June 28, 2021 – Cisco announced a new portfolio of Catalyst industrial routers to extend the power of the enterprise network to the edge with the flexibility, security and scalability needed for IoT success.

Featuring 5G capabilities today, the portfolio enables organizations to run connected operations at scale with choice of management tools suited for both IT and operations. The unified architecture simplifies collaboration between IT and operations and streamlines their deployments from the enterprise to the edge.

For most of our customers, the opportunity to improve efficiencies, the customer experience, and business results is achieved with data generated at the edge. Because the edge is all the places where organizations serve their customers and create revenue. The edge is diverse and is located anywhere and everywhere – from utility substations and pipelines to roadways and the police cars and buses that run on them. According to Gartner, 75% of data will be generated outside of the data center in these edge environments. This type of growth brings challenging new requirements.

“Managing the complexity of the industrial edge is challenging. Beyond multiple use cases — each of which has different protocols, connectivity requirements, form factors and security. As a result, there are often multiple vendors involved, creating siloed networks, increased maintenance time and cyber security risks. Uniting this unruly edge can be the gateway to real transformation. Approaches like Cisco’s new industrial routing portfolio potentially simplifies the management of this complexity, securely and at scale.” — Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President for IDC Energy and Manufacturing Insights.