We had some sneak peeks at CiscoLive in London but as you probably know by now, this stuff was just formally announced last week.  Several demos worth looking at give you the foundation for what is important. Shashi Kiran is leading this effort and you can always count on a good quote: "Cisco takes Unified Fabric to the next level delivering compelling customer value in an evolutionary manner, we offer a switch with the industry's highest 40GbE density per rack unit, the simplest solution for the hybrid cloud model, and the most extensible network controller." Interesting....tell us more... https://youtu.be/-l7KQ3e0d34 Three areas of innovation:  How we Scale (Nexus 6000), how we enable the Hybrid deployment model (Nexus 1000v InterCloud) and how we open it all up with Cisco ONE (Open Networking Environment)

 The family expands with the Nexus 6000

The new Nexus 6004 switch offers extremelyhigh performance-40 Gigabit Ethernet interface, or 40GbE-in a compact size. The switch can handle very bandwidth-hungry applications without taking up a lot of space in the data center, making it more energy-efficient and cost-effective. The Nexus 6004 delivers up to 96 ports of 40GbE; no other switch in the market can match the compactness and density. https://youtu.be/GVfizvefNrk Also worth mentioning in this arena: New Network Analysis Modules on the Nexus 7000 and new Fabric Extender solutions.  Jimmy Ray talks to Deepak about application awareness and rich performance statistics with the NAM: https://youtu.be/X3_dj4MnKxY

Clouds are starting to make more sense with the Nexus 1000v InterCloud

The Nexus 1000v 'inter cloud,' will allow customers to burst compute loads between private and public clouds.  Sounds easy in theory.  You can see the technology element we put into play here with the 1000V.  The new term here is "Intercloud" which is designed to dramatically simplify the deployment of hybrid cloud solutions.  Security is obviously a big play here as we need to maintain and transparently re-instate policy when when moving virtual machines from a private cloud to a public cloud. This is really interesting stuff...maybe one of our favorite announcements. We have a Fundamentals of Hybrid Cloud in development but for now -I think you will find this conversation with Prashanth very helpful. https://youtu.be/pv7Z-Np8yow Great example of making the complex simple -in this case using the familiarity of VNMC: Virtual Network Management Center. Bit It also gives network operators end-to-end visibility into their virtual machines in the cloud and the traffic running across the network-simplifying management and while preserving policies intact.  We did not talk in detail about the obvious benefit for service providers here but I expect there will be more on that as we deploy. Spend more time on this one -I highly recommend all three parts of Gary Kinghorn's coverage in his blog series: Cisco Launches Nexus 1000V InterCloud -Part 1, Part 2 (VNMC InterCloud), and Part 3And finally, Shashi's third point: 

ONE is no longer the loneliest number with the Open Network Environment

We announced the Cisco ONE controller software, which helps IT more directly manage the network infrastructure, and more closely link applications to the network so that the network more efficiently responds to applications. We are now saying of course -this is the industries' most flexible network and fabric controller. https://youtu.be/wihBU0biHmE We also announced a broad range of updates across its Enterprise and Service Provider portfolio delivering with support for onePK, OpenFlow, etc., continuing to deliver against the Cisco ONE strategy. Tomorrow, we will release a great interview on the ONE Controller as well -so watch for that! Robb https://twitter.com/robbboyd Follow the show: https://twitter.com/techwisetv