it - "data storage"

Cisco is already a leader in data center networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network system. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet standard.

It's hard to overstate how important the Nexus data-center switching platform, set to be unveiled Monday, is to Cisco Systems: for the dominant networking vendor's enterprise business, it's the biggest thing since the Catalyst 6000, which made its debut in 1999, according to the two key executives on the project.At a dinner with press last week, they compared it to the CRS-1 (Carrier Routing System), a huge switch for the core of carrier networks that Cisco rolled out in 2004. To bring that platform to life, the company developed a new version of its flagship IOS (Internetworking Operating System) software and engineered the hardware to scale up to 92Tbps of throughput. The core of the Internet is Cisco's turf, and it wasn't willing to give any ground to upstarts.The Nexus brings Cisco into not just a new territory for its business, but a new product category: a unified switch that spans storage and computing in datacenters and has security built in. Given the

As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.On Monday, the company is set to unveil a datacenter networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.Cisco is already a leading player in datacenter networks with its Catalyst series Ethernet switches and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassi

This is the big one.Cisco is set to launch a datacentre platform that could supersede Ethernet switches and the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks.

Nexus is Cisco's answer to high-traffic, storage intensive data centers.

New Nexus 7000 combines Ethernet switching and storage capabilities into a single product.