Cisco Targets $14B Data Center Play With New Nexus Switch

Cisco Systems is launching a new data center switch as part of a strategy to foster consolidation and virtualization of centralized server, storage and network resources.

The new Nexus 5000 Series data center switch, launched Tuesday at the Cisco Partner Summit in Honolulu, is part of a new product family that Cisco says will help partners nab their share of the $14 billion data center hardware and services opportunity expected to develop over the next five years.

The Nexus 5000 launch follows the debut of the vendor's first data center switch, the Nexus 7000, in January and is targeted at the access layer, where it can connect and aggregate existing LANs and SANs. It aims to provide line-rate 10-Gigabit Ethernet switching as well as input/output consolidation with support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Data Center Ethernet and virtualization technologies.

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The new switch line was developed as part of a collaborative effort between Cisco and Nuova Systems, which Cisco Tuesday said it plans to acquire. Cisco has already invested $70 million to acquire an 80-percent of the company and now plans to purchase the remaining 20 percent in a deal expected to close by July.

The first product in the new 5000 series is the 5020 Server Access Switch, a two-rack unit device that includes a 56-port Layer 2 switch with 40 ports of 10-Gigabit Ethernet/FCoE with Power over Ethernet as well as two expansion slots. It is based on the same Nexus operating system as the 7000 and is scheduled for availability in May starting at $36,000.

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