Q&A with Luca Cafiero, VP of Storage Networking Group
Cisco's Strategy for Competing in the Storage Networking Industry
Cisco Systems recently introduced the SN 5428 Storage Router, the industry's first storage networking platform to incorporate both IP and Fibre Channel switching technologies. The Cisco SN 5428 is targeted at enterprise workgroups, which include small/medium-sized businesses and corporate departments, who have in the past been unable to benefit from storage networking because of the prohibitive price and complexity of previous methods. Using the Cisco SN 5428 will allow customers to migrate their enterprise wide workgroups from direct attached storage (DAS) to storage area network (SAN) environments far more cost effectively than was possible before.
Press Release:
Cisco Introduces the Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router
Data Sheets:
Cisco SN 5428 Storage Router
Photo:
SN 5428 photo image
The Cisco SN 5428 extends the company's goal to merge data and storage networking proficiencies to provide multi-protocol, highly scalable and highly manageable networking service solutions to its customers. Cisco is also playing a central role in determining interoperability standards that will advance the storage networking industry.
News@Cisco recently talked with Luca Cafiero, Cisco's Vice President of the Storage Technology Group, about Cisco's strategy for becoming a leading solutions provider in the storage networking industry.
What is Cisco's strategy for competing in the storage networking industry?
Cisco's strategy is to leverage its current technology in data networking and storage management to provide multi-protocol, highly scalable and highly manageable networking service solutions. We are also driving interoperability standards that we believe will advance the storage networking industry. Using our storage networking expertise and our partnerships with established storage networking companies, our goal is to enable our customers to enjoy high-performance access to storage from anywhere on the network.
Specifically, what products are Cisco planning to introduce and how will Cisco customers benefit?
Cisco will address our customers' enterprise data center, department/workgroup and small/medium-size business requirements through a complete line of storage networking solutions. The current Cisco SN 5420 allows customers to cost-effectively extend the benefits of storage area networks or SANs to midrange applications in data centers and remote servers. The Cisco SN 5428 is the industry's first storage networking platform to incorporate both IP and Fibre Channel switching technologies. This allows workgroups to easily migrate from direct attached storage (DAS) to SAN environments. Cisco customers can also use Metro DWDM to interconnect SANs across multiple data centers in metropolitan area networks (MANs). These products improve our customers' business continuity through data replication and disaster recovery, and lower total cost of ownership through storage consolidation, improved storage utilization and centralized storage management.
Cisco will continue to work with industry partners and standards bodies to offer our customers a wide range of interoperable input/output (I/O) storage networking solutions. Cisco's storage networking products incorporate a variety of technologies including Fibre Channel, IP storage and optical networking. Our goal is to apply Cisco's philosophy of transport and media independence to meet our customers' specific storage networking requirements, irrespective of which transport or protocol is right for their applications.
Cisco will incorporate Layer 2-7 services into this I/O services foundation for storage networks, promoting storage networking to the level of sophistication currently available in data networking. These intelligent network services include advanced security, VLANs, and Quality of Service (QoS) to help make storage networks more scalable and manageable. As a result, Cisco is in a unique position to offer our customers integrated management and common interfaces across both IP networks and storage networks. We will also work in partnership with storage management and network system management providers to deliver unified management capabilities across all our storage networking platforms.
How does storage networking fit into Cisco's overall strategy?
Our approach to storage networking is analogous to how we established the utility model for Internet business solutions. Cisco is currently building intelligent networking services into its storage networking products. Intelligent data and storage management services, which may be provided by multiple Cisco storage networking partners, will make storing, retrieving and protecting critical data across widely distributed environments more efficient and cost-effective.
As in IP telephony, Cisco is leading technology development, standardization efforts and real-world deployments in this emerging market. Customers have come to rely on Cisco to provide intelligent networking services to build scalable, fault tolerant network architectures for data and voice networks. These same services enable scalable, manageable storage networks. In addition, Cisco offers industry leading iSCSI driver support available for Microsoft Windows 2000 and NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, and Linux operating systems. This driver support is crucial to deploying IP storage across heterogeneous server environments that many customers have today. Cisco believes that driving standards, openness and interoperability is essential in expanding this market going forward.
Does Cisco know enough about storage networking to compete successfully?
Cisco has successfully applied its networking technology to new and emerging markets such as LAN switching, Systems Network Architecture (SNA), and Voice over IP. Our networking expertise and our partnerships with storage networking leaders provide us with significant advantage in the storage networking industry, which is now entering a period of major growth and scalability. From a storage perspective, we are uniquely positioned to provide our customers with complete solutions to meet their expanding and increasingly complex requirements. Consistent with our approach to other emerging markets, Cisco plans to execute a multi-phased strategy for storage networking.
How will Cisco advance the storage networking industry?
Cisco will advance storage networking by marrying the technologies currently available in IP networking with data and storage management to make storage networks more scalable, secure, and manageable. And, staying true to our philosophy, Cisco plans to pursue this strategy through industry-wide cooperation and standards.
Today, the storage networking industry is still too dependent on proprietary technologies that limit customers' ability to fully leverage storage networking. In terms of scalability, for example, the data networking industry is much further along than the storage networking industry. In storage networking, typical SANs remain relatively small and isolated. Enterprise-wide SANs are not predominant since the scalability and management of these large SANs is rudimentary. Contrast this to IP networks. They are enterprise-wide, consist of thousands of nodes, and connect millions of users. Cisco's goal is to leverage our collective experience in data networking to create the next phase of storage networking that will enable intelligent, enterprise-wide SANs to become a reality. |
