Cisco Introduces Application-Oriented Networking

June 21, 2005

Cisco helped launch a new era in communications when it created its first multi-protocol router 20 years ago. Now the world's leading vendor of networks for the Information Age is launching a new era in communications with application-oriented networking for multi-protocol message routing. Application-Oriented Networking, or AON, takes networking to a new level by using the existing network to facilitate communications among different software applications. AON promises to greatly ease the challenges of building, deploying and integrating increasingly distributed applications and computer systems used by businesses and organizations throughout the world. News@Cisco spoke with Taf Anthias, vice president and general manager of Cisco's new AON business unit, about AON and its potential for improving how networks can help organizations run better.

What is application-oriented networking?

Taf Anthias: Application-Oriented Networking is the ability of the network to understand and, if necessary, act on messages as they are in transit. Messages are the way software applications talk to other applications. AON lets the network understand and speak the "language of applications." By speaking their language, the network can provide more value, making the dialogue between the applications more secure, more optimized and more flexible. For example, when a purchase order flows from one application to another, it may be represented differently--the same information such as customer name, account number, or date may be shared but encoded differently by different applications. The fields could be in a different order, the date could be presented differently or each application could be using a different protocol. This is a surprisingly complex and expensive problem to solve today.

Cisco has designed AON to addresses this need for better collaboration between applications and systems. AON includes not just translation functions, but also security, performance and other issues with collaborative applications.

AON uses the network to more effectively facilitate the translation of different application languages, so businesses and organizations can better coordinate how their applications work together. An example of this is when a company gets an order that order might need to be entered into its inventory application, its delivery application, and its accounting application, typically requiring three different entries. Today there are many different ways to automate this process, but most of them require expensive software or time-consuming custom integration work. AON saves a company time and money by performing application translation automatically within the network and boosts operations by providing a more dependable way information gets to the right applications and to the right people or partners.

Exchanging messages among disparate applications has been a complicated challenge addressed by various technologies. How does AON carry out this task?

Taf Anthias: AON is really the logical evolution of the network to do more and more tasks to improve communications. AON takes the functions of the router to the next level by having it not only examine the data packets that flow through it but also having it look inside some of those packets to see what the messages say.

Messages are units of information, such as purchase orders or trades, that mean something to applications. Based on what it finds in a message and what policies have been defined by the customer, an AON-equipped network can make sure the information flowing over it is handled in the most secure, efficient and flexible manner possible. For example, a company might write a business rule that tells the router to send an email to a customer service representative every time an order over $1,000 goes to the warehouse. These rules guiding the actions of the router can be created using graphical tools we have developed for our customers. Also, Cisco will provide an extensive array of services to help customers develop and deploy new AON products.

What specific problems does AON address and why is the network the best place to carry out communications among disparate applications?

Taf Anthias: Most importantly, AON helps simplify today's overly complex application infrastructure. Over the years, there has been a wide range of infrastructure technologies created to help organizations get one application to talk to another. This ad hoc approach addressed specific needs but as technology has evolved, customers are now faced with the problem of managing a vast array of infrastructure products that are expensive to run and difficult to manage. These products largely focus on centralized management from the data center. Our network-based approach recognizes that secure and effective information flow needs to take into account other areas in the computing infrastructure, including the branch office and the campus, as well as across the supply chain.

By using the network to manage these tasks, application communications will be far more streamlined. Because of its characteristics, the network can far more efficiently take on the task of coordinating messages among applications--regardless of platform or physical location--while being more scalable and cost-effective than other options. By dealing with application messages in the network, organizations will have a comprehensive, centralized framework for managing these tasks.

The network offers a ubiquitous system, connected to every application and computer. When computers are repetitively performing specialized tasks, such as message routing of XML traffic, it makes sense to use custom silicon to provide a different level of scalability, just as we've done with packet-level processing. So in a sense, AON extends what the network already does to an even more sophisticated level. And as the network takes on these types of functions, servers, software and other computer-based tools can focus on even more advanced tasks that benefit business operations. This is the natural evolution of networks and computers. Over the last ten years, the network has become more intelligent and capable. And since it is so pervasive, it is clearly the best medium for taking on this role of coordinating application communications.

What business issues does AON address? What are the benefits?

Taf Anthias: One of the most important business issues that AON addresses is helping customers align their IT (information technology) resources to better respond to changing business needs. IT cannot do this while a lot of its information is "siloed" within various applications scattered throughout the organization.

AON boosts an organization's flexibility by making it possible for an organization to pick and choose how it wants its applications to interact and what information it wants them to share. It can help them make their IT infrastructure more "future-proof" by allowing change to take place without affecting other systems, with AON compensating for a change in message protocol or message format or by AON intelligently routing information to wherever it is needed at any point in time. Aligned with this business need, AON addresses the issue of visibility.

AON will make it easier for organizations to "see" more of what's going on, both in their IT infrastructure and in their business processes. AON will also help enforce application-level security policies. By being able to look at application messages within data packets, the network can more closely inspect traffic for malevolent messages. And it can help with security in other ways. For example, AON can "sign" a message on behalf of a branch office and verify the signature in the data center. AON also reduces costs by removing complexity and by helping customers make more efficient use of their IT resources.

AON brings greater optimization of network resources as well by caching and compressing information, in addition to routing important messages to the most available server based on the value of a purchase order or on the premier status of a customer submitting the order, for example. It can also control quality-of-service in the network based on information it sees in the messages.

What kind of equipment is Cisco developing for AON and how long will it take for Cisco to develop a comprehensive AON equipment portfolio?

Taf Anthias: Since Cisco has created highly modular routers and switches, customers won't have to build a whole new network infrastructure to bring AON capabilities online. Instead, customers will only need to install AON "blades." A blade is a general term we use for a processing device built on a thin board that is installed in slots in the back of our routers and switches. By installing different types of blades, our customers can bring new and different capabilities to their networks without having to undertake expensive "forklift" replacement of their routers. Besides blades, our AON portfolio will also include various software and ancillary devices for running specific tasks and management.

AON addresses some very complex business challenges, so it will be a continuous process to fully develop the technology. It will likely take three to five years to develop an extensive portfolio of products for AON. We have started modestly, working with a few select customers to test and develop our AON technology. We are now going into a "controlled availability" phase and later in the year we plan to make the products generally available.

Although this is early in the development of AON, we have major computer industry vendors backing the AON concept. For example, IBM and SAP have endorsed our approach and will be teaming with Cisco to develop devices and technologies that work in conjunction with our routers and switches running AON blades. I think this speaks very highly of the promise of AON and its potential to greatly improve the way networks help businesses and other organizations operate.