The path to digitization requires a digital network that evolves beyond just connectivity. This new network will enable business innovation, generate insights and create customer experiences. It will reduce cost and complexity with new orchestration and automation capabilities, while helping protect the business with an architecture designed for security.
At the same time that enterprises are addressing how to move to digitization, there has been tremendous innovation in networking, including software defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), model-driven programming, overlay networks, open API’s, cloud management, orchestration, analytics and more. These innovations have great promise to improve operational efficiency and enable digital applications, yet adoption has been slow due to the difficulty in consuming these many new technologies. The market needs a solution that integrates the critical innovations in networking software –virtualization, automation, analytics, cloud service management, and open and extensible programmability– into an architecture that can achieve these promises in an integrated and easy to consume manner.
Cisco is introducing the Digital Network Architecture (DNA), an open, extensible and software driven architecture for digital business. Cisco® DNA complements Cisco’s market leading, data center based Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology by extending the policy driven approach and software strategy throughout the entire network: from campus to branch, wired to wireless, core to edge. Cisco DNA is delivered within the Cisco ONE™ Software family, enabling simplified software-based licensing, and helping with investment protection and flexibility.
Cisco DNA is built on five guiding principles:
- Virtualize everything to give organizations freedom of choice to run any service anywhere, independent of the underlying platform – physical or virtual, on premise or in the cloud.
- Designed for automation to make networks and services on those networks easy to deploy, manage and maintain – fundamentally changing the approach to network management.
- Pervasive analytics to provide insights on the operation of the network, IT infrastructure and the business – information that only the network can provide.
- Service management delivered from the cloud to unify policy and orchestration across the network - enabling the agility of cloud with the security and control of on premises solutions.
- Open, extensible and programmable at every layer – Integrating Cisco and 3rd party technology, open API’s and a developer platform, to support a rich ecosystem of network-enabled applications.
“The digital network is the platform for digital business,” said Rob Soderbery, SVP for Enterprise Products and Solutions, Cisco. “Cisco DNA brings together virtualization, automation, analytics, cloud and programmability to build that platform. The acronym for the Digital Networking Architecture – DNA – isn’t an accident. We’re fundamentally changing the DNA of networking technology.”
Cisco is announcing automation, virtualization and cloud management capabilities in support of the DNA architecture:
- DNA Automation: APIC-Enterprise Module (APIC EM) Platform
- APIC-EM Platform: A new version of Cisco’s enterprise controller is now generally available. With 100+ customer deployments and running up to 4000 devices from a single instance, APIC-EM meets the enterprise scale and resiliency required for our largest customers, with the broadest set of network services and device support. The APIC-EM platform supports a range of automation services, including new services announced today and described below.
- Cisco Plug and Play: This automation software removes the need for any staging for pre-configuration or truck roll-outs to remote locations, which typically cost IT around $200-$2000 per device. The Plug and Play agent sits on Cisco routers and switches and talks directly to the network controller, reducing deployment time from up to 4 weeks to a few days, and providing up to 79 percent decrease in Day 0 deployment costs over traditional methods.
- Easy Quality of Service (EasyQoS): The EasyQoS service enables the network to dynamically update network wide QoS settings based on application policy. With EasyQoS IT departments can ensure that the right application is prioritized to provide the best experience for users.
- Cisco Intelligent WAN Automation Services:
- This service automates IWAN deployment and management, providing greater WAN deployment flexibility and allowing IT to quickly configure and deploy a full-service branch office with just 10 clicks. IWAN automation eliminates configuration tasks for advanced networking features, and automatically enables Cisco best practices, application prioritization, path selection and caching to improve the user experience.
- DNA Virtualization: Evolved IOS-XE and Enterprise NFV
- Evolved Cisco IOS XE, is a network operating system optimized for programmability, controller-based automation, and serviceability. The new OS provides open model-driven APIs for third party application development, software-defined management, application hosting, edge computing and abstraction from the physical infrastructure to enable virtualization. It supports the Cisco Catalyst 3850/3650, ASR 1000 and ISR 4000 today, and will continue to be expanded across the Enterprise Network portfolio.
- Evolved Cisco IOS XE includes Enterprise Network Function Virtualization (Enterprise NFV) that decouples hardware from software and gives enterprises the freedom of choice to run any feature anywhere. This solution includes the full software stack - virtualization infrastructure software; virtualized network functions (VNFs) like routing, firewall, WAN Optimization, and WLAN Controller; and orchestration services - to enable branch office service virtualization. With this solution, IT can now simplify their day to day operations, roll out new branch services with no truck rolls, and have flexible deployment options – customized Cisco platform, a server platform, or any x86 platform
- DNA Cloud Service Management: CMX Cloud
- CMX Cloud provides business insights and personalized engagement using location and presence information from Cisco wireless infrastructure. With CMX Cloud enterprises can provide easy Wi-Fi onboarding, gain access to aggregate customer behavior data, and improve customer engagement.
