Cisco muscles into software

Cisco lifted the curtain on a new business unit, setting the stage for a potential collision between the networking giant and integration software providers.

At its Cisco Networkers customer conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Cisco detailed the first products from its Application-Oriented Networking (AON) unit, a widely anticipated initiative meant to move the company beyond its core Internet routing business and into messaging middleware.

Partners, including SAP, Tibco Software and IBM, said they intend to build products tied to the AON gear.

News.context

What's new:
Cisco debuted its AON business unit, one of the company's forays beyond traditional routing and into message-level network devices.

Bottom line:
Although Cisco has an AON partner program, the company's hardware-centric approach to integration--a task typically done by back-end software and hardware servers--creates areas of competitive overlap with many software companies.

More stories on this topic

With the AON business unit, Cisco is betting that it can stimulate revenue growth by adding more sophistication, or "intelligence," to its current networking hardware line. The AON products will be "application-aware," which means that they can inspect information that's being transmitted and route messages based on predefined policies, according to Cisco.

The company plans a multiyear introduction of products, starting with a blade that can be inserted into Cisco's Catalyst 6500 switches, and a branch office router, both of which will be generally available later this year. A standalone AON device and a branch office router that connects to SAP applications also are planned for completion within a year.

Cisco's foray into application networking represents a potentially significant shift in the competitive dynamics of the technology industry, said analysts.

By building appliances optimized to move data between systems, Cisco is giving corporate customers a hardware alternative to traditional integration software suites. The company promises the appliances will provide better performance and cheaper administration.

"No question--this is a game-changer," said Roy Schulte, an analyst at research firm Gartner. "Cisco isn't going to have a huge impact in 2005?but everyone's integration strategies will have to take this concept into account. It's a big change."

In particular, integration software vendors and start-ups that focus on XML networking hardware will need to consider areas of potential overlap with AON, Schulte said. Cisco's traditional networking hardware competitors are expected to enter the application networking market as well, analysts and IT executives said.

Cisco's heavy imprint
With AON, Cisco is lending credibility to a relatively young kind of networking gear.

Traditional routers and switches move packets of data around a network by viewing the Internet addresses of incoming traffic. AON products will be designed specifically for handling inter-application messages, said Taf Anthias, the general manager of the AON business unit. Anthias joined Cisco to develop the AON strategy about two-and-a-half years ago, after heading up development of IBM's MQSeries middleware.

"If the network could be made to speak the languages of various applications and be able to translate between the languages of various applications, much like a multi-protocol router can do, then we could have much better collaboration between applications," said Charles Giancarlo, Cisco's chief technology officer.

Cisco's approach will reduce the amount of application development required and provide a more efficient centralized system for making changes to business applications, he said.

For example, a retail store or warehouse can use AON gear to process data collected by radio frequency ID readers. Instead of sending large amounts of data over the network to a back-office system, a branch-office AON router can be programmed to automate certain tasks, such as sending an alert when inventory reaches a certain point.

"This is about taking dollars away from software and middleware and putting it into Cisco's pocket"

--Eugene Kuznetsov
CTO and founder, DataPower

Specifically, Cisco has developed AON gear to add security; to speed up XML processing time with caching and compression; to track performance or trigger responses to incoming messages; and to route messages across the network, Anthias said.

Cisco has licensed IBM's WebSphereMQ Client software to provide message transport in its AON devices. While traditional middleware systems traditionally run in data centers, AON technology will be used in data centers, small offices and potentially even in home computing scenarios, Anthias said.

With the hardware, Cisco will release new configuration tools. One design tool will allow application infrastructure specialists to set policies, such as how to treat a purchase order that exceeds $1,000.

The company has also made tools that allow network administrators--Cisco's traditional audience--to install the software on machines in corporate data centers and in remote offices, Anthias said.

Cisco's entry into the market will likely most affect the handful of companies that already make gear to accelerate performance and provide security for XML-centric applications. These vendors, which were started over the past five years, include DataPower, Sarvega, Reactivity and Forum Systems.

These XML hardware appliances can perform the job infrastructure software products might do. For example, rather than acquire more middleware or beefier servers to speed up XML processing time, a corporation could purchase a specialized device, which can be cheaper and potentially simpler to deploy.

By providing a product that handles these middleware jobs, Cisco can potentially get some of the money typically earmarked for infrastructure software in corporate IT budgets.

"This is about taking dollars away from software and middleware and

[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 ASICs 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&.