Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service | Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Cisco is stepping up its enterprise switch game to support the collaboration and multimedia it's been pushing as the next generation of work.

Enhanced video meeting systems are emerging along with unified communications software that could put far more voice and multimedia on data networks. Organizations also are operating less from the top down and more as teams of people on the edge of the organization, altering traffic patterns, according to Cisco. The company is set to announce enhancements to its Catalyst 6500 Series and 4500 Series routing switches on Tuesday that are designed to help customers take advantage of those changes.

Though growing switch capacities are as inevitable as faster PCs, Cisco said it's also making more fundamental changes that let IT departments configure their networks for new uses, specifically ones that need low latency and steady performance, such as video. The company has done so in a way that lets customers with existing switches add the new capabilities without having to invest in new chassis hardware, according to Cisco.

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