Yes, Cisco does make Industrial Ethernet switches
It is surprising to hear how many Automation Engineers (I’ve talked to) do not know about Cisco’s Industrial Ethernet range of switches.
“Cisco makes switches for Industrial Ethernet applications?” and “Cisco makes industrial switches?”, are what I hear commonly.
Yes, Cisco does make industrial switches (and I don’t mean the *old* Cisco Catalyst 2955). I am talking about the modular based IE3000 series switches. In fact, the press release for it was about a year ago (with a 2nd quarter ‘08 release). With the abundance of Industrial Ethernet switch products already in place, Cisco may have come into a crowded marketplace with some catching up to do with the established *players*.
When I think of Cisco nowadays, I think of Cisco’s Unified Communications — which includes IP telephony, unified messaging, customer contact, Web and video conferencing etc. That’s kind of edged in my mind as with the great simplistic (yet powerful) marketing they’ve done.
Cisco in industrial automation and the factory floor? Not so much. I can’t remember the time I have actually seen a Cisco IE3000 printed ad, or is there even one? They don’t even have a direct link in their main Cisco website. One will have trouble ever finding it (being buried several levels down); good thing I have got it bookmarked. For your reference, here is the direct link to their Ethernet to Factory floor solution.
Are they taking a step back because of their partnership with Rockwell Automation, letting Rockwell be the front player in marketing the Cisco switch range? Rockwell branded Cisco switches differ from the standard IE3000 models as they have inbuilt feature sets and reference architectures tailored to Rockwell’s Integrated Architecture™ applications. Cisco also has a partnership with Honeywell as well (that one we hear even less off).
The IE3000 series targets industrial automation (with the familiar PLC DIN-rail mounted form factor design and the bells & whistles of extended environmental rating, convection cooling, alarm relays, surge/ noice immunity, 24VDC power etc.), outdoor video and transportation systems control, substation automation specifications (incl. IEC61850 and IEEE1613), railway, military and other unique environmental situations. It comes in 4 ports and 8 port versions with expansions modules and SFP transceivers.
Here is a video of the IE3000 as demonstrated by their product manager.
How they will fair remains to be seen … this is relatively an early stage of them entering the already abundant industrial switch marketplace. However, with their track record, I’ll never count them out. I liken them to the Goliath of the network world with a silent but deadly presence.
