Ovum comments on Insieme’s acquisition by Cisco

After the recent news of Cisco entering SDN space with Insieme acquisition, Ovum’s Principal Analyst of Network Infrastructure and Telecom , David Krozier commented, Cisco continues to promote the role of hardware in delivering future high performance networks and took great pains to distance itself from pure software based overlay virtualized networks (like the Nicira technology VMware acquired, Junipers Contrail, and Alcatel-Lucent’s Nuage) in the data center.

He added, Ovum notes that while the 9000 Series switches can operate standalone, the features provided by the APIC controller require Cisco hardware.  While this may raise the hackles of those who believe future networks should be based on generic hardware platforms, this approach is unlikely to match the performance capabilities of ACI.

Cisco acquired Insieme’s ACI solution consists of 100 Gbps ready Nexus 9000 Series switches that run under a new optimized version of NX-OS and can support up to 1.92 Tbps of bandwidth capacity per slot.

The 8-slot Nexus 9508 is available now, and other switches in the family will follow.