Cisco Campus Core Design/Positioning Update!!!

[tollom]

Greetings all,

Over the past couple of weeks, many of you have been reaching to your Cisco account CSEs/SEs and asking questions on what Cisco's view on how you should be Designing your customer's Campus Core.

Many of these questions were based on rumors / opinions on what Cisco's strategy when looking both short term and long term for our campus core portfolio and I'm happy to share with you, an updated view from our Business Unit on our Core Campus Positioning below.

Catalyst 6500/6800 Lifecycle Update:

There are NO End-Of-Sale Plans for the Catalyst 6500/6800 platform for at least the next 2 years.  Additionally, these platforms will not go End-Of-Support before 2024.

Leading with Cat6807-XL

• Optimized for high density 1G/10G
• 8x40G module orderable in May 2017
• Proven Catalyst 6K Class of feature set
• IOS: OS consistency in campus
• Campus optimized mechanicals
  • 18” deep
  • Side to side airflow
  • Front accessible fan, power supply, modules

Leading with Nexus 7700

• High-density 10/40/100-Gbps connectivity
• Closest to 6K in features, buffers, table sizes

In order for our Business Unit to gain clearer insight into what you are positioning in the field today, if you would take 5 minutes and fill out the survey below on Campus Design, the team would be very appreciative.

Thank you all in advance and we hope to see you in San Jose April 3rd - 6th our EN PVT!!!

[Pete Cowen]

Cisco have a mixed message wrt core switching  and you are asking us the resellers what we position?

[tollom]

hi Pete, the post above is a statement from our Switching Business Unit on which platform(s) they are looking for our sellers (internal and partner) to position in the field.  The link for the survey, is to gather feedback from you the partner on what you are positioning.  The survey will help provide some information back to our Business Unit, because what they think should be positioned in the core, is not always what our internal and partner sellers are positioning. 

[tollom]

The reason for the 3850 and the 4500x not being within the survey, has to do with the BU looking at our Large / Enterprise Customers that are deploying cat6500, cat6807, nexus 7700, and nexus 9000 currently in the core. As you know, there are many ways to design the campus core and our BU is looking to understand better what are sellers (cisco employees and partners) are leading with.

That’s great feedback Jason on the check box concept for the survey. I’ll make sure that I bubble that up to the BU for any new survey they are looking to provide in the future.

Thanks as always for the feedback and insight.