Cisco Receives Frost & Sullivan’s 2007 North American Carrier Ethernet Equipment Market Leadership Award

Prestigious award based on technology innovation, market share, revenue growth rates and profitability

SAN JOSE, Calif., - January 24, 2007 - Frost & Sullivan, a world leader in growth consulting and the integrated areas of technology research, market research, economic research, corporate best practices, training, customer research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy, today announced that Cisco® had received the Frost & Sullivan North American Carrier Ethernet Equipment Market Leadership of the Year Award.

“Cisco remains comfortably perched as the number-one Carrier Ethernet equipment vendor,” noted Frost & Sullivan. “While the company will continue to face challenges with market share in the fast-growing Carrier Ethernet equipment space, it is in no imminent danger of giving up the top spot. Innovation, whether internally or by identifying companies with strong products and/or technologies and integrating them under the Cisco umbrella - and, above all, a strong focus on customers - has assured Cisco’s position as the frontrunner in the Carrier Ethernet equipment market.”

At the Ethernet services edge, Cisco offers the 7600 Series Router, the industry’s first comprehensive Carrier Ethernet service-edge platform for converged Internet Protocol (IP) video, voice and data offerings with mobility. The Cisco 7600 Series offers service providers a highly-configurable router with a suite of line-card options that can be tailored to support a variety of Carrier Ethernet IP services, reducing costly upgrades and offering unsurpassed investment protection. With more than 35,000 units in production, this flexible design concept has proven itself in global provider networks. The Cisco 7600 Series has received Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) certification (MEF-9).

Integrated intelligence in the Cisco 7600 Series includes support for the Cisco Intelligent Services Gateway (ISG), a Cisco IOS® Software function that provides policy control, service control and subscriber management. Other features include the integration of video/voice Session Border Control (SBC) for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and non-IMS. The 7600 Series also features Visual Quality Experience (VQE) technology, designed to improve the quality of wireline IPTV services and subscribers’ viewing experiences. VQE enables network-based rapid channel-change and video error repair, two significant challenges in the development and delivery of wireline IPTV services.

Cisco also leads the market in development of operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) capabilities needed by service providers to successfully deliver Ethernet services. Several Cisco Carrier Ethernet platforms support new OAM features such as IEEE 802.3ah for monitoring and troubleshooting Ethernet links; IEEE 802.1ag for end-to-end service verification; and Ethernet local management interface (E-LMI), also known as MEF 16, for auto-provisioning of customer premise equipment.

The Cisco portfolio of MEF-certified Carrier Ethernet switches includes the ME 3400 Series, Catalyst 3550 Series, Catalyst® 3750 Metro Series, Catalyst 4500, Catalyst 4948-10G, ME 4900, Catalyst 6500 Series and the ME 6500 Series. Each of these Ethernet switching platforms has received MEF certifications (MEF9/MEF14) for Ethernet service and traffic management capabilities.

“We are extremely pleased to have been recognized for our leadership in this increasingly critical market segment,” said Pankaj Patel, senior vide president and general manager of the service provider technology group at Cisco. “Development of infrastructure for a true multi-service edge is critical to the ongoing convergence of service-specific networks onto IP. We will continue to focus on delivery of solutions that help our service provider customers become ’experience providers’ to meet the rising demands of their business and residential customers.”
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