10 reasons to take another look at 2015 Cisco Mobility

Let’s face it, Cisco is huge. They’re massive, and occasionally they get things wrong. If you’ve strayed away from Cisco in the past year (or longer) because of a specific issue or gap, it’s high time you took another look. The Cisco Mobility offerings today are a far cry from what they were just an easy year back. Here are 10 great reasons to go get reacquainted with the 2015 Cisco Mobility offerings:

1) 5520/8540 WLCs

The introduction of a Converged Access 60G solution highlighted the gaps in the WLC portfolio in the 20/40G of throughput range. Both of these new controllers (one 20G, one 40G capable) are based on the more mature AireOS codebase running 8.1 and later. While this doesn’t mark an EOS/EOL announcement for the 5508 (clocking in at 8G), it does give that 7 year old platform some good alternatives for lifecycle management.

2) Prime Infrastructure 2.2 then 3.0

Ever since WCS was taken over and moulded into the NCS then Prime Infrastructure products, it’s always bore the scars of a legacy mired in Adobe Flash performance issues. Couple that with a dramatic uptick in features and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. The new versions of Prime Infrastructure are actually performing as well as they should be starting at about the 2.2 version and the new UI of Prime Infrastructure 3.0 completely moves away from Flash and demonstrates a significant re-think of the product – including ‘Make a wish!’.

3) 802.11ac wave 2

Let’s not forget the fun stuff – APs and radios. With competitively positioned 802.11ac Wave 2 products, Cisco is staying in the lead of the latest and greatest standards. With impressive throughput numbers, multiple gigabit uplinks, and fancy new features like MU-MIMO, the 1830/1850 APs are clearly paving the way for the next generation of some pretty obviously numbered future platforms. The only question is, what does Cisco have in store for us next?

4) HALO

No, not the game – the new Hyper-Location Module and antenna array. Cisco is delivering on the promise that the industry made to us oh so many years ago about leveraging your WiFi network as a platform for tracking your enterprises assets. Touting down to 1 meter accuracy, this module for your AP3600/AP3700s will take your location fidelity ‘to the next level’.

5) Mobility Express

Those that don’t like having a bare metal controller and don’t see the need for controller based features (such as centralized data plane), we now have a ‘controller on the AP’ option! This allows us to focus on the smaller deployments without the extra cost and complexity (such as it is) for those customers. This isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach that we’ve seen in the past, but rather an evolution of a well thought out strategy to bring enterprise features to every market segment.

6) UI improvements

Along with the Mobility Express product, the ‘metal WLCs’ are sporting a new user interface and out of the box setup experience (Day 0 and Day 1 support). If you’ve felt the WLC interface was a bit dated in the past, go take a gander at the plethora of new graphs, charts, and actual usable data about your infrastructure – all without having to goto a larger NMS platform!

7) CMX Evolution

The MSE product is finally getting some legs under the advanced location pieces. This easy to deploy ‘for everyone’ product starts to bring some pretty insightful analytics to any sized deployment – all the way down to a ‘no maps required’ presence analytics and all the way up to a Hyperlocation enabled, social media engagement platform. With both on premises and cloud based offerings available, it really is very easy to start getting very insightful data out of any sized network.

8) CCIE Wireless version 3

The dated CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, Wireless) exam has been updated to include software and hardware platforms from this year. You can now tackle one of the industries most challenging certifications on contemporary labs that are actually relevant to solutions you’re deploying today!

9) UX domain APs

See my previous blog on the topic for a more in-depth look at the UX products, but for those buying and deploying APs spanning multiple countries, this is a pretty good way to reduce a ton of deployment and ordering complexities. By standardizing on a single SKU globally, you can make quick work of some of the logistics nightmares of the past.

10) Cisco ONE licensing

Yes, licensing is boring, complicated, and expensive. Cisco ONE addresses all three of those pain points in one easy go. With a ‘count the AP’ approach to licensing, you can now start to take advantage of all of the above products in an easy to consume, deploy, and license fashion – without breaking the bank. For example, if you wanted to replace your old WLC with a new one, in the past, you would end up repurchasing your AP licenses. In this model, all products start at 0 APs and you pick the size that’s right for you – at any scale. Pick the solutions you want to deploy: ISE, Prime Infrastructure, advanced location analytics, etc – and go! A significant departure from the traditional licensing model in Cisco-land.

I know that a ‘recap overview’ blog sometimes seems too lofty, but there really is a ton to see if you’ve been unplugged from the Cisco world over the past year or so. Take a deep breath and plunge back in at any level and you’ll find something new that wasn’t there before. The Cisco ship sometimes turns slowly and sometimes it’s easy to forget that there is innovation happening all over the mobility space in San Jose.

Disclaimer: I was part of the Wireless Field Day 8 delegation to Cisco where we learned about several of the above topics. For more information on Cisco’s appearance at WFD8, go check out the video!