Cisco Systems has produced its CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap and a clutch of new products, in an attempt to tap the market for connecting legacy applications on IBM mainframe systems and SNA Systems Network Architecture networks to the Internet. The CiscoBlue Intranet Roadmap outlines the future products to increase the security, scalability and fault tolerance of legacy systems with Internet gateways, as well as enhancements to existing products. It sits alongside the original CiscoBlue strategy for integrating SNA networks with high-performance switched networks announced last year (CI No 2,887). Cisco is also launching two new products, WebAccess for S/390 and Cisco IOS software for S/390. WebAccess is a result of an alliance between Cisco and OpenConnect Systems Inc. Cisco IOS provides TCP/IP applications to run in the data centre with comparable reliability and security of existing SNA applications. It includes features of Cisco IOS software together with TCP Assist, which moves functions out of the TCP/IP stack and on to the channel interface processor card in a Cisco 7000 family router, to reduce host mainframe cycles. Cisco jointly developed Cisco IOS software for S/390 with Interlink Computer Sciences Inc. Cisco also announced its CiscoWorks Blue Internetwork Performance Monitor, management software which isolates performance problems, locates bottlenecks, diagnoses latency and performs trend analysis within an IBM internetwork. An updated release of CiscoWorks Blue Maps and SNA View are also available offering SNA and TCP/IP network management from a single console.
