Cisco to introduce new products for cos.
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NEW YORK -- Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday will introduce new products aimed at protecting and expanding one of its biggest sources of revenue - computer-networking equipment for small businesses and branch offices.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco announced a pair of additions to its Network Admission Control (NAC) product line on Monday, launching new tools that promise to extend the authentication system to a greater variety of devices and office environments. The introductions were timed to coincide with the start of the Security Standard Conference in Chicago, which is owned and operated by InfoWorld's parent company, IDG. They come hot on the heels of Cisco's late-August announcement that Intel will arm computers using its vPro and Centrino microprocessors with the ability to communicate their security posture to corporate networks, even before they have been booted up. Â  Cisco unveiled its Network Module for NAC, which will give customers the ability to implant the authentication system into the vendor's Integrated Services Router (ISR) hardware, along with its NAC Profiler, which is meant to allow users to monitor a greater number of non-PC devices using the security tools. Executives with the San Jose, Calif.-based company said the latest products evidence the company's ongoing work to mature NAC aggressively. "This is an announcement where you see things continue to develop, not only in terms of the types of things that NAC technologies can do, as was the case with the chipset interaction, but also in terms of addressing problems that everyone has, such as getting posture assessments for devices that don't run on Windows," said Brendan O'Connell, senior product manager for Cisco's Security Technology Group. "With the ISR module, we're giving customers the option to push NAC into the branch-office setting, which is something else customers have been asking us for," O'Connell said. "It's all about increasing NAC's ease-of-use and operability." While Cisco is widely credited with inventing NAC technology -- which is identified by other vendors by the more generic term "network access control," and is used to verify a device's identity and security standing as it attempts to connect to a network -- some industry watchers have criticized the manufacturer for not moving faster to introduce products such as its new releases. In addition to expanding the potential footprint of its NAC systems by driving the technology into its ISR hardware, which it has been selling to customers for over three years, Profiler addresses one of the primary security concerns raised with the authentication systems, namely, their ability to identify and monitor IP-connected devices other than desktop and laptop computers. Based on NAC's complexity, some companies have chosen to use branch offices or remote locations to test its impact and efficacy in the field before blending the tools into their central IT networks, Cisco officials said -- exactly the type of scenario the ISR module will seek to facilitate. The ability to add NAC via a blade in the ISR devices will also appeal to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs), the networking giant contends, as will the ability to license the technology for office settings with 50 to 100 users -- the smallest deployment alternative for the tools the vendor has offered to date. Cisco maintains that by offering NAC monitoring for IP-connected machines such as Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) phones and networked printers, companies will no longer be forced to formulate complicated exceptions to test the devices. In adding direct hooks for such equipment into NAC, Cisco claims it has also addressed the perceived security loophole created by the need to create such exemptions, which some have said made it easier for attackers to defeat the authentication systems by spoofing such devices. "It's not just PCs that are connecting to the perimeter of a network where customers need to make these types of decisions, which has been sort of a hole for a while as it was cumbersome to do NAC securely for some of these other devices, and users didn't have much information at their fingertips when they could do it," O'Connell said. "In some customer deployments, over half of the devices on the network are IP phones today, so, Profiler is an important step forward in improving NAC's abilities to that end." Ladi Adefala, security practice manager for World Wide Technology, a St. Louis-based systems integrator that both uses and re-sells Cisco's NAC products, said the new products should help expand the technology's uptake in both larger and smaller customers. Many companies have been looking for ways to test NAC in smaller settings and then extend the tools to a wider set of users, making the Network Module product launch particularly important, he said. The Profiler will eliminate the need for IT shops and service providers like World Wide Technology to port NAC to phones and other devices, a time-consuming process, according to Adefala. Cisco has been actively marketing two approaches to NAC -- using its appliances to provide local protection on networks and also utilizing its top-down network-wide "framework" strategy. This has caused some customers to spend a long time deciding which route to go down, the expert say. However, Adefala contends that more companies are jumping further into NAC as Cisco's products become more mature. "There was some initial confusion with which way to go, but Cisco has been able to get most customers to begin considering it more closely, particularly by marketing the appliance as a one-stop shop for NAC," he said. "I think that will continue to be the case over the next year because of the type of announcements we're seeing here, and more integration with third-party products." One industry analyst echoed those comments, saying Cisco's is making "incremental improvements" with each NAC product release and likely growing its overall customer base for the tools. Cisco's move to launch the NAC Profiler directly addresses a "perceived shortcoming" of the systems in allowing more devices to be tested, while the Network Module will encourage broader deployment among large multinationals and among smaller firms, said Phil Hochmuth, analyst with Boston-based Yankee Group. "They're trying to fit in more places with both the switches and the framework. Obviously a lot more customers are using the [appliances] today because they are easier to deploy, but I think the framework will eventually appeal to some people," Hochmuth said. "They also have all these switches in place, and if they can harness that to sell NAC, that could be pretty powerful. "NAC remains complicated and Cisco has been guilty of playing both sides a bit with the two different approaches, but they know that if they can get customers to adopt it today with the appliances, the eventually might go for the network-wide approach," the analyst said.
