MUMBAI, India, March 29, 2010 - Cisco today announced an extensive deployment of its next-generation network architecture at the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE), the country's largest stock exchange in terms of daily turnover and number of trades. The comprehensive solution comprises Cisco's world-class routing, switching, security and core technologies designed to help ensure high network availability, boost network security and expand NSE's reach in India.  The announcement represents a key milestone for Cisco India, which gains the distinction of being the exclusive networking technology provider to the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd.

As part of this deployment, Cisco has provided high-level design and installation of a complex three-tier network architecture with Cisco® 7600 Series Routers, Cisco Integrated Services Routers and Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Series Switches with Cisco Firewall and Intrusion Prevention System modules. The system is designed to provide enhanced security, intelligent load balancing for business continuity, better collaboration and integration across 3,000 NSE member locations. With Internet Protocol migration, larger bandwidth and higher throughput are expected to be available for NSE members, allowing them to consolidate their technology infrastructure, thereby reducing information technology costs and at the same time reducing the transaction cost for the end investor.

Supporting quotes

• Mr. Ravi Apte, chief technology officer, NSE, said:

"At NSE, the trust of our investor community is critical to our growth and success. As one of the largest stock exchanges in the world today, we wanted to invest in an intelligent and highly secure network architecture that would support the large scale of our financial transactions. We trust and value Cisco's proven expertise in networking solutions. Our decision to shift to Cisco's trusted Intelligent Network platform was primarily driven by the need for a highly secure, resilient and collaborative network infrastructure. With this relationship, we will be able to efficiently support the needs of our investors and accelerate our business growth."

• Commenting on the deployment, Mr. Anil Bhasin, senior vice president, West for Cisco India, said,

"It is a matter of great pride for us to work with NSE, which has always been a technology innovator with IT being the key differentiator. In this project, NSE needed extremely high benchmarks on resiliency, availability and latency to build the next-generation trading platform. We adopted an architectural approach to design a platform that would address key business imperatives and technology challenges outlined by NSE. Working jointly with NSE, we created a unique "build, own, operate" model that will help NSE focus on its core competencies and be able to embrace the best practices provided by Cisco."

• With the outcome of the nationwide deployment, Mr. N Muralidharan, CEO of NSE Infotech Services Ltd, said,

"Given NSE's leadership position in the business and technology innovation space, it was important for NSE to keep innovating within the technology space."

Supporting Resources

• For more information on the National Stock Exchange of India, visit:
  http://www.nseindia.com/
• For more information on Cisco's solutions for financial services, visit:
  http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/financial/index.html