SAN JOSE, Calif., January 16, 2007 - With today's real-time business demands, customers need a rapid and reliable means to activate intelligent services across the entire network. Also, with the move toward a Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) within companies, the consistency of services across the network is critical to networking success.

Cisco® today announced a new approach to Cisco IOS® Software deployment and management that enables customers to:

• Speed deployment and more completely roll out new Cisco IOS Software Activation feature sets across customers' global networks
• Centrally and more accurately manage and track software and license compliance
• Easily and rapidly conduct software compliance audits to meet mandatory regulations without negatively affecting network operations

These new capabilities are delivered to customers through Cisco IOS Software, which has a full complement of services that are pre-installed on new Cisco hardware platforms, allowing network operators to electronically activate or "turn on" the desired upgrade feature set and new capabilities when they choose. Tools and enhancements to Cisco management systems are also available to customers to ease the tracking and managing of Cisco software and licenses.

"With Cisco IOS Software Activation, Cisco is emphasizing software's important role in delivering the best possible experience on a flexible network services platform," said Marie Hattar, senior director of Cisco Network Systems Marketing. "Better software deployment and management practices drive operational excellence and simplicity in customers' networks."

Cisco today also announced Cisco License Manager, a highly secure client- and server-based application that manages Cisco IOS Software Activation and licenses. Cisco License Manager automates the workflow associated with Cisco IOS Software activation through its wizard-based graphical user interface (GUI) and can be used for large network deployments of up to 10,000 devices. With this free downloadable software tool, customers have ready access to an exact inventory of installed software and activated Cisco IOS Software feature sets. This serves to rapidly enable new service deployments through software upgrades and to help ensure service consistency across the company's network, easing troubleshooting and speeding nonintrusive software compliance audits.

By standardizing how network software is managed, customers gain a consistent mode for acquiring Cisco IOS Software updates through their SMARTnet® service contracts. Under a SMARTnet contract, customers are entitled to all new Cisco IOS Software releases within a feature set, anytime. Having activated a new feature set, customers must purchase a SMARTnet contract to ensure service coverage for the newly activated Cisco IOS Software feature set. By applying one normalized method for managing their networking software, customers will gain in operation efficiency and effectiveness.

Pricing and Availability

The initial implementation focuses on Cisco IOS Software operating on new Cisco product lines to be introduced in early 2007. This new approach to Cisco IOS Software deployment and management has no effect on software prices for comparable feature sets.