2. DOCUMENT PURPOSE
This document has been prepared by C&C Technology Consulting as a briefing and
recommendations paper. Its intended audience is Cisco staff involved and working with C&C on
AON and internal consultants and management involved with the Cisco AON initiatives. Its
purpose is to position where C&C believe Cisco’s AON technology offering currently is, how this
contrasts to other major players and initiatives in the market and what C&C believe the
opportunities and Cisco’s future strategy for AON should be.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
C&C Technology Consulting initially became involved with Cisco in relation to AON technology in
December 2005. C&C were well known to Cisco for consulting and design work in the network
and application areas with BAA in the UK. Via the BAA AM C&C established contact with the AON
Business Unit (BU) through Grant McNulty and began to consider its capabilities as a technology
that could add value to C&C’s clients and consulting portfolio.
C&C has now been working with the BU and AON for 8 months and has recently completed
investments and training which make C&C the first UK ATP partner and in the position of having
a number of fully trained AON consultants as well as a others with good understanding of the
technology. As part of C&C’s ATP initiatives and go to market approach two streams of activity
have been undertaken recently which have provided the background detail for this paper
including:
Due diligence on the current status of the technology and approaches taken by Cisco in
marketing and positioning the product.
Workshops aimed at reviewing pilots to date and developing repeatable usage scenarios
and solutions that C&C believe can be taken to market with the current product offering
The purpose of these activities is to ensure that C&C, working with Cisco, can leverage the
maximum traction and market adoption for AON Technology now and in the future.
C&C TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE
C&C Technology Consulting have provided IT infrastructure consultancy services and solutions to
the corporate market place for over 10 years. Over this time C&C has developed a unique blend
of both networking and application expertise that is demonstrated in our portfolio of services and
solutions; ranging from major infrastructure and networking design projects to application
architecture and optimisation services such as performance testing and troubleshooting. Being a
small integrated team of around 30 consultants gives C&C the ability to create highly competent
solutions and consultancy teams that can really understand and deliver services based upon
complex application and infrastructure technologies.
3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The middleware and application integration markets are undergoing significant change as a result
of SOA design ideas and the widespread adoption of Web Services within organisations. This is
transforming how vendors and organisations are looking at middleware infrastructure with the
emergence of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), new application platforms and appliances as well
as new types of B2B software.
These changes provide a significant opportunity, if the strategy is right, for Cisco and its partners
to capitalise on a position of strength in the corporate network through SONA and Application
Oriented Networking (AON). It is C&C’s view that Cisco should position AON as a key part of
Cisco SONA and as a complimentary not competitive technology to the major established
players within the application and middleware markets such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and SAP. It
is co-operative, mutually beneficial partnerships with these organisations that will be critical to
driving AON’s success.
The analogy that can be drawn is that of TCP/IP protocols and the massive influence Cisco have
had in this area since its beginning. There was a time when TCP/IP protocol stacks cost a lot of
money and the implementation and routing of TCP/IP and related protocols was done at a server
level – much like application platforms and middleware are now (in the main). The router and
Cisco’s huge impact on this area of infrastructure has meant that this has been consigned to
history and network devices handle all of this and a lot more today.
This point around what network devices handle today is also very relevant; Cisco and many of its
competitors have been introducing and adding value to the application layer for many years.
This has resulted in load balancing, content switching, acceleration, QoS, traffic shaping and
many other technologies being embedded into network devices but addressing the application
layer. This is how AON should be positioned, developed and marketed - as a critical part of SONA
and a logical evolution (not revolution) of this application intelligence.
Over recent times a number of niche and larger players have entered the market providing
appliance or networked based solutions to a variety of SOA, XML and application integration
challenges. It is C&C’s view that with its strong presence and reputation in the corporate network
Cisco should compete head on with these vendors and take the market lead, providing the best
in class infrastructure that enables organisations to implement SOA services network. This means
focusing on the lower layer of functionality and capabilities that exist within the middleware
platforms and developing partnerships to ensure this integrates with solutions from the major
players in the market place and supports the key open standards. To this end the AON product
should focus on the following services:
XML Acceleration, Security, Offload and processing
Edge Network Functions - Security, Encryption, SSL Termination
Integration – providing the common infrastructure for high end software solutions such
as IBM, Tibco, BEA and Oracle to everyday integration such as FTP:
o Message routing
o Message Transformation
o Visibility
Cisco should gain traction in for AON through this positioning and build on its strength and
trusted position of trust within the networking market to deliver the SOA infrastructure
4. AON – CURRENT STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
The information presented in the tables below show where in the SOA infrastructure landscape
the AON offering currently sits in comparison to the other players and what it’s strengths and
weaknesses are in C&C’s opinion.
