"It will have some of the network services aspect, and it will have a network management aspect," Patel said. (It will also have something Cisco calls "slicing," which he didn't elaborate on.)

The controller is being designed with the assumption that some major changes will get suggested after the first release -- which would be normal, but here, it seems a concession to the vague and shifting nature of SDN.

"We have a framework of what we believe we want to put in, and we have been getting feedback from a lot of the schools in particular," Patel said. (Cisco pictures universities and research networks being the most fervent users of controller-based networks.)

The controller also "needs to be tied to powerful ASICs that can deliver scale," Lloyd said. That fits with Cisco's overall philosophy, where ASICs still rule the high-end and most sophisticated systems, and also matches the Insieme team's reputation for being strong on ASIC development with prior spin-ins. (See Cisco Wraps Up Nuova and Andiamo Crew Reunites With Cisco.)

Friends and neighbors
Another topic that came up was the way that virtualization is bringing Cisco's world closer to VMware Inc.'s. For now the companies are allies, because they provide separate parts of the infrastructure.

"We think that the world of customers that we talk to will absolutely want to connect their virtual environments [mostly VMware] to their physical environments [Cisco]," Lloyd said.

Overlap between the two is going to get dicier; Cisco's Nexus 1000v gives it a virtualization play, and VMware became a noteworthy SDN player when it acquired Nicira. But Lloyd wasn't willing to predict all-out war between the two.

Rather, customers want things in the data center to work together and to be simplified, and that's going to force Cisco and VMware to stay friendly. "This is my job. I'm Canadian; we're very peaceful," Lloyd said.

Of course, you'd expect him to say that, and VMware has said pretty much the same thing. (See VMware Insists It's Not Warring With Cisco.)

When it comes to storage, another key let of the data-center market, Cisco definitely wants to stay out of the market. "Our rule is: Can we make it to No. 1 or No. 2? Is there an inflection point?" Lloyd said. "We are adamant we are gonna partner in storage."

— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading