alcatel Takes Aim At Cisco With New Data Switch Line

With the new switches, dubbed the OmniSwitch line, Paris-based Alcatel becomes a serious contender with Cisco in the market for end-to-end voice and data solutions for large enterprises, said Tom Wilburn, senior vice president and general manager of Alcatel's North American enterprise business, based in Calabasas.

The OmniSwitch family includes the 7700 edge switch, the 7800 for the medium enterprise core or large wiring closet, and the 8800 for the large enterprise core, said Eric Penisson, director of campus backbone strategy and product lines at Alcatel. The switches are priced against similar offerings from Cisco and Extreme Networks, he said.

Mike Westerfield, network engineer at Morse Communications, a Melbourne, Fla.-based solution provider, said Alcatel's new switches will aid the former voice dealer's expansion into the data business. Morse still must educate prospective clients about Alcatel, but customers are "very receptive to a quality data switch [offering that is leveraged for convergence," Westerfield said.

The OmniSwitch 7800 and 8800 bring "carrier-class availability" to the core of medium and large enterprise networks, Penisson said. The OmniSwitch family's distributed architecture delivers wire speed Layer 2 and Layer 3, quality of service (QoS), access control list and embedded server load balancing, he added.

The 7800 provides up to 192 ports of Gigabit Ethernet with a throughput of 60 million packets per second (Mpps), and the 8800 provides up to 384 ports of Gigabit Ethernet with a throughput of up to 240 Mpps.

Prices for the OmniSwitch 7700 and 7800 start at $11,000 and $16,000, respectively. Both switches are slated to ship in the second quarter. Pricing has not yet been set for the OmniSwitch 8800, which is due out in the third quarter.