Programmable Networks Will Power 'Internet Of Everything,' Says Cisco

The Company's SDN Strategy And Programmable Chips Give It An Edge Over Rivals, Executives Said

To make the Internet of things a reality, Cisco says that networks must be much smarter and more flexible.

The company wants to build an "Internet of Everything" that connects sensors, mobile devices and network infrastructures, said Padmasree Warrior, director of strategy and technology, on Wednesday.

Cisco estimates that there will be a $ 14.4 billion business opportunity with opportunities to generate money and save money in sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, smart networks and the public sector. Services that deliver data from multiple sources and require distributed processing will make networks even more critical than they are today, says the company.

"Ninety-five percent of the things in the world today are still not connected to the Internet," said Rob Lloyd, president of sales and development for Cisco, Warrior for a press day at corporate headquarters in San Jose, California.

Although 92 different legacy protocols are used in connected devices today, Cisco expects that most of these objects will connect over IP (Internet Protocol) and play in Cisco's own performance range.

Programmability will be crucial to making these combined systems useful, Warrior said. Cisco hopes to capitalize on this with its network strategy defined by the Cisco ONE software and internally-developed processors in its devices.

As an example of using this new type of infrastructure, Warrior offered buyers the opportunity to plan a trip to a downtown store. The merchant's mobile app could exchange real-time data on store latencies and combine them with information from a city-managed system that uses integrated sensors to determine how many parking lots are available nearby. Drivers arriving at the parking lot can make a short-range wireless point-to-point connection with a kiosk to get a map to the nearest available location.

Cisco has a parking lot in its own headquarters equipped with such sensors under each room, with a system to reserve space for a car and then find the nearest available space on arrival. This could save time and fuel in search of parking, Warrior said.

The combination of sensor data, cloud-based services and distributed local processing will be replicated in many industries, Warrior said. It will promote new types of applications that require more programmable networks, he said.

Cisco ONE is the company's strategy to help networks better understand applications. Essentially OnePK (ONE Platform Kit), which will include 710 APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to help developers take advantage of current and future Cisco network devices, Lloyd said. With these APIs, developers can address the installed base of $ 180,000 million of Cisco equipment, he said.

Cisco ONE was named Cisco's answer to SDN (Software Defined Networks), though the company says it goes beyond other SDN approaches that focus on separating the transport layer's control from the network.

"Our vision is much wider, we see the network as a platform," said Warrior. Cisco says its approach enables more programmability.

The company's ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) are another element of programmability, Lloyd said, showing chips for the Cisco Catalyst 3850 Switch and the ASR1000 aggregation service routers. Developers can access the software running on these ASICs through Cisco ONE, Lloyd said.

"The ASICs in the products, with software and services, will allow Cisco to really shake up this industry," said Lloyd.