Cisco 2013 Annual Report Download - page 12

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For a discussion of the risks associated with our strategy, see “Item 1A. Risk Factors,” including the risk factor entitled “We
depend upon the development of new products and enhancements to existing products, and if we fail to predict and respond to
emerging technological trends and customers’ changing needs, our operating results and market share may suffer.” For
information regarding sales of our major products and services, see Note 16 to the Consolidated Financial Statements.
Products and Services
Our current offerings fall into several categories:
Switching
Switching is an integral networking technology used in campuses, branch offices, and data centers. Switches are used within
buildings in local-area networks (LANs) and across great distances in wide-area networks (WANs). Our switching products
offer many forms of connectivity to end users, workstations, IP phones, access points, and servers and also function as
aggregators on LANs and WANs. Our switching systems employ several widely used technologies, including Ethernet, Power
over Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Packet over Synchronous Optical Network, and Multiprotocol Label
Switching. Many of our switches are designed to support an integrated set of advanced services, allowing organizations to be
more efficient by using one switch for multiple networking functions rather than multiple switches to accomplish the same
functions. Key product platforms within our Switching product category, in which we also include storage products, are as
follows:
Fixed-Configuration Switches Modular Switches Storage
Cisco Catalyst Series: Cisco Catalyst Series: Cisco MDS Series:
• Cisco Catalyst 2960 Series • Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series • Cisco MDS 9000
• Cisco Catalyst 3560 Series • Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series
• Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series • Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series
• Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series
Cisco Nexus Series: Cisco Nexus Series:
• Cisco Nexus 2000 Series • Cisco Nexus 7000 Series
• Cisco Nexus 3000 Series
• Cisco Nexus 5000 Series
• Cisco Nexus 6000 Series
Fixed-configuration switches are designed to cover a range of deployments in small and medium-sized businesses. Our fixed-
configuration switches are designed to provide a foundation for converged data, voice, and video services. They range from
small, standalone switches to stackable models that function as a single, scalable switching unit.
Modular switches are typically utilized by enterprise and service provider customers. These products are designed to offer
flexibility and scalability for these customers, which due to their large-scale network demands often need to deploy numerous,
advanced-functionality networking services without degrading overall performance.
Fixed-configuration and modular switches also include products such as optics modules, which are shared across multiple
product platforms.
Our switching portfolio also includes virtual switches and service offerings. These products provide switching functionality for
virtual machines and are designed to operate in a complementary fashion with virtual services to optimize security and
application behavior.
During fiscal 2013, we continued to introduce what we believe to be the industry’s most advanced and versatile portfolio of
modular, fixed-configuration, blade, and virtual LAN switches for campus, branch, and data center deployments. We also
established new performance efficiencies in the industry for data center switching with the Unified Data Center next-
generation storage network, which solution provides, in our view, unmatched flexibility with its multiprotocol innovations.
Individually, these switches are designed to offer the performance and features required for nearly any deployment, from
traditional small workgroups, wiring closets, and network cores to highly virtualized and converged corporate data centers.
Working together, these switches are, in our view, the building blocks of an integrated network that delivers scalable and
advanced functionality solutions—protecting, optimizing, and growing as a customer’s business needs evolve. We also
recently announced a versatile and broad approach to network programmability, called 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 is designed to enable flexible, application-driven customization of network infrastructures to help businesses
realize objectives such as increased service velocity, resource optimization, and faster monetization of new services.
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