Cisco Cisco Nexus 5010 Switch Dépliant

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The single-pane management of the switching environment, enabled by Cisco Catalyst Smart Operations and

Cisco StackWise

Plus technology, is a huge benefit. “From here in San Francisco, I can log into one console and

figure out what’s happening across an array of switches,” says Gray, who manages the company’s extensive

network on his own. “It dramatically cuts down on my management and troubleshooting time and delivers real

savings in IT administration.”

Finding skilled outside support resources for Nagra - OpenTV’s integrated Cisco environment has proven to be

simple, which is particularly important given the huge demands on the company’s network and relatively small IT

team. “With Cisco, we can choose among the best of the best when it comes to service and support. It’s easy to

find experts who are trained and certified to address our growing and changing requirements,” says Gray.

Results

For Nagra - OpenTV, key benefits of Cisco Catalyst 3750-X Series switches include ease of management,

ongoing reliability, and excellent scalability. “Once you configure the [Cisco Catalyst fixed access] switches, you

can just walk away,” says Gray. “If an issue comes up, I can now easily resolve it in a couple minutes. When

you’re dealing with hundreds of switches, the efficiencies quickly add up.”

The ability of the Cisco environment to scale smoothly with the growing business has proven critical to Nagra -

OpenTV and has helped the company accelerate time to market for new products. “We have a pre-IPO mentality,

so sustained growth and scalable systems are priorities. We have to be able to adapt and expand services at a

moment’s notice, which is why we went with the Cisco 3000 Series switches,” says Gray. “With Cisco, we can

ramp up quickly and don’t have to worry about whether we have another blade slot open.”

The management stack configuration, with price points that did not require a large upfront investment, made

getting buy-in from the company’s CEO easier, especially when Nagra - OpenTV was operating with tighter capital

budgets. “With such a broad range of solutions, Cisco can deliver the right type of solution at the right price,” says

Gray. “In our case, it was easy for us to buy a couple of Catalyst 3000 Series Switches and just keep stacking

them as needed.”

Beyond the scalability and manageability of the Cisco solutions, Nagra - OpenTV is realizing further benefits from

the Catalyst 3000 Series switches with Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+). Nagra - OpenTV powers a segment of

its phone system in Asia and its wireless access points through PoE. “We can deliver more reliable power to our

systems, while simplifying management,” says Gray. “Given the scope of our operations, this is critical.”

“We have developer groups in China, India, and the U.K. working on the
same projects all the time, so if access goes down, our core development
work comes to a standstill. Our comprehensive Cisco environment helps
drive our success by keeping our teams collaborating without
interruption.”