Network execs working with Cisco gear should already be incorporating the principles of Cisco's Services-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) into their network design. That was the message from a Q&A session between Bill Ruh, vice president of Advanced Services at Cisco and Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie.

Pushing further Cisco's message that it's no longer a data-centric company, Ruh explains that SONA was launched 18 months ago:

... in response to the changes in the network that we see and trying to make sense of the broad Cisco product line and figuring out how all the pieces fit together because it's no longer just routing and switching. SONA is partly about voice technology, collaborative technology, security technology and data center networking technology and how all these things come together and fit together into a single integrated whole. Secondly, SONA is aligned with the movement toward service-oriented architecture.

But SONA is not a product that you can order from the catalog; it's an architecture that enables Cisco customers and Cisco itself "to begin thinking about how you are going to structure your network and how we structure our products," according to Ruh.

Cisco is putting a lot of emphasis on SONA and if you don't know much about it, you will soon. Cisco has updated its course materials for its CCDP and CCDA certifications to cover this all-emcompassing network architecture.

How much emphasis will you be putting in SONA in your corporate network?

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