms, as well as speed application deployments.
The Cisco ACE 4710 addresses smaller- and medium-scale enterprise deployments, supporting up to 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) of application traffic and 20 virtual devices in a single appliance. Featuring Cisco-patented FlashForward acceleration technology, the product helps eliminate the network delays associated with embedded Web objects such as JavaScript files - resulting in up to 500 percent faster Web application performance.
In addition to introducing the ACE 4710 Appliance, Cisco has upgraded the software for its ACE XML Gateway, which processes Extensible Markup Language (XML) transactions on the network for service-oriented architectures and applications, including Web 2.0 services.
Cisco WAAS Mobile: Speeding Application Performance to Mobile Users
Cisco WAAS Mobile extends the capabilities of the award-winning Cisco WAAS product family by providing application acceleration of any Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)-based application operating in a wide-area network (WAN) environment to mobile and remote workers. Consisting of client desktop and server-based software, the solution can be easily installed without reconfiguring existing desktop clients, file or application servers, or network infrastructure, and preserves existing network security policies.
Dallas, Texas-based Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS), a premier provider of global IT and business process outsourcing, has deployed both Cisco WAAS and ACE internally and also deploys Cisco ANS products at client sites, such as Scott's Miracle-Gro.
"Cisco has a broad range of application delivery technology that provides greater productivity to end users and accelerates business opportunities for our company, as well as our clients," said Tom Gibson, ACS director of business development. "Our ability to rapidly and reliably deliver key applications from our data centers to a wide range of end users, whether mobile or branch office, gives ACS and our clients a critical business advantage. Because Cisco tightly integrates application delivery capabilities into the overall network, we can more easily deploy, scale and manage application delivery as we and our clients continue to grow."
To complete its application delivery networking offering, Cisco also is launching a new Application Profiling Service, a custom design and support service that helps customers profile their applications' performance, security and availability status, and recommends application delivery technologies to achieve resulting IT and business goals.
Price and Availability
The Cisco ACE 4710 Appliance is currently shipping with a promotional starting price of US $15,995. Cisco WAAS Mobile is currently shipping with a price of US $5,000 for the server software and $8,750 for a 25-concurrent-user license; larger concurrent user licenses are also available. The Cisco Cisco ACE XML Gateway Release 5.2 is currently shipping and available at no charge for Cisco SmartNet customers. The Cisco Application Profiling Service is also available now.
For more information about Cisco ANS Products and Services:
Cisco Application Networking Services
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/contnetw/index.html
Cisco Data Center Assurance Program for Applications:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns751/networking_solutions_sub_program_home.html
Cisco Services for Application Networking Services:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6894/serv_group_home.html