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Modern corporate networks are under increasing pressure to support a wider variety of applications thanks to mobile and cloud computing, desktop virtualization plus video traffic having skyrocketed. Not only are bandwidth rates increasing from 1 to 10 to 40 GbE, but most importantly network services are needed to manage and support a different application portfolio mix and network access methods. Network services such as firewalls, WLANs, network diagnostics and monitoring plus application performance acceleration are needed to deliver a consistently excellent user experience. Cisco recently announced an upgrade to its popular Catalyst 6k with the availability of the Supervisor 2T that included re-vamped high performance service modules to deliver these network services. Goyal, product line manager at Cisco Systems joins me to discuss which network services need to be available in modern networks.

Download “A Comprehensive Testing of Cisco Systems Catalyst 6500 Sup2T” report here.

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During the week of October 31, 2011, the Lippis Report tested Cisco System’s new Catalyst 6500 with Supervisor 2T or Sup2T for performance, upgradability, control and scalability at Ixia’s modern iSimCity laboratory in Santa Clara CA. By all counts, Cisco’s upgrade of the Catalyst 6500 via its new Sup2T, is its most ambitious and thoughtful yet for the venerable platform. The Sup2T is a major upgrade to the most widely-deployed switching platform in campus and data center networking. It’s the new Catalyst 6500’s network services that deliver most of the value, which is partially found in the Sup2T’s Policy Feature Card or PFC that increases NetFlow monitoring and a new TCAM design offering improved Access Control (ACL), Quality of Service design options, encryption security and many other features. This Lippis Report test verifies many of Cisco’s performance and upgradability claims. While it’s impossible to test all of the Catalyst 6500’s new 200-plus features with the Sup2T, we rather focus on a select few that will have the widest impact on IT business leaders’ product acquisition decision process.

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To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

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To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

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The Web Malware Pandemic

Just as the Internet, the Web, and the information age have revolutionized our businesses and our lives, these developments have also radically changed the face of crime. Computer and Internet crime are no exception. Today, computers factor in nearly every form of crime – from crimes facilitated by computers (credit card theft, for example), to crimes, which are specifically computer-to-computer (malware, for example), and to crimes in which computers play an incidental supporting role (i.e. an illegal gambling bookie that keeps computerized records). This paper addresses one single facet of cybercrime – the manipulation of Web content and Web technologies for criminal and/or for illicit gains

Find out how to defend Web traffic from cybercrime by downloading this paper

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THE WORLD’S LARGEST SECURITY ANALYSIS OF REAL-WORLD WEB TRAFFIC
By Cisco Systems

The ScanSafe Global Threat Report is an analysis of more than a trillion Web requests processed in 2009 by the ScanSafe Threat Center on behalf of the company’s corporate clients in over 80 countries across five continents. Our leading position of providing security in-the-cloud provides unparalleled insight in the real-world Web threats faced by the today’s enterprise; this report represents the world’s largest security analysis of real- world Web traffic.

Download it now here.

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by Cisco Systems

Every manager faces the prospect of an operations breakdown. That is the risk of doing business in an uncertain world. But business resiliency implies more than successfully coping with disasters and disruptions when they occur. Managers need to give their employees the knowledge, means and confidence to overcome, and even take advantage of, the potential risks that pervade the business environment. A successful business resiliency program involves anticipating and preparing for the major disruptive threat exposures that any company faces, while taking a risk-adjusted, capital-allocation-based approach to managing risks. With foresight and proper planning, organizations can develop a level of resilience that allows them to withstand any emergency that could put their people and business in jeopardy.
Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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Unified Communications (UC) as an integrated launch point to multiple communications applications will swiftly fade as UC is integrated into corporate social networking and collaboration applications. This is the impression I walked away with after the Orlando VoiceCon industry event. The implication of this is systemic, sending change throughout the industry from suppliers, buyers, and even industry event organizers. What I mean is that UC as a standalone desktop application has limited value. IT and business leaders are pressing suppliers to improve user experience and in the process productivity.

