* Will Cisco AON help network pros and apps developers live in harmony or do battle?
In our last newsletter, we briefly discussed Cisco’s recent Application-Oriented Network announcement. In particular, we discussed that AON is intended in part to resolve the issue of application integration by embedding message brokers such as IBM’s WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker into AON.
Cisco makes a technical argument for embedding message broker functionality into AON. It states that the network is the one place that has visibility to all of the applications. Cisco claims that AON simplifies things for the IT organization, provides real-time visibility, lowers cost, improves performance and enhances security. Cisco also claims that AON is a new technology category and is designed in a way so that partners can add value. One example it gives is that partners can leverage AON to gather real-time business intelligence.
It is difficult to be opposed to the laundry list of technology benefits that Cisco is promising for AON. It is also difficult at this time to assess if AON can really deliver on those benefits. However, the success of AON may end up having more to do with organizational dynamics than it does with technology. More specifically, how will a company’s application developers react to using a message broker provided by the networking organization?
We would like to hear from you. If the network organization in your company decided to embed message broker functionality into the network, how would the applications organization react? Would they applaud the move or would they resist and suggest that the networking organization focus on traditional networking functionality and let them provide application functionality?
