2/5/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced a bevy of new product and feature offerings, including new Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series Switches and Catalyst 3560 and Catalyst 2960 Compact Switches.

Elsewhere, Cisco unveiled its Catalyst 4500 Series Full Image In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU), along with other availability features -- including its new Redundant Power System (RPS) 2300 and Catalyst 6500 Series power supply. Analysts say the product and feature refreshes, while far from game-changing, help shore up Cisco's overall competitive position.

"[The] new fixed configuration switches, redundant power options and nonstop code load for the Catalyst 4500 ... squarely shore up weaknesses in Cisco's product lines and put the company in a stronger position," wrote Steven Schuchart, a senior analyst for enterprise infrastructure with consultancy Current Analysis.

Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series switches describe a line of tri-speed wiring closet switches with integrated power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet support. The Cisco Catalyst 3560 and Catalyst 2960 compact switches, on the other hand, are small footprint tri-speed and 10/100 models designed for smaller environments where space is at a premium.

The new offerings ship with Cisco's Stackwise Plus feature set, which Schuchart particularly singles out.

"Stackwise Plus allows for local switching in an all-Stackwise Plus stack, fixing a significant competitive deficiency in its stackable products," he said, noting that Stackwise Plus is also backwards-compatible with Stackwise. At the same time, Schuchart conceded, Stackwise Plus isn’t a slam-dunk. "Stackwise Plus is a nice feature for the Catalyst 3750-E and 3560-E Series Switches, but doesn't really fix all of the problems with Cisco's stacking. When a Stackwise Plus switch is stacked with a Stackwise switch, only the original Stackwise functionality is used, removing local switching. In addition, Stackwise and Stackwise Plus are slower than most competing stacking technologies on the market today."

For this reason, he said, "Stackwise Plus will only be competitively relevant in greenfield situations and customers will still be able to use deficiencies in Cisco's stacking technology against it in competitive selling situations."

Ditto for Cisco's updates to the Catalyst 4500 Series, Schuchart continued. "The nonstop code updates are nice for the 'R' versions of the 4500, but the majority of the Catalyst 4500 line still has redundancy and reliability competitive issues that ISSU simply doesn't solve." --Stephen Swoyer