Boosting utilization
But the real selling point is the cloud, he insists. "Every service provider I talk to in Asia wants to talk about cloud computing for two basic reasons: one, they want to get better utilization out of the assets they have internally. If you look at average utilization on a data center, it's about 15% because of all the inefficiencies. Second, they want to leverage those assets and create new services such as IaaS, PaaS and SaaS."
White adds that Cisco is justified in describing the CRS-3 as "the foundation of the next-generation internet" because it is designed specifically for the three main traffic types that telcos need to ready their networks for: data center/cloud, video and mobility.
"Is it overhyped? I don't think so, because this really is a foundational technology in the sense that we're building more and more intelligence into this platform to more effectively handle those traffic types, which are very different traffic types traversing across a common architecture," he says. "The networks need intelligence to allow operators to get better economics and allows the end-users to have a better experience."
White also wryly notes that the CRS-1 didn't get the greatest reception, either. "When CRS-1 came out, people said that's interesting, you'll probably sell a dozen. Six years later, we've sold about 5,000 units to over 400 customers worldwide."