Unleashing Application-Driven Network Programmability

The ongoing transformation to a comprehensive Business Technology model requires savvy leaders to see beyond the traditional IT and networking silos within their organization -- thereby offering a cohesive portfolio of application-driven services to their key stakeholders.

Cisco has introduced a versatile and broad approach to network programmability -- Cisco Open Network Environment (Cisco ONE) -- aimed at helping customers drive the next wave of business innovation through trends such as cloud, mobility, social networking, and video.

Cisco ONE enables flexible, application-driven customization of network infrastructures to help realize business objectives such as: increased service velocity, resource optimization, and faster monetization of new services.

The Cisco Open Network Environment is delivered through a rich set of platform APIs, agents and controllers, and overlay network technologies. Cisco ONE complements current approaches to software-defined networking while encompassing the entire solution stack from transport to management and orchestration.

With Cisco's Open Network Environment customers can harness the intelligent network through programmability and abstraction across multiple layers, offering a choice of protocols, industry standards, and usage-based deployment models.

As part of the Open Network Environment, Cisco announced the One Platform Kit (onePK) which provides application programming interfaces (APIs) for developers across Cisco operating systems: Cisco IOS, IOS-XR, and NX-OS.

Cisco also announced proof-of-concept controller software and proof-of-concept OpenFlow agent for Software Defined Networking (SDN) research. Cisco is also enabling scalable virtual overlay networks for multi-tenant cloud deployments with the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch. New innovations include: OpenStack support, programmability, multi-hypervisor capability, and VXLAN gateway functionality.

"Our IT network engineers and computer science department researchers have been collaborating with Cisco to develop and advance SDN solutions that will help move SDN from the R&D lab to mainstream business and academic production environments," said Bruce Maas, vice provost for information technology and CIO at University of Wisconsin Madison. "We believe that programmable networks -- providing program interfaces to devices and software that take advantage of network intelligence -- will enable new research innovations that will advance science and boost economic development."

Cisco is collaborating on emerging network technologies with industry leaders, academic organizations, and standards bodies to meet their heterogeneous requirements for network programmability. Cisco's Open Network Environment supports a wide variety of deployment models including:

• Universities and Research Organizations: Network partitioning or "campus network slicing" using proof-of-concept controller software and OpenFlow agents for SDN research.
• Hyperscale Data centers: Network flow management with programmatic access via APIs.
• Cloud Providers: Automated provisioning and programmable overlay network for scalable multi-tenancy.
• Service Providers: Programmatic access, policy and analytics to optimize and monetize service delivery.
• Enterprises: Private cloud automation for virtual workloads , including VDI.

Beta trials and phased general availability are scheduled to begin the last quarter of 2012.

Videoconferencing Apps will Grow Rapidly in Latin America

There's little doubt about the continued adoption of videoconferencing and telepresence applications over the past few years. Clearly, growth has been fueled by the increasing popularity of video communications among multinational companies around the world -- particularly with mobile video chat applications that utilize new handheld devices.

According to IDC's latest market assessment, the videoconferencing and telepresence market will continue to be one of the fastest growing networking markets for the foreseeable future.

"Growth has been spurred on by more well-defined video use cases among organizations across a range of vertical market segments, including healthcare, higher education, financial services, legal, law enforcement, manufacturing, and retail," said Rich Costello, senior analyst, Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, at IDC.

Other industry analysts are equally enthusiastic about the market outlook, as more enterprise users find new ways to connect and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders via traditional video meeting rooms and other more flexible video endpoints.

Enterprise Video Communications Market Results

Infonetics Research released excerpts from its fourth quarter (4Q11) "Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing Equipment" report, which analyzes markets and vendors by region.

"Sales of telepresence and videoconferencing equipment surged in the past two years, with growth accelerating in 2011 as video took off on enterprise IP PBX systems" said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise networks and video at Infonetics Research.

The video conferencing market is being fueled by a confluence of factors, including the proliferation of video-capable equipment, demographic and communication trends that favor video, and industry use cases -- such as tele-learning and tele-medicine.

Most importantly, the video collaboration market is being driven by increasing demand across a growing number of industry verticals that use the technology today.

The Infonetics market study highlights include:

• The global enterprise video conferencing and telepresence market jumped 15 percent to $882 million between the third and fourth quarters of 2011, setting a record high for quarterly revenue.
• For the full year 2011, sales of videoconferencing and telepresence equipment are up 34 percent to $2.99 billion.
• Infonetics expects a cumulative $22 billion to be spent by enterprises on videoconferencing and telepresence hardware and software from 2012 to 2016.
• PBX-based systems had the strongest performance for the year, growing 80 percent, as they offer a cost-effective way to enjoy multi-modal communication using existing infrastructure.
• Market leader Cisco shows no signs of slowing down: its 4Q11 telepresence and videoconferencing revenue jumped 25 percent sequentially and market share is up 3 points to 52.5 percent.
• Dedicated multi-purpose room video systems made up over half the enterprise videoconferencing equipment market in 2011 and will continue to be the biggest revenue-generator among enterprise video solutions.
• Sales of videoconferencing infrastructure and endpoints are strong in all major world regions, but the standout region is the Caribbean and Latin America (CALA), which saw sales nearly double in 2011.