* The implications of Cisco's move to put more functionality in the network
Last week at the Cisco analyst conference in San Jose, Calif., the company reiterated its long-held position that the network is the only platform that can transparently connect all the components of the IT infrastructure. As an extension of this belief, Cisco discussed its intention to continually add additional intelligence into the network.
Cisco has been extremely successful with this strategy to date. However, every time Cisco discusses putting more and more functionality in the network, we wonder what some of the other industry giants think about this strategy. In particular, we wonder what Microsoft thinks about this move. Is it in Microsoft’s best interest to have a highly intelligent network? Or would Microsoft be happier with an IT infrastructure that was comprised of highly intelligent desktops and servers and a less-intelligent network. Obviously, where the intelligence resides has a huge impact on Cisco and Microsoft because along with intelligence come higher prices and higher margins.
We would like to hear from you on this topic. Do you believe that continually putting more and more intelligence into the network makes sense or do you see limits to how much intelligence belong in the network. Also, do you see a coming battle between Cisco and Microsoft – and if so, who wins?
On a related topic, at the conference Cisco also announced that it believes that in order to optimize applications, processes and resources to deliver greater business benefits, a new architecture is needed. Cisco refers to this architecture as the Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA). In our next newsletter, we will discuss what Cisco did and did not say about SONA. We will also weigh in on whether the call for a new architecture is a good idea.
