BARCELONA, SPAIN -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/23/08 -- CISCO NETWORKERS 2008 -- Cisco® (NASDAQ: CSCO) today introduced new Catalyst® switches and capabilities to the Campus Communication Fabric, its blueprint for network services, to help customers increase operational flexibility and use the network as a platform to accelerate the delivery of applications and to support evolving networks. In an industry first, Cisco announced innovative enhanced Power-over-Ethernet (ePoE) capabilities across its Catalyst portfolio beginning with the Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series, with the Catalyst 6500 and Catalyst 4500-E Series scheduled to follow in the second quarter of this calendar year. With ePoE, customers can power Cisco 802.11n wireless access points from a single switch port, delivering greater operational simplicity and business flexibility for secure wired and wireless integrated network.

Cisco today also announced new fixed 10 Gigabit Ethernet aggregation switching solutions in its Catalyst 3560-E Series and has introduced Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support in its Catalyst 2960 Series, providing greater deployment flexibility to enterprises and small and medium-sized business customers.

"On the one-year anniversary of the Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series, we are proud to demonstrate continued switch innovation to help our customers meet the growing demand of faster applications and media-rich business collaboration," said Inbar Lasser-Raab, senior director of Cisco Network Systems. "We're seeing rapid adoption of our Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series as customers roll out these services and require higher performance, easy migration to next-generation 10 Gigabit Ethernet and extended Power-over-Ethernet capabilities."

Strong Customer Momentum for Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series

Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series switches are enterprise-class lines of wiring closet and aggregation switches that enhance worker productivity by enabling real-time applications such as IP telephony, wireless and video. Customers spanning various industry verticals have harnessed Catalyst 3750-E and 3560 E-Series benefits such as uninterrupted uptime, increased speed and the creation of future-ready infrastructures.

Sanford Health Reinvents Community Healthcare with Integrated Campuses

With more than 360 physicians across 150 locations in South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota, Sanford Health is using Cisco's integrated network to support a comprehensive system of hospitals, clinics, managed care, long-term care facilities, living facilities, home health services and pharmacies.

The Cisco Catalyst 3750-E has improved service performance by allowing bandwidth-hungry applications such as digital imaging, electronic medical records and picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) to run with high availability and low latency, which helps increase productivity from its geographically dispersed workforce. The added support of ePoE in the Catalyst 3750-E Series provides solid investment protection and deployment simplicity as the hospital aims to deploy its 802.11n wireless network, a network that represents the next generation of wireless mobile communications. The combination of the Catalyst 3750-E and the Cisco Aironet® 1250 Series Access Point delivers next-generation 802.11n wireless with greater performance and the industry's only full single-port Power-over-Ethernet solution.

"Our vision is to be one of the best integrated health systems in the United States, and we needed superior network performance to realize that goal," said Daryl Bouma, chief technology officer at Sanford Health. "The Cisco Catalyst 3750-E Series allowed us to deploy a highly secure converged network that meets performance demands while delivering the utmost security required by a healthcare organization. It also offers reduced downtime, a critical factor when dealing with matters of health and well-being.

"As our organization grows and the healthcare industry embraces more multimedia and collaborative technologies, the Catalyst 3750-E will allow us to easily respond. For example, it will enable us to upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks so we can prepare our network for a seamless transition to IEEE 802.11n and upcoming applications such as video."

British Medical Association Works for a Better Health Service

With more than two-thirds of practicing British doctors in its membership ranks, the British Medical Association (BMA) chose a Cisco intelligent network to deliver key applications that it relies on to provide membership and professional services to its 135,000 members.

BMA replaced its aging network with Cisco Catalyst 6500 and the Catalyst 3750-E Series Switches without interrupting business operations or application availability during the rollout. With the Catalyst 3750-E Series, BMA has also future-proofed its network for business growth because of the unique Cisco TwinGig Converter Module, which will allow BMA to easily change two Gigabit Ethernet uplinks to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplink as business demands grow.

"Cisco SMARTnet® services exceeded British Medial Association's expectations with full support for all aspects of deploying, operating and optimizing an integrated network that supports our 135,000 members and applications," said Tony Wood, senior network analyst at British Medical Association. "Cisco offered us an industry-leading 10 Gigabit Ethernet-ready Catalyst switch solution that is backed by the best service available anywhere."

