Omar Sultan's Blog

You may be wondering if there is anything to this “Data Center 3.0” thing beyond some clever marketing folks earning their paychecks. Well, clever marketing folks aside, the name was very explicitly chosen, so lets deconstruct it a bit. First of all, this is not LAN 3.0 or SAN 3.0, but Data Center 3.0.

The point is that, looking ahead, you can expect a more holistic approach to Cisco data center solutions. The best example of this is the Data Center Assurance Program—its not just product or feature testing, but full-fledged system integration testing. VFrame Data Center is an other example of a solution designed with a pan-data center perspective

Second, if you look at where the industry is heading and more importantly, how our customers looking to transform their businesses, we feel we are on the cusp of another inflection point. To successfully ride this transition is going to take fresh thinking and new solutions. Granted, we need to build upon what is currently successful, but we also need to step outside the box in terms of products and solutions, hence, we have 3.0.

Data Center 3.0 encompasses this mix of both the evolutionary and the revolutionary. For example, we have taken our existing storage networking solutions and added new form factors for design flexibility. We have also added new capabilities such as Storage Media Encryption and the Cisco N-Port Virtualizer because they address pressing customer concerns such as regulatory compliance and simplification of server infrastructure.

On the other hand, VFrame Data Center inaugurates a whole new category of tools. Actually, if you take VFrame Data Center, Cisco Smart Call Home and the Cisco Data Center Assurance Program together, you can see on of the goals of Data Center 3.0 is to not just allow you to do more or do better, but to do easier—simplify operations.

Finally, Data Center 3.0 is about keeping pace with the increasing complexity and scope of customer’s application environments. At Networkers, for example, we introduced a trusted WAN optimization solution to offer secure WAN acceleration and more precise application performance management. Along the same lines, the Cisco ACE XML Gateway allows an increased ability to monitor and manage XML traffic. These solutions are elements of a broader Data Center 3.0 strategy to increase the application fluency of the network, which, we believe, will support further customer innovation.

I think that final point is the real value of Data Center 3.0—it’s all about giving our customers the tools to innovate. If you watch the video clip of Jayshree Ullal on this blog, her final comment is worth remembering: the things we launched at Networkers this week are simply the beginning—they establish a vision and a vector and give you a hint of some of the cool things you can look forward to in the coming months.