Updated: Dec 05, 2025
Your network is bleeding money while you sleep.
Not through some catastrophic failure or dramatic breach, nothing that makes headlines. The damage happens in increments: 47 minutes of downtime here, three hours of troubleshooting there, an entire weekend spent manually configuring VLANs across 40 switches because your infrastructure refuses to talk to itself.
By the Enterprise Networking Team at Proactive Data Systems, Cisco Gold Partner
We've spent 34 years deploying networks across India. The conversations with CXOs follow a pattern: everyone knows their infrastructure needs upgrading, but procurement wants lower costs, IT teams fear implementation risk, and budget cycles push decisions into the next quarter. Meanwhile, the network keeps constraining what the business can do.
Here's what we've learnt from hundreds of deployments: the question isn't whether to upgrade. The question is whether you upgrade strategically before you need to, or reactively when something forces your hand.
Traditional switching infrastructure, older Catalyst 2960s and 3750s, legacy non-Cisco switches, basic Layer 2 equipment, carries hidden costs that rarely appear in your P&L.
Manual operations consume expensive time. Research shows that roughly 70 per cent of data centre networking tasks are performed manually. Your network engineers spend days on work that should take minutes. In our deployments, we've seen enterprises dedicate 2-3 full-time staff just to routine configuration changes, that is Rs 40-60 lakhs annually in labour doing work that modern infrastructure handles automatically.
Troubleshooting eats business hours. Traditional switches give you basic SNMP data. When performance degrades, you start investigating. One Bengaluru-based logistics company we worked with was losing 6-8 hours monthly to network issues that modern telemetry would have flagged before they impacted operations. At Rs 5 lakhs per hour of business disruption, that's Rs 3-4 crores annually.
Scaling requires project planning. Want to add 50 access points? Expect a weekend deployment. Need network segmentation for compliance? Block out three engineers for a week. We've tracked deployment timelines: traditional infrastructure averages 3-4 weeks for branch office connectivity. Modern approaches reduce this to 2-3 days.
Integration with modern architecture fails. Your applications run in containers, your workloads span hybrid cloud, and your security requires microsegmentation. Traditional switches cannot participate in automation workflows, cannot provide the telemetry your monitoring needs, and cannot handle east-west traffic patterns from virtualised infrastructure.
The five-year total cost of ownership tells the real story. A typical 500-employee organisation running traditional switching spends approximately Rs 2.5-3 crores on network operations over five years, hardware, labour, downtime, lost productivity, and delayed projects. Modern infrastructure cuts this by 40-50%, not through cheaper equipment, but through eliminated labour and prevented downtime.
Let's address the obvious question: why not just upgrade to newer Catalyst switches?
For many businesses, that's exactly the right answer. If you're running straightforward access layer switching with minimal automation needs, newer Catalyst models (9200, 9300 series) provide excellent value. They're reliable, well-supported, and sufficient for traditional campus networks.
Nexus becomes necessary when you need capabilities Catalyst wasn't designed for:
Data centre and private cloud infrastructure. If you're running virtualised workloads, building private cloud, or managing high-density server environments, Nexus provides the throughput, latency, and fabric capabilities required. Catalyst switches will connect servers; Nexus switches build modern data centre architecture.
Network automation at scale. Nexus was built from silicon up with APIs and programmability. If you need infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD integration for network changes, or policy-based automation across multiple sites, Nexus gives you tools that Catalyst doesn't.
Advanced telemetry and visibility. Nexus provides streaming telemetry that shows you what's happening in your network in real time—every flow, every queue, every buffer. You see congestion before users complain, spot security anomalies whilst attacks are forming, troubleshoot in minutes because the system identifies exactly where problems exist.
Modern workload support. Whether you're running AI/ML training on GPU clusters, building software-defined infrastructure, or supporting latency-sensitive applications, Nexus handles the transport, congestion management, and quality of service these workloads demand.
Your vendors aren't telling you about alternatives because they want your business. We will, because picking the wrong solution wastes your money and our reputation.
Arista builds excellent data centre switches with strong automation. They're a legitimate alternative to Nexus for pure data centre deployments. The trade-off: smaller partner ecosystem in India, less comprehensive support outside metro areas, narrower product portfolio if you need campus-to-data-centre consistency.
