Lost in Cisco's fuss about intent-based networking is the fact that the company had already tried this idea a few years ago, with ACI.

The Application-Centric Infrastructure (ACI) was the company's answer to software-defined networking (SDN), developed by Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) spin-in Insieme. Its architecture was based on a declarative model -- one where a centralized policy engine dictates desired outcomes and the switches configure themselves accordingly.

Release 3.0 of ACI, which came out today, lets that policy engine apply the same rules across multiple locations. Cisco is touting it as a type of Layer 2 data center interconnect (DCI). But, again, that's a market where Cisco already had a product, one that ACI now purports to replace.

Read the full story on Enterprise Cloud News.

— Craig Matsumoto, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading