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Cisco revamps enterprise product pricing

Cisco revamps enterprise product pricing

In an effort to simplify enterprise customer procurements, Cisco is implementing a licensing model for data center, WAN and access product purchases.

The new model, disclosed by Cisco executives in a roundtable session with reporters this week, will package Cisco's new Application Centric Infrastructure controller -- called Application Policy Infrastructure Controller, or APIC -- with CiscoONE APIs and software developer kits, virtual switches and the company's traditional router and switch hardware in four offerings for enterprise data center, WAN and access applications.

The four packages include:

  • CiscoONE Essentials, which include APIC, virtual switch, Cisco onePK southbound interfaces and oneDK development kit;
  • CiscoONE Foundational Elements, which includes management tools like Cisco Prime, ACI Fabric, and Layer 2/3 networking services;
  • CiscoONE Advanced Services, for policy-based, optimized end-to-end application delivery;
  • And CiscoONE Advanced Security Services, for end-to-end network security and threat defense.

+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD:First Look: Cisco ACI re-imagines the enterprise data center network+

"We have a bunch of products. We'll turn those products into licenses -- a data center suite, a WAN suite, an access suite -- for the enterprise," said Cisco President Rob Lloyd. "We'll allow the customer to consume the full capabilities in a domain or across the full enterprise. It'll be simpler and cost-effective to buy whole suites. The APIC controller is fundamental to every domain."

Lloyd said more details on the licensing model, including pricing, will be disclosed at the CiscoLive conference in May. Rob Soderbery, senior vice president of Cisco's Enterprise Group, said programmability and orchestration should not be targeted solely at the data center.

"With the data center focus" of software-defined networking and programmability "people lost sight of the other domains. We (Cisco) have over 400 business-to-business connection points. Orchestrating the data center is important but orchestrating the WAN is just as important. Product brands will be much less important than the suite itself. With our product breadth, we need to simplify consumption. The challenge for us will be simplification and packaging."

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 27 years, 22 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.

Read more about lan and wan in Network World's LAN & WAN section.

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Tags NetworkingrouterCisco SystemsEthernet SwitchLAN & WANCisco licensingCiscoOneCisco SDNCisco pricing

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