Cisco's Bold (and Brilliant) Move into Applications

Cisco's announcement today of their new 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine and associated software elements is both terrific technology and an exceptional exercise in marketing - and I mean marketing in a good way. While some fear that the wireless (or at least wireless LAN) opportunity is beginning to consolidate and commoditize, this announcement shows that such is still far from the case, and that innovation with meaningful customer benefits is both alive and well.

Cisco's concept is actually pretty simple. Remember mobile middleware? The idea was to isolate applications from the difficult and unique elements of different wireless networks and allow the delayed binding (until runtime) of applications to networks. At one point I was tracking more than 200 mobile middleware products, all proprietary, of course, and all with varying degrees of effectiveness, ease-of-use, and value. Well, suppose we move the middleware concept into a network server, and change the model to one of mobility services available across essentially all wired and wireless networks. And we package the facility in a box that is non-disruptive to current network operations, open, extensible, and very cost effective. That's just what Cisco has done, and I think they will be very successful with the concept and execution. It will take a while for some to get it here, but they will.

The marketing technique Cisco is using is what I call Redrawing the Map. What this means is altering the traditional relationship between elements in an IT system (or, in this case, by adding a new layer of network functionality) so as to create unique positioning for a product. I've used this technique myself, many times, and always with good results, so it would be hard to imagine that Cisco won't be successful here. So, successful, in fact, that they'll attract competitors, who will have to move fast if they want in on this before Cisco builds a big installed base and library of capabilities. Cisco has introduced what we might call Layer 6.5 or 7.1 functionality, moving what used to be in an application (or at least in middleware bound to an application) into the network. And they've done this with an extensible, open, XML-based API and a great set of starter features that demonstrate the power of the concept and their initial implementation.

One thing that's always impressed me about Cisco is how they never stand still. Here's a company that's (arguably) 65% of the enterprise WLAN market, and could (arguably) just sit back and let the orders flow in, doing little more than keeping pace with basic industry requirements and matching the competition. But instead they choose not to be reactive, and come up with creative and valuable solutions like what we see here. And that's why they'll always be a tough competitor - it is, after all, not size alone; it's value delivered.

But I do in fact expect some competition here, and to extend the network-is-not-really-the-computer-but-it's-a-lot-more-than-simply-transport idea beyond what we see in this initial announcement. Such is very good for wireless overall, and should serve to accelerate the movement towards wireless as primary or default access by enhancing what apps can do when running on essentially any network. Bottom line: this is one of the most important wireless announcements of the year, and, interestingly, doesn't directly involve a radio of any form.

In fact, it's so important that I've written a Farpoint Group White Paper on this topic and how it fits with unified networking. All Farpoint Group publications come, BTW, with a copyright that allows free redistribution, so please feel free to post or send these to anyone who might be interested.

Wireless boring? Not yet. And not for quite a while.