The scale and complexity of modern enterprise infrastructure environments are exploding as workloads become pervasive and infrastructure becomes more hybrid and distributed across data centers, edge, and public cloud resources. Recent events have put the importance of successful network operations at the forefront. Through a barrage of obstacles, today's resilient and successful organizations are modernizing and automating their network operations to stay ahead of the curve. Their destination? Hybrid Cloud - and by a vast majority.

According to IDC research, 55% of organizations currently have hybrid cloud and use it as a framework to deploy applications where scale-out architecture and high availability networks are needed. Another 29% reported not having a hybrid cloud, but they planned to create one within a year. And by 2025, 70% of organizations will modernize their applications based on drivers like data security, organizational flexibility and agility, and productivity gains versus drivers like IT cost savings.

To solve hybrid cloud application complexity, your IT needs to focus on automating application infrastructure management. This includes the many personas involved in configuration, provisioning, lifecycle operations, and orchestration of cloud and hybrid datacenter environments. But scaling applications into hybrid cloud also increases the cost of managing thousands of distributed devices, containers, and network services. These elements require more knowledge and more time to troubleshoot the many interconnected parts using multiple purpose-built solution tools and methods.

To be successful, it'scriticalto have the visibility and insights into your network wherever your data is created with consistent network and policy orchestration across multiple data centers -whether on-premises, in the cloud, or at the edge. At Cisco, we know that for any move to the hybrid cloud lifecycle journey, there is an uncompromising need for a centralized approach to manage network capabilities. Cisco's Nexus Dashboard is our newest cloud networking platform innovation to help with this very problem. With its One View presentation of all your hybrid cloud network sites, your IT operators can use a single agile platform, to operate all their network infrastructure in a single place. How manysplitpersonas (NetOps, DevOps, SecOps, and CloudOps) do you have?Cisco Nexus Dashboardbridges all the tools needed byeach personawith a flexible operational model forall use caseson a single platform.

We listened, here are the recent innovations that you asked for:

Bolster Cloud Neutral Support

Recent innovations include expansion to the hybrid cloud with added support for Google Cloud, simplifying network management across multiple public cloud sites. Nexus Dashboard is available in the AWS and Azure marketplaces and will also be featured in the Google Cloud marketplace.

Improved Intelligence and Site Management

Key new features support air gap environments, provide simplification of experience such as reduced app downtime due resource challenges when upgrading an app or installing by determining whether you have enough resources etc. The dashboard will predetermine the resources needed for the app and environment to run smoothly.

With air gap support, customers that are not connected to Cisco Cloud can utilize insights advisory features to better identity risks to their infrastructure and get decrypted updates on PSIRTS, EOS/EOL, field notices etc. Syslog support as well as customization and personalization features are newly available with the interface.

Decreased Dependence on Physical Hardware

Additionalscale improvementsare being implemented with the virtual form factor of Nexus Dashboard, where additional physical hardware is not required to run the Nexus Dashboard in your environment. Please refer to the Nexus Dashboard datasheet for more details.

End to End Visibility

External devices such as firewalls and integrations such as vCenter -offer broader visibility, correlated telemetry and deeper insights beyond the core network. For end-to-end visibility, it is imperative to additionally understand where exactly the problem truly lies, which allows for quick remediation. L4-L7 and cross-domain integrations are a key strategy to gain comprehensive visibility. With the new vCenter integration, the Insights function can incorporate virtualized workload data such as hypervisor name, VM name, VM health into telemetry. This will enable visibility across silos, into the virtualized environments and enable faster MTTR for customers by correlating network events and application issues.

The Insights function is also able to enable optimal network and application performance and ensure continuous availability with recent AppDynamics SaaS support.

Considering recent news of companies that have implemented changes resulting in outages, we'd like to emphasize that pre-change validation with upgrade assist are key capabilities of the Insights function. It's a critical capability that evaluates configuration changes before they are deployed to allow IT Ops to make changes with confidence. This removes unintended consequences that take down applications and/or the network. I encourage you to check out these Nexus Dashboard capabilities.

Which performance zone is right for you?

Customers have different reasons as to operate in the various performance zones (be it OKRs, metrics, speed of the business or foundational capabilities) in terms of the people, process, and technology alignment.

With the Nexus Dashboard, we are helping customers figure out where in the network infrastructure automation journey they are. Then help them in their journey to move their performance zone from reactive, to proactive and then to optimizing and the visionary self-healing, self-driving, and self-diagnostic networks.

So, how do you get started?

Speak with your partner or account team and check out these informative sessions:

• Interactive#CiscoChat
  • Hear about the innovative use cases where Cisco Nexus Dashboard brings together disparate IT teams to collaborate effectively in this new hybrid cloud world.
• Cisco Champions Podcast
  • Our engineering and product management leaders are interviewed by Cisco Champions on Cisco's hybrid cloud networking strategies.
• Hybrid Cloud Demo Series
  • To watch a live demo of the latest Nexus Dashboard innovations, please register here

Resources

Visit us at Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Announcing Cisco Nexus Dashboard Open Ecosystem Expansion with ServiceNow(Blog)