Cisco kicks off Borderless Networks push with new Integrated Services Router

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 16:00

IT Industry - Strategy

Cisco has kicked off its new borderless networks architecture with announcement of the second generation of the four year old Integrated Services Router - one of the most successful products in the company's history.
As reported by iTWire earlier this month Cisco gave a preview of its Borderless Networks architecture when it announced plans to host a webcast on the subject. Borderless Networks is one of thee major key product areas - along with collaboration and virtualisation - on which Cisco hopes to secure future growth of its business.

According to the VP of Cisco Australia, Les Williamson, "borderless networks is about making the routing and switching a safe, scalable and secure infrastructure inside and outside the enterprise to enable...application rich consumer and business services."

The original ISR, released in late 2004 was a router designed for installation in branch offices that was also able to incorporate a range of additional functionality such as an inbuilt wireless access point, firewall and intrusion protection and a version of Cisco's IP PBX, Call Manager. In its first year it became the fastest selling new product in the company's history and Cisco says it has now sold in excess of seven million units.

Cisco has announced the second generation ISR touting it as offering five times the performance at the same price points but with the key new feature being a server module that can be pre-installed and then used to support a wide range of Cisco and third party applications all remotely provisionable and configurable.

Marc Van Hoof - the Melbourne-based global product manager for the ISR within head of Cisco's Access Router Technology Group - told iTWire that the G2 ISR was the first of many announcements that Cisco would be making to flesh out its Borderless Networks architecture.

"[Currently] there are borders between what you can do at head office and what you can do at a branch and what you can do mobile. Borderless networks is about removing those barrier and make sure that services are consistent regardless of device or location - to connect anyone at any time via any device...without worrying about security or reliability."

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