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Cisco subsidiary Linksys is launching a raft of new SMB products and services under the Linksys Connected Office platform.
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Companies can expect to see more modularity and features in Cisco'sÂ IOS software over the next several quarters, as the elements of technology it recently introduced for carriers trickles down to business customers.
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Cisco Systems Inc. on Monday is set to take aim at small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) that have growing needs and sparse technical expertise, introducing a pair of LAN switches and a graphical management application.
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With its eyes on the future of home entertainment and a relatively uncluttered band of radio spectrum, Cisco Systems' Linksys division on Wednesday unveiled a line of IEEE 802.11g/a wireless LAN products.
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Cisco Systems is teaming up with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to develop new communications technology that the company hopes to ultimately turn into products.
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Acquisition is expected to help Cisco Systems reinforce its network management offerings.
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Cisco&#39;s Tokyo R&amp;D center will focus on advanced Internet technologies such as IPv6, multicast, and wireless, in addition to improving existing security and quality-of-service (QoS) technologies.
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Cisco plans to introduce a range of new, better-integrated security products at the RSA Conference this week.
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IBM and Cisco are releasing a jointly developed telecommunications network management and service assurance product.
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IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. plan to release a jointly developed product in July as part of an expansion of their existing alliance around telecommunications network management and service assurance, the companies said Thursday.
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InfoWorld - Cisco Systems&#160;has&#160;expanded&#160;a&#160;range of security mechanisms for wired LANs&#160;to the&#160;wireless side of enterprise networks.
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Cisco will introduce next year its Entertainment Operating System (EOS), a platform for delivering multimedia content to online communities.EOS will be the first major product of&#160;Cisco&#39;s push into helping media companies connect with their customers. It will combine a delivery system, a social networking platform, and a set of tools to help consumers find the content they want, said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco&#39;s media solutions group. It will go on sale in 2008, he said.Two online fan communities, run by the National Hockey League and the NASCAR auto-racing organization, are using elements of EOS today, Scheinman said. NHL Connect, launched last year and uses technology from&#160;social networking company Five Across, which Cisco acquired&#160;in February.Content providers like the sports leagues have large and loyal fan bases but don&#39;t know how to enrich the fan experience or get them to spend more time on their sites, he said. EOS will be a standardized solution for doing that.Making online communities stronger benefits both consumers and content providers, according to Scheinman: Fans get to know each other and providers learn more about their visitors. On top of that, more visits can mean more revenue. Sites such as the NHL&#39;s and NASCAR&#39;s have found that providing legitimate video content leads to more user-generated content as visitors comment on the videos. As they do, visits go up by three to five times, which means three to five times as many opportunities to advertise to the community, he said.EOS will help visitors find content through a recommendation and relevance engine that looks at a user&#39;s activity patterns and makes personalized suggestions, Scheinman said.The growing flood of information available online begs for this type of approach because users often don&#39;t even know what they&#39;re looking for, he said.&quot;Finding anything in this world of infinite information out there is really going to be tricky,&quot; Scheinman said. &quot;You want to be able to have content find you.&quot;Cisco&#39;s network expertise and&#160;recent social-networking acquisitions uniquely equip it to solve this set of problems, he said.&quot;We&#39;ve become the only company that can do all of these three things together,&quot; Scheinman said.
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Cisco Systems today is unveiling nine new software and hardware products, and upgrades to protect corporate computer networks from hackers and other Internet threats.
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And clusters made of blades HP has added more Cisco networking gear options to its pre-packaged cluster product line.â¦
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Cisco(R) (NASDAQ: CSCO) has established a state-of-the-art customer briefing center (CBC) in Singapore to showcase the latest innovations in Internet Protocol (IP) networking technology.