Cisco Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2 White Paper

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©2015 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved. | www.enterprisemanagement.com
Cisco Prime Infrastructure 2.2:
Enterprise-Class Network Assurance
Executive Summary 
In today’s world of fast-growing and fast-changing application hosting and delivery environments, networks 
have never been more important. Good network management tools, particularly those that help networking 
pros get the most out of networking equipment features and capabilities, are worth their weight in gold. And 
if those management tools can go further by providing the means for managing the infrastructure end to 
end, from users to applications, and from branch to data center, the value is even greater, opening the door to 
achieving business outcomes that are both directly and indirectly reliant upon the network. This paper reviews 
Cisco Prime Infrastructure Version 2.2 and examines how the enhancements and extensions that are part of the 
release bring needed capabilities for assuring high functioning, high performing networks as well as the broader 
data center operations function. 
Issues at Hand
Enterprise network managers have a lot on their minds and a lot on their plates as they must deal with a growing 
number of devices to manage, steadily rising bandwidth demands, and ever-higher expectations for network 
reliability and performance. To help them keep pace, network management tools must rise to the challenge. One 
of the key network management tools and technology requirements that Enterprise Management Associates 
(EMA) has been steadily tracking is the consistent demand for solutions that can handle multiple management 
needs on a task basis, while also supporting multiple types of technologies and equipment. Such converged 
network management solutions help networking pros keep up with increased complexity and expectations by 
simplifying operations, accelerating deployments, reducing restoration times, and enhancing user experience, 
even when staffing levels aren’t rising at the same rates.
One of the interesting challenges facing networking pros today is they must 
recognize and accommodate more than just the traditional physical network 
equipment. The introduction of network virtualization and multiple layers 
of virtual networking, as well as virtual endpoints being connected by those 
virtual network constructs, creates a new category of visibility and control 
challenges. More specifically, network management practices, and the tools and 
technologies that support them, must be ready to support a combination of 
physical and virtual networking elements and architectures.
Finally, truly effective network management practices increasingly rely upon effective network management 
tools and technologies. To have positive impact, the tools themselves must be designed to make advanced 
features and critical automations both easy to access and easy to implement. This is particularly important 
for control and optimization solutions that are intended to improve the manageability and predictability of 
network and application performance. If networking management tools have not been designed properly, such 
advanced capabilities will be far more difficult to leverage, commonly resulting in less than full use/deployment 
and, ultimately, less value to the organization.
Networking pros today must 
recognize and accommodate 
more than just the traditional 
physical network equipment.