Huawei has launched a new line of switches capable of being upgraded, similar to applications on a smartphone, in an effort to intensify competition with Cisco Systems.

The new S12700 series of switches, which are programmable by software, and would offer four times faster updates compared to hardware-based switches.

Huawei’s latest switch will join the industry trend toward software-defined networking, an emerging technology that targets delivering programmable interfaces to network hardware.

Huawei S12700 switch claimed to support higher reliability and larger Ethernet frames which the company said has been designed for cloud computing, bring your own device, SDN, Internet of things and big data related analytics for business use.

According to the Chinese firm, the Agile switch and network products can resolve the problems customers have in network development.

Designed with the company’s own Ethernet network processor that can serve various software tasks, the new Agile switch is claimed to offer better performance over rival switches that are manufactured with application-specific integrated circuit chips.

Huawei is expanding into smartphones and business-computing products and services upon its sales being banned in the US over security concerns.