Cisco Introduces a New Advanced Proactive Performance Management Solution to Ensure Application Performance across the Enterprise

Cisco Network Application Performance Analysis solution helps large enterprises optimize their networks for delivery of business critical application

SAN JOSE, Calif., December 13, 2005 - Cisco Systems today introduced the Cisco Network Application Performance Analysis (NAPA) solution, an innovative portfolio of network management products and customer support services that provide IT management with a holistic view of the interaction between network resources and application performance. The Cisco NAPA solution helps ensure that customers with business-critical applications can operate efficient and effective networks. Customers can react quickly to high-priority application performance problems while proactively planning for changing network requirements.
The Cisco NAPA solution helps enable IT operation managers and network managers to gain new levels of visibility into their network as well as provide more certainty in the delivery of application performance. Key benefits for customers include:

Predict performance impact of new applications and network services on existing infrastructures
Reduce risk prior to application or network services deployment
Optimize network performance by identifying trends in the network and application configuration issues and recommending corrective actions
Help enable faster problem identification and resolution through more granular monitoring and wider visibility
Single vendor integration and support
The Cisco NAPA solution is part of Cisco’s Service Oriented Network Architecture (SONA), an architectural framework that accelerates applications, business processes and resources to help enable IT managers to have a greater impact on the business. The solution combines tools that work together to monitor and predict application requirements and network issues aligned with support services to help customers solve problems immediately.

This comprehensive solution covers all aspects of network management from the planning and design to the operating and optimizing phases. In support of Cisco SONA adaptive management services, the Cisco NAPA solution includes advanced customer support services that help implement and manage the solution based on a lifecycle approach and the customer’s specific needs. It provides a network-wide view and optimizes across many networking technologies and protocols.

“IT operations managers and network managers need to be better aligned as they migrate to a more service-oriented architecture,” says Zeus Kerravala, vice president at the Yankee Group. “The Cisco NAPA solution integrates products and services into a single intelligent solution helps customers better communicate within the IT organization. They can troubleshoot more quickly and plan better for future issues.”

Customers Seek an Optimized and Resilient Network for Today and Tomorrow

With the Cisco NAPA solution, customers can improve resiliency and operational efficiency of their current and future networks. This solution helps ensure IT managers proactively and accurately isolate bandwidth and network performance problems so that they can meet service-level objectives to support application performance.

Thomson Financial, a division of Thomson, the world’s leading information resource, provides a source for integrated information and technology applications in the global financial services industry. Thomson Financial’s products and services provide clients with real-time and customized solutions to analyze data and respond to specific needs.

“The efficient interaction between applications and the network is critical to Thomson Financial’s business success,” said Ayman Soliman, Senior Network Architect at Thomson Financial. “With Cisco’s tools and intelligence in the network, we will be able to review application performance from an end-user perspective. This will help us plan and optimize our network and quickly resolve performance issues. With the Cisco NAPA solution, Cisco leads the way in addressing growing customer needs in today’s complex IT environment.”

“With growing intelligence in the network, IT managers will need progressively more tools and services that capture increasing levels of visibility as well as proactively plan and prevent network issues before they occur,” explains Cliff Meltzer, senior vice president of the Cisco Network Management Technology Group. “Eventually, a transition will happen from a user-assisted management system to an automated management system. The Cisco NAPA solution is just the first phase of Cisco’s application network performance management vision.”

Availability & More Information

Most of the products and support services in the Cisco NAPA solution are available now. The remainder is scheduled for availability by March 2006. For additional information on the solution, please visit: www.cisco.com/go/napas.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

# # #
Cisco, Cisco Systems, the Cisco Systems logo, and Cisco IOS are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information

Nancy Darma

Cisco Systems, Inc.

Contact via E-mail