Durham County Upgrades Data Center Network with Cisco ACI to Speed New Services and Applications for County Residents, Businesses, and Employees - Seite 2

"Working at a forward thinking organization like Durham County is extremely fulfilling because they understand the value of technology and support innovative employees," said Seth M. Price, Senior Network Engineer for the county. "When I began the process of redesigning our data center and chose the ACI platform, I had the full backing and trust from my management to design what will truly be a next generation data center. The freedom to be innovative and create positive change is what brought me to Durham County and what keeps me here today."

Better Management with Cisco ACI
When the data center improvements are completed in 2017, Durham County expects the following benefits to be realized:

• An application centric data center able to deploy or redeploy network infrastructure rapidly to support new or changing applications and services.
• Advanced security, load balancing, and monitoring providing a more reliable, more secure and easier to manage network.
• Application and services integration where previously complex daily tasks can be automated processes.
• An innovative and highly skilled team prepared to meet new challenges.

"Right now we spend 80 percent of our time and resources maintaining the network, and 20 percent on new projects or improving services and innovation," said Joel Bonestell, Network Services Manager. "Moving forward, we will be able to flip that around and have more time for new and innovative projects that will benefit our residents and businesses with new capabilities and services."

As part of the ACI network deployment, Durham County will add ACI extensions to its dark fiber ring in downtown Durham. Network engineers will install ACI remote leaf switches, creating a 40Gb fiber ring downtown that will provide capabilities at other county sites, and which can be managed holistically. The extended dark fiber ring will lay the foundation for "Smart City" services such as a video surveillance system, enhanced library network access and services, and the opportunity to create more services to better serve the residents and businesses of Durham County.