Cisco takes routers into the cloud

Cisco is continuing to push the boundaries of its Borderless Networks portfolio, today claiming the industry’s first routing solution to run virtual servers, eliminating the need for a separate server.

The Cisco Unified Communications System (UCS) Express solution extends datacentre management capabilities into its wide area network (WAN) optimisation solution, Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), based on Cisco’s second generation Integrated Services Router (ISR G2), and IOS Software.

Cisco UCS Express allows customers to run VMware vSphere Hypervisor and Microsoft Windows Server using the same network management tools used in the datacentre from within the ISR G2.

Christian Korff, director of Cisco’s Borderless Networks Architecture said this, along with a number of other switching, routing, security and mobility product announcements, would ease enterprise implementation and management costs, while delivering higher network branch performance and a faster end-user experience.

“UCS Express delivers the simplicity of centralised management and the performance of a local server appliance without the extra equipment,” he said.

The Express functionality is itself part of a new Application Velocity service, targeting physical and virtual application performance acceleration. The network giant said this would meet the growing demand for high-performance, and reliable and secure application delivery from a smaller number of consolidated datacentres to a growing number of wired and wireless endpoints.

“Cloud computing is blurring the borders between physical and virtual environments, where network architecture needs to be able to provide the same user experience wherever they may connect to your network from, but not at the expense of cost efficiency and secure control,” Korff said.