Cisco Unveiled Nexus 5000 Data Center-Class Switch

The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series strengthens the company’s existing data
center switch portfolio and builds on its commitment to invest heavily
over the next 18 months in new products and capabilities to help
customers architect the next-generation data center, creating a new
market opportunity for its channel partners. The development of the
Nexus 5000 Series was a collaborative effort between Cisco and Nuova
Systems. Today Cisco also announced its intent to acquire the remaining
interest that it does not yet hold in San Jose-based Nuova Systems, a
Cisco-invested start up focused on the development of next-generation
products for the data center market.

The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is designed for data center
consolidation with investment protection, helping allow customers to
transition to a unified fabric at their own pace. It also meets
stringent customer requirements for operational continuity, transport
flexibility and scalability. With a unified fabric, IT organizations
can simplify cabling infrastructure, reduce the number of required
adapters, lower costs, and reduce power consumption and their carbon
footprint. The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series delivers line-rate, low-latency,
10 Gigabit Ethernet switching, as well as the industry’s first
standards-based, input/output (I/O) consolidation solution via support
for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Data Center Ethernet and
virtualization technologies. The switch is an extension to the Cisco
Nexus family designed to support increasing I/O demands of multicore
processors and virtualized environments. With its support for FCoE, the
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series consolidates local-area network (LAN), Fibre
Channel and iSCSI-based storage-area networks (SANs) and server cluster
traffic onto an Ethernet-based unified fabric. The Cisco Nexus 5000
also provides virtual machine (VM) optimized services, supporting the
Cisco Data Center 3.0 vision by allowing IT organizations to
dynamically respond to changing business demands through rapid
provisioning of application and infrastructure services from shared
pools of consolidated compute, storage, and network resources.

SAVVIS, a leading global IT utility services provider specializing
in hosting, network, and application services, is currently testing the
new Cisco Nexus 5000 switching platform. "We believe the benefits to
SAVVIS of a unified fabric are multifold, including the ability to
provide our customers with a higher quality of service as well as total
cost of ownership reduction within our data center operations," said
Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer of SAVVIS. "The Cisco Nexus
5000’s ability to deliver this unified fabric today makes it an
attractive platform for us and we are actively evaluating it."

The Cisco Nexus 5000 platform can connect to either Cisco Nexus 7000
or Cisco Catalyst 6500 in the aggregation/core layers of the data
center. With native Fibre Channel interfaces, the Cisco Nexus 5000
Series can also connect to SAN fabrics built with the Cisco MDS 9000
platform. This helps enable customers to deploy the Cisco Nexus 5000
and FCoE today for I/O consolidation in the access layer, while
protecting their technology investments in aggregation and core layers.

A wide array of ecosystem partners are helping to create an
end-to-end unified fabric solution with the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series,
including 3PAR Data, APC, Broadcom, Dell, EMC, Emulex, Intel, NetApp,
Netxen, Panduit, QLogic, and VMware.

Building a Data Center Practice
To further align with opportunities in the data center, Cisco is
evolving its channel program to help allow partners to build a
network-centric data center practice. Part of this effort includes the
evolution of the Cisco Data Center Networking Infrastructure (DCNI)
specialization to DCNI 2.0, which recognizes partners with a highly
qualified data center practice. Cisco DCNI 2.0 Specialized Partners
will be able to provide customers with in-depth data center technology
skills and a proven customer track record in selling, deploying and
providing sophisticated data center services and solutions.

In addition, for partners who decide to build a network-centric data
center practice, Cisco will offer technical and business enablement
tools and enhanced financial incentives. This includes the introduction
the Cisco Data Center Value Incentive Program (VIP), which rewards
partners who invest in a comprehensive business practice focused on the
data center. Cisco is further enhancing its partner enablement
portfolio with the introduction of the Cisco Data Center Partner
Practice Builder, a proven, simplified and repeatable approach to
building a Cisco solutions-based practice, along with Steps to Success,
a business building platform that provides a step-by-step customer
engagement model and associated resources designed to enable partners
to sell, deliver, and support Cisco advanced technology business
solutions.

"With a proven history of success in delivering innovative network
solutions in data, voice and communications, video and storage
networks, Cisco and its channel partners are uniquely positioned to
lead the transformation of the data center into an agile and efficient
network that revolutionizes how our customers adopt new IT strategies
and respond to changing business needs," said Edison Peres, vice
president of worldwide channels at Cisco. "With a full portfolio of
data center solutions, channel programs and enhanced financial
incentives through Data Center VIP, we are helping to create
extraordinary opportunities for our partners to accelerate their
growth, differentiation and profitability."

Services and Financing Options
Cisco has also expanded its services offerings to help customers
realize the full potential of a unified fabric and take the next step
in data center transformation. Cisco Services provide the expertise and
experience needed to address the entire data center architecture and
are designed to support an organization’s growth, server performance,
as well as storage and virtualization goals. In addition, Cisco Capital
offers financing solutions to support customers with the development of
their data centers, including technology adoption, migration and
lifecycle management. Cisco Capital offers competitive rates, high
residuals and flexible terms for Cisco data center equipment and
services globally.

Pricing and Expected Availability
The Cisco Nexus 5000 Series pricing starts at $36,000 for the fixed
configuration 40-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch, and is scheduled to
be available May 2008. Cisco Data Center VIP will be included within
VIP 12, with an expected availability of July 2008 and DCNI 2.0 is
planned to be available May 2008.

Cisco