It wasn’t too long ago that UC was touted as a better way to access a broad range of communication applications such as voice, IM, video, email, etc. Vendors such as Microsoft’s Office Communicator, Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator, Avaya’s One-X, Siemens OpenScape Desktop Client et al., will be of increasingly little use as standalone products. Even as these UC clients go mobile they will fall short of user experience expectations. As communications is now firmly in the grips of Moore’s Law and software economics, the rate of change and level of integration is accelerating at a frantic pace.

There are multiple trends building upon each other with such force as to morph UC into social networking and collaboration Web 2.0 applications. Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter have jumped from consumer internet services to business tools. There is a cottage industry of start-ups that are creating innovative approaches to capturing an individual’s social grid and interface it into contact centers so as to better up- and cross-sell. Yes there are interesting Facebook, Google and/or LinkedIn pop-ups that extend caller ID to a screen pop, complete with a caller’s profile and even search your email for relevant past exchanges with the caller, all aimed at increasing user experience.

Then there are corporate-based social networking platforms such as SocialText which add security and journaling to social media tools. Whether UC is added to consumer social and collaboration tools or to enterprise grade applications is irrelevant; both are occurring and both activities will only accelerate. The growth and level of communications enabled by social networking and collaboration tools is unparalleled and represents a new approach to human interaction that needs to be captured and put to work within enterprises. We are in the midst of a great experimental phase of how best to achieve this integration. The meeting at VoiceCon offered only a glimpse of this progress.

Collaboration platforms such as IBM Lotus Sametime is very popular and its growth has not waned during the economic downturn. In fact IBM’s LotusLive cloud collaboration for inter-company collaboration is one of the fastest growing IBM products. Sametime is a great example of how a UC has been integrated into a collaboration suite and improves the user experience. IBM’s mash-up hub application lets users create their own mash-ups with a Sametime call widget, again increasing the user experience and control over that experience.

Siemens is in an interesting position as its OpenScape is an integral part of IBM’s Sametime. Siemens introduced its Cloud UC service built upon Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to offer the SMB market UC in a SaaS model. One can imagine that with OpenScape and Sametime in the Amazon cloud a SMB would have access to the same tools and user experience that only large firms could once afford. Therein lies the beauty of UC being integrated into collaboration suites and offered as a cloud service. Price points are smashed along with a total disruption of the SMB channel to market.

Cisco has been busy integrating UC into a wide range of collaboration tools too. It has integrated its unified personal communicator client into its Unified MeetingPlace and WebEx platforms. I expect to see UC integrated into its recently acquired Jabber IM service and Telepresence platform too.

Avaya introduced its Aura™ platform, which seeks to clean up and rationalize legacy voice and VoIP communications into a SIP platform. Two important aspects of Aura™ are that 1) it’s a new design that takes cost out of communications by reducing WAN, equipment and operational spend; and 2) it offers a UC integration into applications platforms. In short Aura™ should pay for itself within twelve months and pay dividends as communications is embedded into applications, especially social networking and collaboration applications.

But the above examples are just snapshots of a broader and bigger vision of how UC will be integrated into Web 2.0-based social and collaboration tools.

Envision a corporate Facebook-like user interface that is self populated with an employee’s profile, complete with past and current projects, their skills and relationships to both internal and external resources. Employees can join groups modeled after traditional organizational lines of command such as finance, HR, manufacturing, engineering, sales, etc. But more importantly, imagine these groups being cross-functional and based upon projects or product development where sales, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, etc., collaborate to move a product through its phase review process. Employees would populate the groups with work product, placing a huge body of work or information into the collaboration space. So imagine that over time three entities would emerge: people, groups and information, all cross-referenced through TAGs. All IT offers is the collaboration and social networking platform; profiles, group membership and information are populated by employees. The collaboration between these entities of people, information and groups would enable work to move faster throughout an organization and employees to self-organize around projects. Now inject real-time UC and video into this platform and you have the basis for a new approach to how work gets done.

