Cisco speaks apps language

Cisco for years has talked about moving "up the stack" - taking on more application-based network roles instead of just moving packets at Layers 2 and 3. The recent launch of Cisco's Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit is the latest move in this direction, with the introduction of hardware and software that can read XML message traffic and route whole messages instead of just packets. But instead of buying its way into the XML market, Cisco has hired Taf Anthias, a 32-year IBM veteran and former head of its MQ messaging group, to lead the internal development of XML and message-based switching technology. Anthias serves as vice president of Cisco's AON business unit, and he spoke with Network World Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth about the vendor's latest data center initiative. This is an edited transcript of that discussion.

When Cisco moves into new markets, such as telephony or storage, this sometimes forces customers to reorganize IT responsibilities, such as shifting voice management from a company's telecom group to the networking group. How will AON affect the network staff and other groups that manage applications and data center equipment in large businesses?

From lessons like voice and storage, we've learned a lot about how new kinds of products are accepted by customers, and who we are actually going to be selling to.

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Cisco for years has talked about moving "up the stack" - taking on more application-based network roles instead of just moving packets at Layers 2 and 3. The recent launch of Cisco's Application-Oriented Network (AON) business unit is the latest move in this direction, with the introduction of hardware and software that can read XML message traffic and route whole messages instead of just packets. But instead of buying its way into the XML market, Cisco has hired Taf Anthias, a 32-year IBM veteran and former head of its MQ messaging group, to lead the internal development of XML and message-based switching technology. Anthias serves as vice president of Cisco's AON business unit, and he spoke with Network World Senior Editor Phil Hochmuth about the vendor's latest data center initiative. This is an edited transcript of that discussion.

When Cisco moves into new markets, such as telephony or storage, this sometimes forces customers to reorganize IT responsibilities, such as shifting voice management from a company's telecom group to the networking group. How will AON affect the network staff and other groups that manage applications and data center equipment in large businesses?

From lessons like voice and storage, we've learned a lot about how new kinds of products are accepted by customers, and who we are actually going to be selling to.

Among our customers, we find a clear delineation of roles between network groups and applications management groups. So there are two separate sides. The networking group doesn't necessarily control certain pieces of network equipment, such as load balancers or data center switches. And it's not the application group's responsibility to control what's inside a switch or router.

But the deployment of AON-based products will involve both groups. They do need to work together. Now the job of the networking group will be to push AON policies to the switch. So there will have to be some kind of a hand-over point from the applications group to the network staff. It is a shift, which can be valuable, but we're not going to force it artificially on customers that are not ready.

By bringing middleware functions into network hardware, is Cisco potentially taking away business from the software vendors you're planning to partner with?

Potentially there could have been some kind of issue there if we did not bring in the partners we did early on in the process. Because we reached out to everyone, we were able to determine where this kind of technology makes sense. This is not about force-fitting anything. From a middleware vendor's perspective, this is a useful technology they can use to help customers. We have very productive relationships with IBM and Tibco, and others will develop over time.

So I don't see a conflict. You can always ask this kind of question when you're in an evolutionary point in the industry. When middleware vendors see the value AON provides them, the benefits will be clear.

There are so many problems to be addressed in Web services and SOA applications. The entire pie of potential IT spend on technology and services for tying applications together is so large, it way exceeds any kind of revenue that these vendors would see by installing middleware servers that do the tasks that AON products perform. There's plenty of IT spend to go around for everyone.