At-a-Glance
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure for Application Developers
Simplify Network Configuration to Meet Application Requirements
• Accelerate application deployment.
Accelerate release automation into
production data center environments.
Decrease time to revenue by provisioning
application tiers, security, performance,
and availability policies automatically
across the data center fabric. Extend
application policies to computing and
storage resources in a cloud environment
through an open policy framework,
including group-based policy.
• Deliver an optimal customer
experience. Continually enforce
application and tenant policies, even
as they change and as infrastructure
demands increase.
• Gain application-specific real-time
visibility. Monitor application health in
real time and rapidly isolate applications
through application-level visibility of
infrastructure events.
Today’s competitive business pressures require new application features, security, and performance
capabilities. But deployment of these changes in production environments is almost as slow as ever, requiring
hundreds of device configurations and testing involving multiple vendors. After deployment, the process of
helping ensure application performance, security, and availability is equally complex, requiring device-specific
troubleshooting and isolation.
Cisco® Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI™) removes complexity at the network layer, implementing
application, tenant, and security policies automatically in multivendor infrastructure deployments. As policies
change, Cisco ACI makes instantaneous changes to the infrastructure, enabling real-time governance. It also
brings application-level visibility to infrastructure events, simplifying the enforcement of application servicelevel agreements (SLAs).
Simplify and Automate Network Topology Management
Cisco ACI is a comprehensive software-defined network (SDN) architecture that enables collaboration in
application deployment, security management, services delivery, and network configuration using a common
platform. Cisco ACI is built on three components (Figure 1):
• Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC)
• Application network profiles
• Cisco ACI fabric (based on Cisco Nexus® 9000 Series Switches)
© 2015 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Confidential. For Channel Partner use only. Not for distribution.
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At-a-Glance
Figure 1 Cisco ACI: APIC,
Application Network Profile,
and Supporting Fabric
In the Cisco ACI operating model, predefined application requirements and
descriptions—policy profiles—automate network provisioning, application
services, security policies, tenant subnets, and workload placement. The
model’s fabric-based approach allows both applications enhanced by Cisco
ACI and traditional enterprise applications to run side by side on a network
infrastructure designed to support them dynamically and with scalability.
Network policies and logical topologies, which traditionally have dictated
application design, are instead applied based on application needs.
With Cisco ACI, you can:
• Build, test, and provision comprehensive, application-based network
policies quickly and easily to continuously monitor, deploy, and adapt
underlying infrastructure to meet application requirements
• Enforce network policies during frequent changes to scale, tenants, and
underlying infrastructure
• Simplify operations through common policy, management, and operation
models across a range of application, network, and security resources
Cisco ACI delivers these benefits through open Representational State
Transfer (REST) APIs. Northbound APIs consume application policies, and
southbound APIs convey application policies to the data center fabric and
Layer 4 through 7 services. Many application vendors and Layer 4 through 7
partners have already joined the Cisco ACI technology ecosystem.
Next Steps
The next step toward a rewarding partnership with Cisco is to join the Cisco Solution Partner Program.
With the Solution Partner Program, you can:
• Use Cisco go-to-market (GTM) programs to assist in lead generation at
Cisco deployments
• Gain access to innovative technical, marketing, and sales resources
• Connect with Cisco channel partners to provide even more competitive solutions
• Allow all applications and infrastructure to use intelligence at the network
layer through open APIs
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective
owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
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