To address evolving IT needs around increasingly distributed, collaborative workforces, Cisco has introduced its Borderless Networks architecture and a five-phase plan designed to help deliver services and applications to anyone, anywhere, on any device, at anytime – seamlessly, reliably, and securely. As the first proof point of its Borderless Networks architecture, Cisco has announced the second generation of its Integrated Services Router, the ISR G2.

The Cisco ISR G2 helps businesses and service providers scale delivery of on-demand, networked business services like video and collaborative applications at branch offices. It serves as a natural part of the Cisco Borderless Networks Architecture, which combines the company’s routing, switching, wireless, and security technologies into an integrated networking infrastructure.

The Cisco ISR G2 offers as much as five times the performance of its predecessor, the Cisco ISR, as per company claims. It boasts of new video-ready architecture and new video digital signal processors, which will be key to delivering medianet capabilities essential to the Borderless Networks experience.

Borderless Networks solutions decouple hardware and software so that virtual services can be remotely deployed and managed. The ISR G2 implements this with the Services Ready Engine, which lets businesses dynamically deploy services in branches without costly onsite support. The ISR G2 services module comes with up to 1TB of on-board storage, which is useful for video surveillance deployments, and supports up to seven times the performance of the previous network modules.

Going further, the Cisco Borderless Networks Architecture delivers Cisco EnergyWise across multiple platforms to empower organisations to better manage their power consumption and costs through increased visibility and policy-based controls. ISR G2 extends this capability to the branch office with a new family of integrated EnergyWise compliant switch modules and slot-based power control.