This|is the time to write our New Year's resolution, and for that we should learn from what we have achieved in the past to better prepare for the future. With that in mind, I invite you to look at the new innovations that Cisco brought to you in 2016, and how they have been perceived by our customers, partners, analysts and tech lovers represented in awards and test results.

This way, if you are considering data center solutions to meet your 2017 goals, you can definitely start by looking at the list of 2016 awards winning data center products and make better decisions!

To give you some background, in 2016, Cisco has formulated the most innovative Cisco data center strategy to provide an architecture that lets you Analyze, Simplify, Automate, and Protect your data and applications: the ASAP data center. Brad Casemore, Research director of Data Center | Cisco Nexus Fabric ManagerNetworks at IDC, shares his honest opinion about the Cisco ASAP Data Center:

"...an architecture devised to modernize infrastructure, simplify operations, prepare for next-generation cloud applications, fully leverage hybrid cloud, and provide comprehensive visibility and security throughout the datacenter and across all application environments."

-Enabling Digital Transformation in Datacenters and Hybrid Cloud: Cisco Analyze, Simplify, Automate, and Protect (ASAP).

Following are key solution components of the Cisco ASAP data center:

Best of Interop Awards

Data Center | Cisco Nexus Fabric Manager

Networking | Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)| Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization (NFV)

Security | Cisco Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW)

Cisco Tetration Analytics | The Biggest Launch in Cisco Data Center History| The Biggest Launch in Cisco Data Center History

As Chuck Robbins proudly assured, Tetration is "...an open platform that provides data center visibility at a level that's never been achieved before, and at a scale never possible before" (Cisco Tetration Analytics: Data Center Visibility on a Whole New Scale)

Cisco ACI: InfoWorld Technology of The Year 2016

Besides being chosen for this prestigious award, ACI has also been recognized by customers and partners. As of today, there are 2700+ ACI customers and a rapidly growing ecosystem of 65 technology partners, representing a 100% growth for the year. Learn more about ACI and the benefits of such a rich ecosystem here.

2016 Brand Leader Awards Voted By IT Pros

Cisco has been chosen as the award winner in market leadership, price leadership, performance, reliability, reliability, service & support, and/or innovation:

1. SDN Platform (Cisco ACI)
2. Unified Communications
3. Best Fibre Channel Network Monitoring
4. Network Performance Monitoring
5. Ethernet Core Switches
6. Ethernet Top of Rack Switches
7. Servers for Software Defined Storage
8. Integrated System
9. Converged Network Adapters
10. FCoE Switches
11. Fibre Channel Switches
12. Low Latency Ethernet Switches
13. Fibre Channel Network Monitoring
14. Network Performance Monitoring
15. Virtual Router / Network Access Appliance
16. All Flash Hyperconverged System
17. On-Premise vs. Cloud Unified Communications
18. Layer 4-7 NFV Services Platform
19. SDN Enabled Switches
20. Ethernet Network Monitoring

Network Test and Miercom reports: Cisco Intelligent Buffers Are Superior than Large buffers

In this past year, there has been a marketing buzz about having larger buffers. While there are benefits to larger buffer sizes, Miercom tests and reports that Cisco's intelligent buffers demonstrate a clear advantage over large buffers. See the report to satisfy your curiosity!

Network Test: "Let's cut right to the chase: The Cisco Nexus 9508 is the densest, fastest data center switch we've ever tested." (Cisco Nexus 9508: A New Speed Record in Data Center Switching)

Miercom: "...our testing results show that the Cisco Nexus 92160YC-X and Nexus 9272Q switches outperformed the Arista 7280SE-72 switch for congestion handling. The Arista 7280SE-72 switch has much deeper buffer than the Cisco switches, but with the built-in intelligent buffer management capabilities, both Cisco switches demonstrated clear advantage in flow completion time for small/medium flows over the Arista 7280SE-72 switch and provided the same or similar performance for large-size flows, which resulted in overall higher application performance." (Speeding Applications in Data Center Networks)

SIIA CODiE Awards:

• Cisco ONE Enterprise Solution: Winner of Best Cloud Infrastructure
• CliQr CloudCenter (now Cisco CloudCenter): Winner of Best Cloud Management Solution

As represented by the awards, ASAP brings you the most comprehensive collection of best of breed point solutions yet also integrated to work seamlessly together, something that no other single vendor can deliver. Nada! Cero! Ni uno! Learn more by visiting www.cisco.com/go/datacenter

Now that you start writing your New Year's resolution, you might also want to read what analyst Zeus Kerravala has to say in What to expect from Cisco in 2017 , and of course, attend Cisco Live, where you can meet the experts and see all the latest innovations.