Cisco has started to unify its network application services into a new enterprise data centre platform, promising increased server utilisation. 

The vendor's Data Centre 3.0 vision spans existing products that Cisco has moved to the network over the past few years, such as security and storage area networks, as well as a series of new products.

Cisco considers the mainframe era as data centre 1.0, and the current client-server model as data centre 2.0. Data centre 3.0 combines the company's ideas for using the network to manage data with the rise of virtualisation technology.

Cisco chief executive John Chambers described Data Center 3.0 in his opening keynote at the Networkers at Cisco conference in Anaheim, California as "moving from a box mentality to an architecture mentality". 

The firm unveiled its VFrame Data Center which offers orchestration services at a network level. The application is able to identify when a service or application suffers from peak demand and dynamically add additional server resources.

It will also provision new systems, including the installation of the operating system, middleware and applications.

Cisco also released several other products under the Data Centre 3.0 banner, including the Transted Wan optimisation software, which encrypts key data on the network to ensure integrity, and an XML gateway for securing web services.

Chambers boasted that Data Centre 3.0 will lay the foundation for new services and technology that will drive a new wave of business efficiencies and revenue growth.

By enabling collaboration across departments and between companies, these innovations will dwarf the economic growth achieved during the first wave of internet adoption during the 1990s, Chambers projected.

• A video on Cisco's Data Centre 3.0 is available on vnunet.com TV