The above scenario is not just my vision; it’s the direction our industry is heading after numerous NDA briefings with a wide range of IT suppliers. The intersection between social networking, collaboration and UC, thanks to Web 2.0 techniques will usher in a new model for productivity improvement through improved user experience and in its wake will change the IT industry and IT organizational design. This new collaboration model will emerge as the global economy recovers. As capital spending recovers it’s becoming clear that IT and business leaders will not fund the same old projects but will invest their capital spend into new innovative approaches to corporate productivity such as the UC and social collaboration platform discussed above.

For IT organizations a re-design is needed. UC has been sold to networking and telecom professionals while social networking and collaboration tools are sold to those who manage applications. These two groups are clearly stakeholders in the solution they eventually deploy and thus need to work together. Here too the economic downturn has a positive effect in that many of the past organizational barriers have fallen as IT is focused on operational cost reduction and project delivery.

As the application and networking groups seek a new working relationship so too do IT suppliers. For example, Adobe, Citrix, HP, et al who have for the most part been absent in social networking, collaboration or UC will partner up or acquire others to engage in this new industry sector. Look for one of the above to make a huge announcement at Interop.

Just as IT organizations and suppliers re-align and position for the Web 2.0-enabled collaboration market so too will the industry venues. VoiceCon for example attracts the telecom manager, but not the networking, application, or collaboration buyer. At the same time VoiceCon was taking place so too was Web 2.0 expo. Look for a new venue to emerge that is virtual and uses the tools of social, collaboration and UC to address this new market.

UC as a standalone desktop application has limited value. IT and business leaders should focus on collaboration platforms that are Web 2.0-based, and incorporate social media and UC as the path toward greater use experience and productivity.

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By Siemens Enterprise Communications

This paper defines different telecommuting models and shows how companies are telecommuting across the globe. Lastly, it will demonstrate how Siemens Enterprise Communications Group has significantly cut expenses by adopting green telecommuting and how you can do the same.

Download this white paper to find out how to reduce cost by leveraging telecommuting.

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By Foundry Networks

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) as a technology has been around for over a decade and has been used extensively in several service provider networks world-wide. Over the last few years, the standardization of applications such as VPN technologies over MPLS has opened the door for this technology to be used in an enterprise network. This paper explores the use of MPLS in an enterprise network and its associated benefits of lower cost and increased security.

Find out how to use MLPS in your enterprise WAN by downloading this paper.

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By Ruckus Wireless

Faced with a population of over 16,000 students, limited resources and WiFi-enabled devices of all shapes and sizes, the Delta School District (Delta) recognized it was time to take action in finding a simple, streamlined solution to their growing wireless needs. Delta needed to deploy a reliable wireless infrastructure in each of its schools to accommodate a variety of applications, such as supporting small-footprint laptops provided to special need students, video surveillance, tablet computers, mobile computing carts equipped with laptops, back-office applications and even the ability to control school heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.

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By Cisco Systems and The City of Dublin, Ohio

The city of Dublin, Ohio is home to more than 3,000 businesses, and continually strives to create an attractive economic environment. Information technology plays an important role in Dublin's efforts to bring the best and most promising businesses to the city, and it was important to provide access anytime, anywhere. "œA major emphasis has always been enhancing economic development and establishing a significant tax base that will take us into the future," says Mayor Marilee Chinnici-Zuercher. "œAccess to technology is a key element of our strategy, because we have a lot of small businesses that are global in their missions and purposes." Adds Jane Brautigam, City Manager, "œWe believe that providing better access to the Internet, via our network infrastructure, will bring companies to the city, and encourage them to grow their business here."

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The Cisco mobility group has always had the broadest view and product portfolio for mobility solutions. Their definition of mobility expands beyond wireless LANs to include cellular, VPNs, and location services. But last week the Cisco mobility group elevated their value proposition beyond physical and geographic independent networked computing with the launch of Cisco Motion. Cisco Motion offers the broadest technical and business architecture for mobile networks and communications positioning Cisco far from its smaller WLAN competitors such as Aruba, Meru, Trapeze, et al.

