A New Type of WAN that Grows with Your Business

Wide Area Networking has seen disruption like never before in the past 5 years. The use of technology to transform how businesses interact with their customers and partners combined with the changing behavior of how employees connect and use the network is challenging existing WAN architectures. For those of us keeping score, there have been multiple disruptions impacting the WAN simultaneously:

1. The shift from predominantly MPLS based connectivity to hybrid WAN

2. Evolution of router management to cloud controlled and cloud managed WAN with rich visibility and analytics

3. Centralized DMZ architectures moving to a combination of on-prem, cloud and collocation hub based security

4. Focus on user experience by redefining the cloud edge and focus on Application Quality of Experience (QOE) instead of WAN optimization

5. From purpose-built hardware to flexible network endpoints (Physical vs Virtual, Rich network services vs Lite services, Cloud vs On-premise)

The result is a fundamentally different WAN architecture – one that is able to offer connectivity, security, application experience and cloud access.

Ultimately our goal at Cisco is to develop a WAN solution that enables our customers to deliver “Secure connectivity from any user, device or thing to any application with the best experience” – it is really that simple.

A new WAN architecture

This new WAN architecture represents an end-state but most important is the journey of how our customers can get there. We acknowledge different customers and industry verticals move at different speeds and have different constraints placed upon them by the business. We have outlined a simple journey to move from a traditional branch CPE connected to MPLS architecture to this new end-state.

Simplicity in Consumption

Now, disruptive solutions need to be coupled with new-age business models – one that embraces cloud and utility-based consumption. We are thrilled to announce new Cisco DNA based software subscription licenses for our WAN portfolio: DNA Essentials, DNA Advantage and Cisco ONE Advantage across the Enterprise routing and Viptela portfolios– ISR 1000, ISR 4000, ASR 1000, vEdge and ENCS 5000.

These new DNA subscriptions are aligned with previously announced DNA subscriptions for Enterprise wireless and switching portfolio bringing a simple unified software approach to Cisco’s Enterprise networking portfolio.

To get started with this new subscription based model you pick the DNA license tier, the bandwidth required, the license term, chose Cloud or on-premise and finally the end-point that meets your needs – its really that simple.

The license tiers are structured to support the growth in business needs enabling you to move from DNA essentials to DNA Advantage and Cisco ONE Advantage based on your growing network and security requirements, growth in bandwidth based on user and application growth at the sites, flexibility to move the same license across end-points and lastly the ability to  change management from on-prem to cloud or vice-versa.

Our key intent here is to provide ongoing innovation through simple subscriptions and help simplify the journey to intent-based networking for the WAN for our customers and make all of this possible through a simple consumption model.