Cisco muscles into software

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putting it into Cisco's pocket," said Eugene Kuznetsov, chief technology officer at DataPower. "They're saying that AON will in no way replace middleware, but that's wishful thinking."

Given Cisco's market heft, the company's move poses a competitive threat to some of the smaller companies already in the field, analysts said.

"In the short term, it's going to raise the number of opportunities for start-ups, mainly because most (corporate customers) haven't figured out that they should invest in a hardware form factor to address these problems," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. "But in the long run, Cisco's going to be a real competitive threat."

"This will shift markets and maybe shift the balance of who owns what today."

--Wes Swenson, CEO, Forum Systems

As part of its AON launch, Cisco explained how third-party providers--even those that sell middleware and XML networking gear--can build add-ons to Cisco's gear.

For example, IBM and Tibco Software, two of the largest middleware companies, are building add-ons that will allow Cisco's AON devices to act on messages sent from IBM or Tibco middleware systems. Other partners are expected to build add-ons for reading different protocols or providing higher levels of security than Cisco plans initially.

Cisco envisions AON add-ons--built by the networking giant or its business partners--for handling proprietary protocols or XML document formats used in particular industries. Out of the box, AON will support Internet and Web services protocols, including Simple Object Access Protocol, or SOAP, and common proprietary protocols such as those used for Tibco and WebSphereMQ systems.

IT executives and analysts expect that other networking companies, such as Juniper and Nortel Networks, will also move into application networking as they seek out new capabilities for their routing products.

"This will put more pressure on networking vendors in the remainder of 2005 to catch up or release what they're working on," said Wes Swenson, CEO of XML security device maker Forum Systems, which intends to build an AON security add-on. "This will shift markets and maybe shift the balance of who owns what today."

No choice
Cisco's move into application-oriented networking does carry some challenges, noted analysts.

The company's sales force will need to make adjustments to dealing with a software-oriented product, because Cisco generally communicates with people responsible for networking purchases, analysts and competitors said.

Cisco's first AON product line will need to mature over time, Gartner's Schulte noted. And the company needs to sort out the areas of competition and collaboration with its partners, he said.

Cisco's Anthias downplayed any potential conflict with Cisco's partners. He said that putting application processing into network devices is the normal evolution of computing.

The middleware industry evolved to perform certain dedicated tasks, such as sending messages between applications, for several applications, he said. "It's the same thing here: Do it in the network on behalf of lots of different servers and different middleware systems," Anthias said. "It will probably get fleshed out as we get educated and learn about that."

Regardless of the technical and business issues, Cisco needs to push into new areas, such as application networking, said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Because many companies will be upgrading their network infrastructure to faster technologies in the coming year, many Cisco customers will invite competition from potentially cheaper rivals, he said.

"What Cisco wants to do is climb the 'up' stack and get hooks into applications and into middleware, because it protects their turf and enhances value of their business," Oltsik said.

[pentium4forever]

Cisco

I hope Cisco continues to be a dominant networking player. Their routers power a lot of the Internet and their routers are fun to configure.

[WebGlue]

Followers vs. Leaders

I left the Cisco Internet Commerce B2B Team to design and build something that Cisco did not have the vision to pursue building a business model for, a network appliance B2B Gateway. During my three years at Cisco I proposed several different new ventures to which they all eventually went into after 8 -18 months after me proposing them. The first was a State Management Globally Load Balanced Intelligence into their Content Smart Switches? As I was working with the Content Networking & Storage Product Teams (which I might add is the Team with the most vision at Cisco) that took the least amount of time, 8 months. Then I suggested to the director of the Switching Group that Cisco should enter the Home Switching & Routing Market and the Set Top Box market. I got an email back from him some 12 months later, when I had moved to the Internet Commerce Team that he wanted to hear more of it. Too late, I was already leaving Cisco to pursue a vision I had for the future of B2B Switching / Routing in a Network Appliance that is globally load balanced, has hardware based SSL Encryption Acceleration, is based on current and future RosettaNet Standards that can be updated in Dynamic ASIC?s that we are currently in Malaysia finishing the design on. Cisco went on to buy Linksys.

Cisco is no longer a leader but a follower. I sent an email to John chambers in January 2004 when we filed our Patents for a B2B Gateway expressing this to him and my concept of the future of B2B / A2A Network Appliance Messaging. Obviously he took heed and decided to investigate it further but again instead of innovating they are buying companies to keep them current? What a business model? they no longer need to be smarter or innovate or invent or do R&D they just purchase companies which ever way they think the wind is blowing?.

I guess that is one way of doing business but I am not sure their stock holders prefer the model of following instead of inventing new disruptive technology business models and being an innovator of the future instead?

The funny thing is that we will have something to market within the next 8 months and Cisco will still be trying to figure out how to integrate the appliance companies they purchased into their existing architectures?. Our product will be years ahead of the competition they are purchasing with embedded ASIC logic they will not be able acquire or develop for at least 3 years.

Shame on you John Chambers and Cisco for trying being followers instead of leaders?.