Cisco has had quite a time this year overcoming layoffs and massive restructuring, but that’s no reason for the networking company to take any lip from its competitors. Hoping to prove they’re not lagging behind anyone in the industry, especially the rival business Brocade, Cisco is pitching its Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to compete with Brocade’s 16 Gb/s Fiber Channel kit, but boasting that its product is far better than Brocade’s. While Cisco’s product manager for Fibre Channel over Ethernet J. Michel Metz said there are no storage devices available at the moment capable of sustaining this speed end-to-end. He also said that installing Brocade’s Fibre Channel is a “rip and replace” job compared to Cisco’s FCoE offerings, which will work with existing Ethernet setups. On the other hand, Brocade had said end-to-end FCoE networks are not being executed in any meaningful way.

“Customers can deploy FCoE right now, end-to-end if they wish, through top-of-rack switches to director-class core FCoE switches to FCoE-based storage arrays from a variety of vendors,” said Metz.

“Ultimately, having something available right now versus next year does not sound like it’s lagging behind; in fact, 16Gbit/s FC has a lot of catching up to do to FCoE in terms of use cases, feature sets and deployment scenarios. Cisco isn’t falling behind. Brocade is pushing technology that is far ahead of the majority of customers’ needs. Customers appreciate being able to prolong their investments whilst seamlessly accommodating future growth,” he added.

Moving ahead, Cisco has made several other developments too. A recent update includes their opening up a networking academy, “Knowledge Square.” The project is a collaboration between city officials and the Cisco Networking Academy in a global program that offers networking education and certification that’s required in order to qualify for technical positions in this field.  The first Square is located in the Morro do Alemão section of the Brazilian city. Cisco expects that over 300 students from the local Nova Brasília community will receive training throughout the first half of 2012.

The networking giant has also made some important decisions related to its executive board.  Somewhat surprisingly, Cisco shareholders decided to keep former Yahoo! chief executives Carol Bartz and Jerry Yang on the company’s board.  Some have raised concerns regarding the board members’ salary in relation to their position.

Last but not the least, Cisco has also introduced CloudVerse, the Unified Cloud Platform that encompasses several items, many of which will be available on a subscription basis. CloudVerse offers the Cisco Intelligent Automation for the Cloud, a cloud delivery tool and the Cisco Network Services Manager’s virtual and physical management platform. The Cloud-to-Cloud Connect network position software for the ASR 1000 and 9000 product families is also made available for customers, along with Cisco software and services. This category includes the Private Cloud HCS collaboration app, as well as software that enables carriers to offer similar Cisco-powered services from the cloud to their own customers, and technical services offered by the company and some of its partners.