Tell Cisco what you think of its big Nexus 7000 switch and how it can be improved and you could be sent a Cisco Nexus 
Fleece from Douglas Gourlay, the public face behind the switch at Cisco. Well, that's how Colin McNamara, CCIE No. 18233 got his new fleece. McNamara was able to play around with the big switch at last week's SE Virtual Team meeting, writes Gourlay in his blog, and McNamara wrote up his thoughts in his blog.
Among the useability enhancements that McNamara feels are most beneficial include a separate IP-enabled management interface, a functionally USB Interface to transfer IOS (or NX-OS) images, a 'clean" integrated cabling system, and front to back cooling. Among McNamara's suggestions for improvement include the placement of the compact flash cards in the supervisory module, and for Cisco to "continue with the spirit of innovation that has defined Cisco over the years." He cites Cisco's acquistion of Selsius and "the introduction of VoIP as an enterprise class product" as "game changers" that made his hair stand up.
Could Cisco pull off something similar in the data center market? What are your suggestions for improvements to the Nexus 7000?
Read McNamara's blog entry in full here.
Read Cisco Subnet blogger Michael Morris' take on the Nexus 7000.
Read Cisco Subnet's roving CCIE Mark Lewis head-to-head of Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper EX.
More from Cisco Subnet:
* Cisco vs. Juniper Episode II: Enterprise switching
* Cisco Linksys sales challenged by slow shift to 802.11n, multimedia-enabled homes
* Cisco's weak reference network designs for VMware
* What's new in Cisco's newest NAC appliance version?
* What's there to love about Cisco's TelePresence?
* Cisco security admin pay could soar 48% in 2008
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.
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Nexus Sportswear :)
I'm a huge fan of usability enhancements. As products and markets mature customers tend to get weary of complex operational characteristics, especially unnecessary and burdensome ones. A classic example of a success story capitalizing on this trend is Apple. I am writing this right now on my new MacBook Air- it's just flat out easier to use than any other choice I had. I'm relatively tech savvy, but scrubbing my registry is really not on my top-10 list of things to do anymore...
So when we look at networking I feel it's high time to do the same: look for operational efficiency improvements. I still cannot forget the customer who had a 20 page paper on 'Shutting down a network switch".
THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG IF IT TAKES YOU 20 PAGES TO TELL SOMEONE HOW TO TURN A BOX OFF!!!!!
So why not change it? It's really about understanding the goal behind the operational procedure and then making system default behaviors align.
We have a long way to go, but feel we are making some traction in this. Network Management is really, for me, the next frontier- There is so much that can be learned and applied from thoughtful consumer software offerings and the open-source community that I feel we can apply to creating manageme products that combine simplicity, ease of use, with integration from vendors and other sources via open APIs and even roll-up customer generated content and workflows allowing everyones operations to work more efficiently.
So, as far as our Nexus Sportswear collection - if you have ideas, areas we can improve our products, ways to cut down on complexity, please feel free to reach out to us. I can't promise a fleece for everyone- but good ideas and concepts are always rewarded.
dg