Cisco's Unified Access tries tying up loose ends on networks supporting BYOD
As IT departments continue to grapple with the reality of BYOD while also trying to grapple with updating legacy infrastructures, the big names in tech are fighting to be the first out the door with the one-fits-all solution.
Cisco's latest approach is its new Unified Access platform, touted to be a one-stop shop when it comes to both setting up policies and management for an entire enterprise network.
Like many other infrastructure solutions, whether they be cloud-based or on-premise (or a combination of both), Cisco boasts that Unified Access will free up an organization's resources from focusing on time-consuming IT operations to promoting more innovation and growth for the business with the development of new connected services.
Unified Access is supposed to do this by offering a single set of consistent capabilities across wired, wireless and virtual private network (VPN) networks so that these in turn behave as a single entity.
Some of the features included on the platform consist of a self-provisioning portal for ongoing device management and an identity service engine for automated, role-based access control enforcement across wired and wireless networks.
Being that this is one "unified" network, that should in turn be faster and more capable of handling an ever-increasing number of mobile devices jumping onto the network.
Cisco has previously forecasted that there will be 3 billion users with 15 billion connected devices worldwide by 2015. In promoting Unified Access, the networking giant cites that this figure will climb to nearly 19 billion connected devices globally by 2016.
Suffice to say, there is definitely going to be a lot more competition in the next year or two to try to meet the escalating demand in this space.