University of Plymouth Provides Excellence and Innovation in Teaching and Research

With the growing demand of its more than 30,000 students and 3,000 staff, including researchers, for enhanced collaboration and communication applications, the University of Plymouth implemented a Cisco Catalyst 6500, 3750-E and 3560-E Series-based network to support unified messaging and wireless across the campus. Delivered on a converged network that supports data, voice and video, the University of Plymouth achieved significant cost efficiencies, simplified management and built a more flexible, highly secure network.

One of the United Kingdom's most prominent and innovative universities, the University of Plymouth continually raises the bar by introducing new ways of educating its students such as providing multicast lectures and video conferencing. The University of Plymouth is also prepared to address increases in more network-centric and bandwidth intensive collaboration applications in the future with its 10 Gigabit Ethernet network.

"The innovations in the Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series such as the enhanced PoE and 10 Gigabit Ethernet flexibility greatly simplified our deployment of wireless and IP telephony throughout the University of Plymouth," said Martin Godfrey, network and telephony manager, University of Plymouth. "It allowed us to achieve reliable communications and collaboration between students and staff no matter where they are and helped the university to achieve even higher academic standards."

Cisco ePoE and PoE Solutions for Highly Secure Converged Networks

With the introduction of ePoE to the Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series, customers can now take full advantage of all the performance enhancements and rich-media applications support over wireless connectivity that 802.11n can offer. Enhanced Power-over-Ethernet enables single-port power to support the 802.11n Cisco Aironet 1250 Series Access Point, eliminating the need for a separate power injector, an additional Ethernet cable or a power cord. This internal innovation of ePoE provides up to 18.5 watts per port on the family of Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series today with the future rollout across the Catalyst 6500 and 4500-E Series portfolio scheduled for the second quarter of this calendar year.

To increase productivity in small businesses and branch offices, Cisco introduced PoE into the Catalyst 2960 Series, thus enabling rich application and services support such as mobility and converged voice, data and video applications. Cisco also introduced the new Catalyst 2960 Compact Powered Device (PD), which receives power from an upstream PoE device thus eliminating the need for an internal power supply. This new capability extends the reach of the network beyond the wiring closet to meet the growing demand from users in collaborative work environments.

Reducing Space and Power Reliance: New Additions to Catalyst 3560-E Series

The Cisco Catalyst 3560-E Series has been extended with the introduction of a 12-port 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch and a 12-port 1 Gigabit Ethernet switch with two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports to help customers migrate smoothly from Gigabit Ethernet to 10 Gigabit Ethernet as their business requirements change. Ideally suited for space- and power-constrained environments due to their compact one-rack unit (RU) form factor, these newest additions increase employee productivity and deliver high-availability features such as fast switch convergence, dual power supplies and redundant fans to support business-critical applications.

The Catalyst 3560E-12D and 3560E-12SD are suited to support real-time converged applications such as Cisco TelePresence, Cisco Unified Communications and intensive client-server applications by providing highly secure unified network services with Layer 3 and Layer 2 feature sets and Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and IPv6 support.

Pricing and Expected Availability

Product                                  U.S. List Price          Expected
                                                                  Availa-
                                                                  bility

Cisco Catalyst 3750-E with Enhanced PoE  No additional charge as  Now
                                         is included in the base
                                         software, thus depends
                                         on the model.

Cisco Catalyst 3560-E with Enhanced PoE  No additional charge as  Now
                                         is included in the base
                                         software, thus depends
                                         on the model.

Cisco Catalyst 3560E-12D
12-port 10GbE X2 (or TwinGig) switch     $20,000                  Now

Catalyst 3560E-12SD
12-port GbE SFP + 2-port 10GbE X2 switch $15,995                  Now

Catalyst 2960 PoE
24-port 10/100 with PoE + 2 combo ports
 switch                                  $2,995                   Now

Catalyst 2960 PoE
24-port 10/100 including 8 PoE ports +
 2 10/100/1000 ports                     $1,795                   Now

Catalyst 2960 Compact Power Device (PD)                           Scheduled
8-port 10/100 with 1  10/100/1000 port                            February
 powered by PoE                          $795                     08

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