XML Appliance Vendors (Vordel,
Big Vendors (IBM, SAP, Oracle,
Forum, F5, Reactivity, Sarvega)
Webmethods, BEA Weblogic)
Progress Sonic Actional
Traditional EAI (Tibco,
Systinet (Mercury)
SOA Software
CXO Systems
Amberpoint
Cisco AON
Blue Titan
SOA Landscape Microsoft)
XML Appliances (Acceleration) □ ■
XML Appliances (Security) □ ■
XML Appliances (Integration/Routing) □ ■
Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) □ □ ■ ■
SOA Services Registry □ □ ■ □ ◘
SOA Management/Governance □ ■ □ □ ■ ■ ■ ■
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) □ ■ □ ■
Enterprise Security & Compliance □ □ □ □
Business Process Management (BPM) ■ ■
Business Activity Monitoring
(BAM/BPV) □ ■ □ □
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) □ □ ■
Portals ■ □
Application Servers ■ □ □
Enterprise Applications ■
Custom Solutions (RFID, MiFID,etc) □ ■ □ □
Legend
■ Strong Player
Strong Player with
◘ Partnership
□ Has Presence
5. Functional Capabilities Weaknesses (Issues)
- Message Routing (Field level Architecture:
decision for XML messages - Memory and performance
only?) - Message reliability (external
- Hardware acceleration, caching dependency?)
& load balancing of messages - Limited functional capabilities
(figures?) - Batch Mode of integration
- Translation/Transformation of - XML centric
protocols /messages (limited
capability?) Operational:
- Message/application security - No operational guidelines
(performance?) defined yet
- Business event monitoring (niche - Multi-skills requirement
uses!) - Multi-functional virtual
- Extensibility (adapters & teams/Segregation of roles &
bladelets) responsibilities
Key Benefits (Differentiators) Threats (Positioning with
- Pervasiveness of network Competitors)
(Branch offices, B2B) - Mega-vendors in the market
- Reduction in TCO (Blades, single with higher capability &
vendor; to be justified with maturity (IBM, SAP, Microsoft,
figures?) Oracle, Tibco, BEA, etc)
- Enterprise-wide Services - Several new vendors offering
(Security, event logging, SLAs); similar solutions but more
shared resource focussed (SOA Software,
- Improve Application Vordel, Sarvega, Reactivity,
Performance (Offloading etc))
common services to
infrastructure) Can AON find a place in enterprise
technology tool-set yet? On its own or
as an augmented solution set!
6. FUTURE POSITION & RECOMMENDATIONS
Competitive Positioning
Cisco
Types of Vendors Market Space Approach Detail
Enterprise Applications, Collaborate to provide
Enterprise Wide Solutions platform services like data
primarily at applications feeds for performance mgt,
Super Enterprise Level level but all have presence simple message routing,
(eg: SAP, IBM, Oracle, in the integration domain policy enforcements,
Microsoft) as well. Collaborate security processing offload.
Collaborate in simplifying
complex integrations and
bus services.
Traditional EAI Compete in providing
Vendors simple integration services
(eg: Tibco, Composite Application that do not require big
Webmethods, BEA, Integration Suites, ESBs, Collaborate & investments in traditional
Sun Seebeyond) Integration Backbones Compete EAI.
SOA Appliances
Vendor
(eg: Data Power, XML Appliances Can compete head on as
Reactivity, Vordel, (Acceleration, Integration, most of the vendors in this
Forum, F5) Security) Compete space are new and small.
SOA Governance & Collaborate in Registry &
Mgt Vendors High level governance
(SOA Software, Complete in visibility
Amberpoint, Blue solution space for
Titan, Progress Registries, Management & Collaborate & governance & compliance
Actional) Governance Softwares Compete (SLA, etc)
How can current usage scenarios be leveraged?
From the above three sections it can be inferred that Cisco AON can be more successful if
positioned in the SOA/XML Appliances space with its current strengths. With some quick wins in
this space, it can continue to invest to broaden its offerings in some niche applications as RFID or
enhanced visibility solutions and compliance or in more generic solutions space as an ESB and
continue its role in the converging networks and applications arena.
7.
8. PRACTICAL NEXT STEPS – WHAT CAN C&C TECHNOLOGY DO?
What are the current use cases and approaches that C&C / Cisco can take – to whom and how
What positioning information, awareness and development work can be done internally, in the
channel and externally?
