Cisco’s Nexus 7000 to simplify Data Centers

Cisco Systems Inc. has launched its Nexus 7000 product line, powerful switches for corporate data centers. Along with this update of its market offerings, the Network Equipment maker forecast strong sales despite worries of a slowdown in U.S. technology spending.

Cisco, the top provider of routers and switches which direct Internet traffic, said its latest offering, Nexus 7000 is aimed at helping large corporate data centers to be able to efficiently handle and store increasing Internet traffic. It is actually a single product with a combination of ethernet switching and storage capabilities.

Nexus 7000 will help Cisco remain in competition with companies such as Foundry Networks of Santa Clara, Extreme Networks of Santa Clara and Force10 Networks of San Jose.

According to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president, the company has developed the new product at a cost of $250m.

Cisco said consolidating ethernet and storage, along with an improvement in airflow and design, helped bring out a more simplified and energy-saving product. Also, the Nexus 7000 features an advanced operating system called NX-OS.

The Nexus switches will cost $75,000 to $200,000 and are expected to be shipped in the second quarter.

Banks and large businesses as well as phone and Internet service providers will be able to cut down energy consumption at data centers by around 8 percent, said Doug Gourlay, a senior director for Cisco's data center business unit.

That assumes data center-wide upgrade from conventional switching products, including Cisco's own, he said.

"IT's challenge is to maximize the workload within a given power budget," Gourlay said, adding, "The data center market is growing at twice the rate of traditional core switching market."