We're excited to be at Hannover Messe this week and even more excited to announce that our network architecture now supports the PROFINET standard. This is a big step on our journey towards the Industrie 4.0 Initiative, and in helping our manufacturing customers achieve the business benefits of fully digitized manufacturing.

Cisco's manufacturing customers using the PROFINET standard will now be able to integrate Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches within their existing network. This will allow them to monitor and manage network operability with their Siemens?SIMATIC Step 7 and TIA portal while utilizing Cisco Industrial Ethernet switches. Or, they can use Cisco network management tools to manage more detailed network configurations from a single location.

Benefits include lowering automation integration costs and speeding up network deployments. By integrating manufacturing and business systems onto a single network, customers will also gain greater visibility of overall operations and how machines are performing.

PROFINET is used in Europe, Asia and North America, and accomplishes resiliency through the Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP). PROFINET integrates onto IP networks and is supported by many industrial automation vendors.

What Else?

We have made profound progress working with our customers to bring the best of Plant Operations and Information Technology together to implement IP networks on the plant floor using Cisco's Connected Factory PROFINET as a best practices reference for our customers.

Profinet International certified support for PROFINET and MRP is included in a number of ruggedized Cisco products. PROFINET is supported on Cisco Industrial Ethernet (IE) 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 Series Switches. MRP functionality is included on Cisco Industrial Ethernet (IE) 2000 and 4000 Series Switches included in this release.

Support for the PROFINET standard will help our customers realize the full benefits of digitization and gain the confidence that comes with a secure, end-to-end factory with multiple layers of protection powered by Cisco technology.

More details are available in our Connected Factory PROFINET At-A-Glance.

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