Introducing Success Track for Data Center Network

The pace of digital transformation has accelerated. In the past year and a half, business models have changed, and there is a need for enterprises to quickly improve the time taken to launch new products or services. The economic uncertainty has forced enterprises to reduce their overall spending and focus more on improving their operational efficiencies. As the pandemic has changed the way the world does business, organizations have been quick to pivot to digital mediums, as their survival depends on it. The results of a Gartner survey published in November 2020, highlights this rapid shift. 76% of CIOs reported increased demand for new digital products and services and 83% expected that to increase further in 2021, according to the Gartner CIO Agenda 2021.

Today, more than ever, IT operations are being asked to manage complex IT infrastructure. This when coupled with rising volumes of data, makes the task of IT teams more difficult to manage today’s dynamic, constantly changing data center environments. Automation is clearly the need of the hour and automation enabled by AI will play a huge role. Hyperscalers are leading the way in using AI for IT operations and are increasingly setting the trend that will see AI being embedded in every component of IT. Powered by AI, hyperscalers are quickly defining the future of IT– from self-healing infrastructure to databases that can recover quickly in the event of a failure or networks that can automatically configure and re-configure without any human intervention.

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is a software-defined networking (SDN) solution designed for data centers. Cisco ACI allows network infrastructure to be defined based upon network policies and facilitates automated network provisioning – simplifying, optimizing, and accelerating the application deployment lifecycle.

To minimize the effort of managing your data center networks, Cisco has created Success Track for Data Center Network, a new innovative service offering. We want to help you simplify and remove roadblocks. Success Tracks provides coaching and insights at every step of your lifecycle journey.

Success Track for Data Center Network provides a one stop digital platform called CX Cloud.

The CX Cloud is your digital connection to access Cisco specialists and customized resources to help you simplify solution adoption and resolve issues faster. This is a new way of engaging with us, bringing together connected services—expertise, insights, learning, and support all in one place with a personalized, use-case driven solutions approach.

CX Cloud gives you contextual guidance for three data center networking (ACI) use cases: Network provisioning and operations, Network automation and programmability and Distributed networking.

The number one issue that we have heard about is that most next generation data centers (based on SDN) are complex and difficult to deploy. All three Success Track use cases will help simplify your network management and operations so you can serve the business more efficiently.

Take network provisioning and operations for example. A box by box, element by element management approach does not scale nor give the confidence for consistency required in today’s fast moving IT organizations.

By using the embedded tools built into the Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (or APIC) we demonstrate how to get a single point of automation, orchestration, and troubleshooting that will simplify data center network management and operations for Days 0, 1, and beyond.

To achieve these benefits, it is critical that a strong foundation be built on such a simple management infrastructure such as ACI’s single pane of glass tools.

Success Track for Data Center Network is a suite of use case guided service solutions designed to help you realize the full value of your ACI deployment, faster. This holistic service digitally connects you through CX Cloud to the right expertise, learning and insights at the right time to accelerate success.

Get access to experts, on-demand learning, Cisco community, and product documentation on our CX Cloud Portal.

Customers can simplify data center network deployment and operations through access to experts, embedded tools, and a unified digital platform. This results in greater efficiencies, cost savings and a reduction of errors.

If you are looking for a consistent onboarding of network infrastructure, expedited workload provisioning to network fabric, and improved monitoring and insights, Cisco Success Track for Data Center Network will help you get there.