Today Cisco announced it would acquire its spin-in Insieme, and provided new detail on the Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) for data centers that Insieme introduced in June 2013. Cisco continues to promote the role of hardware in delivering future high performance networks and took great pains to distance itself from pure software based overlay virtualized networks (like the Nicira technology VMware acquired, Junipers Contrail, and Alcatel-Lucents Nuage) in the data center.

Insiemes ACI solution consists of:

The 100 Gbps ready Nexus 9000 Series switches that run under a new optimized version of NX-OS and can support up to 1.92 Tbps of bandwidth capacity per slot. The 8-slot Nexus 9508 is available now, and other switches in the family will follow.

The Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) supports a common policy framework that Cisco will extend to bring compute, storage, and network infrastructure under a common pane of glass for management and control. APIC uses a common application network profile similar to the service profile in Ciscos UCS that will allow applications to be placed where they need to be instead of being tied to an IP address. APIC and the optimized NX-OS will be available in April 2014.

Ovum notes that while the 9000 Series switches can operate standalone, the features provided by the APIC controller require Cisco hardware. While this may raise the hackles of those who believe future networks should be based on generic hardware platforms, this approach is unlikely to match the performance capabilities of ACI.