Cisco Launches Application Networking Services

December 6, 2005

Business and organizations across the globe have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on building software applications to run their businesses. Cisco Systems is creating a new networking technology to help them get their money's worth. On Dec. 6 Cisco Systems announced Application Networking Services as its latest Advanced Technology, its term for any business Cisco believes has the potential to generate $1 billion in revenue within five to seven years. Application Networking Services harness the power of the network to help business applications run better, in the process improving the efficiencies of these crucial technologies while lowering costs and complexities. News@Cisco spoke with Charlie Giancarlo, Cisco's senior vice president and chief development officer, about Application Networking Services and their potential for revolutionizing how organizations manage their software applications.

What are Cisco Application Networking Services?

Charlie Giancarlo: Cisco Application Networking Services are network-based technologies for improving the performance of software applications for accessing information, collaborating and communicating. They address the four key areas of scaling, delivery, optimization and integration for application usage throughout an organization. Cisco Application Networking Services will help improve such tasks as enterprise resource management (ERP), customer resource management (CRM), finance, human resources, and a host of Web-based communications.

Through Applications Networking Services, we aim to greatly improve the return on investment that organizations receive from these types of applications by lowering their operational and management costs while increasing the flexibility in how organizations can use them. The portfolio combines two main groups of products. Our Application Delivery products help make it easier employees or other "end-users" to take advantage of these applications, while our Application-Oriented Networking products, which we launched earlier this year, facilitate communications among different types of software applications.

How do Cisco Application Networking Services work?

Charlie Giancarlo: Cisco Application Networking Services help to "translate" application needs into common network-based functions that can be shared across the infrastructure. Without getting too technical, the common thread is that we embed key technologies into the network infrastructure-into our routers, switches and other networking equipment-that can recognize certain types of application protocols riding over the network.

Our new Application Networking Services technologies will help applications in different types of ways so that they are easier to use or less costly to manage. This is another example of the "intelligence" we often discuss regarding the evolution of the network. Just as we have made routers and switches more intelligent in order to better handle voice and video traffic, such as through quality-of-service or traffic prioritization, we are developing new types of intelligence for our routers, switches and other networking equipment that will make applications run better.

It is important to note that Cisco Application Networking Services are designed to complement and improve the capabilities of our customers' existing business applications, not to replace them. Cisco Application Networking Services are not middleware, and they do not compete with products from middleware vendors. Rather, Application Networking Services will help middleware work more effectively. To that same point, Cisco Application Networking Services do not involve Cisco entering the applications business or the business processes management arena. We are not designing our Application Networking Services to support specific applications. Rather, Cisco Application Networking Services provide a generic set of capabilities for improving the speed, accessibility, and interoperability of most any type of business application.

What challenges do Cisco Application Networking Services address?

Charlie Giancarlo: Client/server software applications have revolutionized the way businesses and organizations operate. But over time these applications have become more complex. To make applications more effective and reach as many employees as possible, businesses have extended them across their networks and even beyond while interoperating them with a multitude of other applications and devices. But this has lead to increased complexities, greater security concerns, performance issues, and other challenges. Many corporate applications were not designed to run over wide area networks (WANs), which operate much differently than more controllable local area networks (LANs). Also, companies are struggling to provide remote or mobile workers the same level of access enjoyed by office workers. And security and compliance issues are becoming more daunting. Organizations are also struggling with managing their data centers as each application requires its own set of computing resources, which leads to inefficiencies and escalating expenses.

So it is a bit of a bottom line business paradox. As software applications become more sophisticated and crucial to businesses, the more complex they are to manage, causing additional expenses. Cisco Application Services are designed to reduce these complexities and reduce the costs of running applications while increasing the benefits organizations receive from their investments in these software programs by helping them better scale, deliver, optimize and integrate.

There have been many different software and client/server based approaches to address these challenges, but historically these have been complex and expensive, and, in general, very specific, custom solutions. So there needs to be a better way. That's where Cisco's Application Networking Services come in. By building new intelligence into the network, organization can reduce many of the challenges of managing their applications.

Why is the network the best place for carrying out Application Networking Services?

Charlie Giancarlo: The network is unique in that it is the only common element that connects and enables all components of an organization's computing and communications resources. By making the network more capable-more intelligent-organizations can improve the efficiency of everything the network touches, most importantly the applications that run the business and carry key strategic information about customers, inventory, finances, etc. All data and communications must pass through the network. This traffic is handled by routers and switches. These devices "see" everything that flows across the network, so they are in an excellent position to manage the information transiting back and forth from key applications.

How do Cisco's Applications Services differ from application services technologies available from other vendors?

Charlie Giancarlo: First, we are one of only a handful of vendors that can offer such services embedded within the network. As discussed in the previous answer, this provides a multitude of advantages, given the nature of the network as a common platform. More importantly, we believe we have the broadest range of products for addressing this need. From our extensive internal engineering resources and through key acquisitions over the last two years, Cisco has assembled a comprehensive set of products and technologies that help with most of the current challenges for running applications over large networks. And this is just the beginning. Over time, we will expand our technology portfolio to better address even more applications-related information technology challenges.

The reason this is so advantageous is similar to the situation with network security. As everyone now understands, no one type of product can safeguard a company from computer-based threats, such as viruses and hackers. Today, organizations use an array of security tools, from anti-virus software and firewalls to intrusion detection devices and virtual private networks. In this case, Cisco offers a full array of security products that are all part of the same technology portfolio. We designed them to work together to create a unified defense rather than as separate tools that operate independently.

This is the same concept and value we are bringing to Application Networking Services. Each product can work on its own to address a particular issue, but each product will also be part of a larger, coordinated portfolio that can provide an integrated and comprehensive technology system. Such coordination among different tools not only helps coordinate activities but also lowers costs by integrating the individual parts under one management infrastructure. Such a consolidated portfolio far outstrips what any point product from another vendor can offer.

How do Cisco Application Networking Services fit with Cisco's new SONA network architecture?

Charlie Giancarlo: Application Networking Services are a core part of Cisco's new Service-Oriented Network Architecture, or SONA. SONA is Cisco's architectural framework for building the next-generation of business networks. We have designed it to support new approaches to networking, such as virtualized resources, as well as providing a more efficient network architecture for the growing array of security, mobility, storage, voice, collaboration, and overall management technologies. The way people and organizations are using IP networks to help with their business requirements is rapidly evolving, and SONA addresses many of these fundamental changes.

SONA works towards building the Intelligent Information Network, our vision for the next generation of networks. The main idea is that we are building networks that do much more than just move data from point A to point B. Rather, the intelligence in the network helps it recognize different types of traffic and provide assistance to help applications, devices or anything else connected to the network work better. Obviously, this is an evolutionary process and this intelligence has been growing in IP networks since their inception.

Until now, much of the intelligence developed for networks was aimed at managing the three basic types of traffic: data, voice, or video. In the early days of voice-over-IP, for example, the network treated voice traffic the same as data. This caused problems because voice traffic has certain needs that are unique from data traffic, such as a low tolerance for delays in packet delivery, which reduces fidelity.

Now, with Application Networking Services, the network will start being able to discern which applications generated which kinds of data packets. With this information, the network can provide certain application specific services, such as helping speed up delivery of the data, protecting the data better, or integrating it with other applications or resources, such as storage servers. Today, we take for granted the network's role in facilitating voice communications. In a few years, we believe that will also be true regarding the network's role in helping businesses use applications.