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Rockwell-Cisco tie-up yields its first fruits

14 November, 2007

Visitors to Rockwell’s annual Automation Fair earlier this month were shown the first fruits of its recently announced collaboration with the networking giant Cisco. These included a range of co-branded modular managed switches, claimed to be the first of their kind.

Rockwell Cisco switch

The switches (shown above) have features optimised for both the IT and manufacturing environments. They use Cisco’s operating system and user interface, combined with diagnostic information provided by Rockwell’s integrated architecture. The switches handle 6-26 ports and offer the choice of using either copper or fibre media.

Other ranges making their debuts at the Automation Fair in Chicago included a lower-cost version of Rockwell’s CompactLogix PAC (programmable automation controller), and another CompactLogix controller that handles up to eight axes of motion. Also on show was a new series of direct-drive or ballscrew-driven integrated linear stages that avoid the need to combine components from separate suppliers. More details of these and other launches at the Automation Fair will be published on this Web site over the coming months.