business, not the limitations of their
technology,” said Osama Al-Zoubi, Chief
Technology Officer, Cisco Middle East
and Africa.
“Customers want to deploy applications
and manage data across a range of
diverse platforms, from on-premises to
cloud-based. That is why we are taking
the ‘centre’ out of the data centre. Today,
Cisco is helping our customers expand
their reach into every cloud, every data
centre and every branch.”
New data centre innovation
Cisco is delivering on its new data centre
vision in three ways:
• • ACI available in AWS and
Azure: Application Centric
Infrastructure (ACI) is Cisco’s intent-
based networking solution for the
data centre. It delivers operational
simplicity, application agility and
protection in the data centre – all
delivered in a uniquely open approach
that integrates with all hypervisors
and container frameworks on which
applications are deployed. With ACI
Anywhere, that journey extends ACI
to any workload, any location and any
cloud. Virtual ACI already supports
bare metal clouds and remote edge
locations. And now with the new
Cloud ACI capabilities, Cisco extends
automation, management and security
to AWS and Microsoft Azure by fully
integrating with their Infrastructure as
a Service (IaaS) environments.
Cisco has announced a new architecture that extends the data centre to everywhere that
data lives and everywhere applications are deployed
New data centre
enterprise agreement
Osama Al-Zoubi, Chief Technology
Officer, Cisco Middle East and Africa
www.intelligentdatacentres.com
Cisco is making it easier than ever
for customers to buy its data centre
technology with the new Cisco Enterprise
Agreement. Customers can now take
advantage of a single standardised three
or five-year licensing agreement across
seven suites, including ACI, HyperFlex,
Intersight and Tetration.
The Cisco EA provides customers with
choice in deployment models and license
portability across physical, virtual or
cloud deployments. It lets customers
have access to what they need, when and
where they need it, available from their
preferred channel partner.
Cross-domain integrations
Cisco is extending ACI to the application
layer and the campus. Now, ACI
integrates with AppDynamics to
correlate app performance with
network health.
It also integrates with Cisco DNA Centre
and the Identity Services Engine to
deliver end-to-end identity-based policy
and access control between users or
devices on campus and applications or
data anywhere.
These integrations are the latest step on
Cisco’s journey to create the industry’s
first multi-domain architecture.
The goal is to reinvent enterprise
infrastructure as a unified system that
unlocks innovation by simplifying the
unprecedented complexity of modern IT. ◊
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• • HyperFlex for branch: Deploying
hyperconverged infrastructure to
multiple sites in order to provide
distributed computing at a global
scale can be a complex task.
HyperFlex with Cisco Intersight now
allows customers to seamlessly
extend computing and storage from
their core data centres to the edges
of their operations. It does this with
flexible scalability and the unmatched
ease-of-use of cloud-powered
systems management. HyperFlex now
delivers data centre-class application
performance for digital innovation
in branch offices and remote sites,
enabling analytics and intelligent
services at the enterprise edge.
• • CloudCenter Suite: The
operational complexity and
burgeoning cost of managing
applications across multiple public
and private clouds is a growing
challenge for IT teams. The new
CloudCenter Suite now features full
application lifecycle management,
greater workflow automation
and significantly enhanced cost
optimisation and governance. Finally,
the new suite is also much easier to
consume, with simplified deployment,
tiered pricing and a new SaaS offering.