Extreme looks to one-up Cisco, others in data center

Extreme Networks Tuesday rolled out an Ethernet switch line designed to play a series of roles, including edge aggregation in the campus and top-of-rack server access in the data center.

Cisco this week rolled out a bevy of data center products ranging from servers to switches to SANs, all designed to further broaden the company’s reach beyond networking and into IT infrastructure.

Cisco this week expanded its data center arsenal with software, switches, modules and services all designed to scale the infrastructure to meet the demanding needs of virtualization, application complexity and cloud computing.

Users and vendors this week got a framework for implementing virtual data center and cloud computing environments from a group formed eight months ago to define such requirements.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) has refocused its data center training and certification portfolio on job roles, adding two new designations along with a plan to align partner specializations to the new certifications. Last March, Cisco rolled out the CCIE Data Center certification which went live in September, and now the vendor has fleshed out its associated portfolio with the CCNA Data Center and

Dell on Wednesday last week introduced a number of new products, services and technology packages that fit in with its unified data center architecture. The products are designed with data center customers in mind and will help them deploy virtualization-ready data center environments.

Cisco this week is expanding its data center product portfolio with a new switch, extensions to existing ones, and enhancements to its servers and software.

The basic tasks of running a data center will change out of all recognition in the near future, according to an expert panel speaking at Interop NY on Wednesday, and there really aren't any easy blueprints to follow.

Enterasys, the networking division of Siemens Enterprise Communications, this week unveiled it data center strategy, which hinges on partnerships and multivendor inclusion as well as the policy-based management capabilities of its switches.