Cisco has unveiled a number of new products, t
he Cisco Industrial Operations Kit and the Cisco Industrial Ethernet 4000 (IE 4000) Series Switches that it says will “expand industrial use cases for the Internet of Things (IoT) [buy giving] customers new networking options to support the growth of IoT applications and unlock the business value of IoT and increased connectivity.”
According to Cisco, “The growing demand for IoT applications has caused infrastructure needs to evolve across industries, requiring greater flexibility, scalability and support of high bandwidth applications and services. … As organisations, such as utilities, oil, gas and energy companies, and municipalities, look to leverage new IoT applications, demand is growing for a quick and simple way to deploy Field Area Network (FAN) pilots, as well as reduce the cost of deploying a secure network infrastructure for medium and small size deployments.”
To help customers deploy these FANs Cisco has developed its virtual Industrial Operations Kit, based on the Connected Grid Network Management System. “Virtualising secure network services on a single Cisco Unified Computing Server, the Industrial Operations Kit can be deployed in a matter of days,” Cisco says. “The kit plays a critical role in creating efficient, secure and affordable industrial architectures for small to midsize organizations and large field area network pilots.”
Cisco’s IE 4000 is claimed to be the first 40Gbps Gigabit Ethernet switch offering high bandwidth and low-latency network connectivity. “In addition to providing more than double the scalability of other industrial switches, the IE 4000 brings real-time connectivity and enterprise intelligence to harsh industrial environments,” Cisco says.
