* Report from Cisco’s analyst meeting
Let’s face it. Historically, the notion of combining strategic network management with Cisco’s business direction was a little like mixing oil and water. The two could coexist in the same environment, but they didn’t come together very well. However, this may be changing, for two reasons.
First of all, Cisco is upping the ante in terms of its role as a “network systems” vendor to include a much more intimate linkage to application and content delivery. This puts extreme pressure on Cisco to get its management act together – through a clear set of priorities, through a more delineated set of products, through industry partnerships, and above all through a defined set of integration points through which those partnerships can deliver full value to Cisco customers.
Secondly, the organization responsible for network management at Cisco has some fresh, smart leadership that understands the difference between “best-effort” management and a fully-baked networked infrastructure management strategy.
Just to be clear – no one, least of all myself, would advocate that Cisco should go the whole nine yards and actually deliver multi-vendor management software in the sense of Computer Associates, IBM or HP. And in fact, Cisco rightly points to IBM and HP in particular as critical partners in delivering its management portfolio. But what Cisco must do if it’s going to succeed in its new business model as a systems (vs. device) provider, is unravel what has been, across the industry, a Gordian knot in which networked infrastructure and strategic management software collide in a tangled web of conflicting business models and undefined architectural handshakes. Alexander the Great solved the riddle by cutting the rope with his sword. Cisco won’t have it this easy.
Let’s look at some of the evolving directions at Cisco – as presented at its industry analyst event earlier this month – that will of necessity force this issue:
* CEO John Chambers spoke about an infrastructure that would align to support the virtualization of business services in a manner that might have made Accenture or IGS proud. He emphasized the need to recognize that advanced technology not only enables better service performance, but it can also enable new business processes. One example was in pharmacology, in which drug recommendations have been delivered on often fairly limited informational sources; technology can open up a new range of awareness of both drug choice and drug side effects. But to capitalize on this, both doctors and pharmacists will have to adjust their drug evaluation processes to incorporate these new resources.
* Chambers and other executives stressed that in order to make good on this direction, Cisco will step up to delivering a “routing/switching” capability not only at the IP layer, but also up the full seven-layer stack, to support application- and even content-specific routing. Cisco will leverage, for instance, XML and other more typically application-specific standards. This puts the company in line to support Web services and service-oriented architecture, which requires an application design that’s inherently “networked” across modular components. It also means a closer affiliation with storage and data content. As Chambers bluntly put it, “We are going to incorporate resources and applications into our sphere of influence.”
Next time: More on Cisco’s transformation.
Note: The next Network/Systems Management Newsletter will come after the first of the year. Have a happy and safe holiday season.