Juniper offers solid enterprise switches with good automation capabilities. Strong choice if you're already heavily invested in Juniper routing. Weaker if you need the breadth of integrations that Cisco's ecosystem provides.
White-box solutions (Cumulus, SONiC) work for organisations with deep networking expertise who want maximum control. Terrible choice if you need vendor support, proven reliability, or don't have staff who can troubleshoot kernel-level networking issues.
Newer Catalyst with DNA Center gives you significant automation capabilities without data centre-class hardware. Right answer for many campus deployments. Wrong answer when you need the performance, density, or fabric architecture of Nexus.
We deploy all of these, depending on what the situation demands. Nexus dominates our recommendations because most Indian mid-market and enterprise clients need data centre-class infrastructure but don't have Silicon Valley-level networking teams. Nexus gives you the capabilities without requiring specialist expertise—if you have the right implementation partner.
The technology isn't why network modernisation projects fail. Politics and process are.
One final truth: the companies that successfully modernise their networks share something in common. Their IT leaders convinced business leadership that network infrastructure is a business capability, not a cost centre. They showed how better infrastructure accelerates projects, enables new revenue streams, and removes constraints from growth.
That's the conversation worth having with your CFO.
Technology is half the equation. Deployment expertise is the other half.
When Proactive deploys Nexus infrastructure, these elements determine success:
You're not choosing between switch models. You're choosing between constraint and capability.
Traditional infrastructure forces you to work around its limitations. Every project includes the question: "Can our network handle this?" Every deployment includes network planning that slows you down. Every problem includes troubleshooting that consumes hours or days.
Modern infrastructure becomes invisible, not because you ignore it, but because it stops being a constraint. Projects move at application speed, not network speed. Deployments happen when business needs them, not when IT schedules a maintenance window. Problems get flagged before they impact operations.
The investment is real. Nexus infrastructure costs more upfront than commodity alternatives or ageing equipment you keep patching. But the five-year economics aren't even close:
Most CXOs wait too long. They optimise traditional infrastructure until either something breaks catastrophically or business requirements make the old network impossible. By then, the upgrade happens under pressure, without proper planning, whilst everything else keeps demanding attention.
The right time to upgrade is before you absolutely need to, when you can plan properly, implement systematically, and migrate deliberately. When you choose based on where your business is going, not scramble based on what just broke.
You've read 2,000 words about network infrastructure. Now what?
Option 1: Keep running what you have. That's fine if your business isn't growing, your applications aren't changing, and your competition isn't moving faster than you. For everyone else, waiting gets more expensive every quarter.
Option 2: Buy equipment and hope it solves things. Purchase orders are easy. Proper deployment is hard. Technology without expertise delivers expensive disappointment.
Option 3: Get serious about understanding what your network should do. That starts with assessment, not purchase orders.
Proactive offers network assessments that identify exactly where your current infrastructure constrains growth, before you commit to anything. We audit your network, document the gaps, calculate the business impact, and recommend solutions (which sometimes aren't Nexus at all).
The assessment tells you three things:
Then you decide. Maybe you upgrade now. Maybe you wait until the next budget cycle. Maybe you fix specific bottlenecks instead of replacing everything. At least you'll decide based on facts, not vendor pitches.
Schedule a free network assessment: Contact Proactive Data Systems at [email protected]. Your network should enable your business, not constrain it. If that's not true today, let's find out why.
How long does a typical Nexus deployment take?
For a single data centre, expect 4-6 weeks from design to production. For multi-site deployments, add 2-3 weeks per additional location. Timeline depends on complexity, current infrastructure, and whether migration requires running parallel networks.
Can we migrate gradually, or does everything change at once?
Gradual migration is standard practice. We typically deploy new infrastructure alongside existing switches, move workloads incrementally, and keep rollback options available throughout. Most deployments have zero unplanned downtime.
What if our team doesn't have Nexus experience?
That's expected—most don't. Our deployments include hands-on training during implementation. Your team learns whilst we build, so they're comfortable operating the infrastructure by the time we leave.
Do we need Nexus everywhere, or just in the data centre?
Typically, Nexus makes sense for data centre and private cloud infrastructure. Campus and branch access often works fine with modern Catalyst switches. The assessment identifies where each belongs in your architecture.
