There's been a lot of buzz around our recent Cisco Unified Access Solution announcement. We understand there is also some confusion around what's what, what's required for Unified Access, and what the impact will be on IT.

In true Mythbuster fashion, let's all discover why no myth is safe. Let's review what we've covered in this blog series so far:

• Part 1 debunked the myth that a move to Cisco Unified Access solution requires the complete replacement of the existing access switch infrastructure.
• In Part 2, we showed that the Cisco Unified Access Solution will NOT negatively impact network and application performance.
•  Part 3 proved that contrary to certain opinions, the Cisco Unified Access solution simplifies network infrastructure deployment and reduces operational costs through streamlining management and policy.
• Yesterday, Part 4 demystified the myth that Cisco Unified Access is time consuming to deploy.

Now for our final myth to wrap up to series:

Myth 5: Efforts should focus on enabling and securing wireless, wired is dead.

PARTIALLY TRUE. It is true that wireless is being adopted at a rapid pace and IT must be conscious of this growth. However, there are many organizations that still rely on their wired infrastructure to support day-to-day activities. As pointed out in the recent Cisco Work Your Way Global Study 79% of end user respondents said they use a wired connection at work. In addition, organizations are also finding new ways to leverage the wired infrastructure to support devices such as security cameras, access systems and other non-traditional end devices. The increase in devices, both wired and wireless, are driving IT to find ways to unify and simplify how operations and the infrastructure support all devices. Cisco Unified Access does just that. It allows IT to meet this challenge by delivering common functionality across the wired and wireless network, including:

• Extending commonly accepted and valued functionality, such as consistent, hierarchical QoS, from the wired network to the wireless network. Additionally, it adds wireless specific QoS selections for access points, radios, SSIDs, User and applications.  The Cisco Unified Access Solution increases agility with the new Unified Access Data Plane ASIC that will enable integration with the Cisco Open Network Environment (ONE) empowering IT to deploy and roll out services at a rapid pace.  The Meraki cloud-based approach allows IT to be more agile by deploying new services anywhere, from a centralized location.
• Supplementing 802.1x and WPA2/AES encryption, IDS/IPS with a stateful firewall on the wired network extends security to all wired and wireless access traffic, not just wireless as seen with wireless based-firewalling.

Combined, Cisco Unified Access enables IT to prioritize traffic, deploy services and effectively secure the network across both the wired and wireless infrastructure.

And it's a wrap! We hope you enjoyed this blog series. To learn more about the Cisco Unified Access Solution visit us at www.cisco.com/go/unifiedaccess