Cisco Motion is yet another example of how Cisco is pivoting its value position to compete for a larger share of IT budgets. With the Network as a Business Platform initiative Cisco is blurring the boundary between computing, communications and networking. Cisco now offers Linux and Windows platforms within its Integrated Services Router (ISR) and Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) products. In the ISR its Application eXtension Platform offers a technical and business architecture for partners creating an ecosystem and value creation around its branch office offerings. The Workspace Ready Networks initiative from its unified communications group links communications and networks together so that collaboration takes place independent of workspace. Its Vframe and Nexus data center orchestration and switch products offer a new approach to data center design that eliminates the old boundaries between computing, applications, networking and storage. Cisco Motion offers a new organizing principal for mobile computing and communications, which connects disparate mobile technologies while offering developers both a technical architecture to build value and business architecture to generate revenues.

There is no doubt that Cisco is increasingly going head-to-head with Microsoft and HP in particular as they seek to gain a larger share of IT budgets. Clearly Cisco has in-segment competitors, which it focuses on, but the real initiatives are engaging business and IT leaders to demonstrate the power of value creation through the network as a core business platform. To that end, Cisco Motion sets Cisco apart from its in-segment competitors such as Aruba, Meru, Trapeze, etc., and engages business and IT leaders with an approach to mobility that includes the following.
The Cisco Motion initiative seeks to:

Unify disparate networks thus allowing mobile applications to be extended to end-points.

Enable end-point choice by being agnostic to various mobile clients while in the process securing and managing devices via centralized client provisioning.

Facilitate Collaboration by using the network to select the appropriate communications media (voice, IM, Video, or a combination thereof) to deliver end-point appropriate collaboration services.

Open Mobility Applications by delivering an open API for ISVs to inject innovation and value creation addressing line of business and/or corporate requirements.

To deliver on the above goals Cisco Motion needs a deep technical architecture. It delivers on that by providing common access to disparate wireless networks and clients through a set of open source protocols, an open API (XML/SOAP) and its Mobility Services Engine (MSE). Cisco Motion includes all versions of 802.11 as well as cellular/WiMax, Zigbee for wireless control of everyday devices and instrumentation, Ultra-Wideband

(UWB) for short wireless gigabit links and Radio-frequency identification (RFID) for supply chain management and senior network applications. Access to these networks is via unified wireless network controllers, which in turn connect disparate wireless networks via a set of open source protocols.
Applications such as conferencing, presence, inventory management, assembly line monitoring, CRM, email, search, et al are presented with a set of mobility services, which increase their access to the above mentioned wireless networks. Mobility services provided in MSE such as context aware, adaptive wireless IPS, secure client manager, mobile intelligent roaming, voice, guest access, spectrum intelligence, et al, are delivered to applications via Cisco's MSE. MSE provides an open API (XML/SOAP based) for developers, which is Cisco's innovation injection and value creation point of entry for partners.

Central to Cisco Mobility is the Cisco Mobility Services Engine (MSE). The 3300 Series MSE is an appliance-based platform that integrates with WLAN Controller and Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS). The 3300 Series MSE provides a common framework for multiple services easing deployment and efficient allocation of capital spend. An abstraction layer based upon Network Mobility Services Protocol (NMSP) and the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) allows transport and applications to evolve at their own separate pace.

As MSE is central to Cisco Mobility it is the basis for the Cisco ecosystem of application partners where Cisco hopes to accelerate development and deployment of customized solutions for customers. As mentioned above MSE provides a range of mobility services to applications. Today MSE provides four services in its software suite. These include: 1) Context Aware which optimizes business process with context such as location and telemetry; 2) Adaptive Wireless IPS to mitigate wireless threats with integrated intrusion protection; 3) Secure Client Manger to simplify device provisioning and management for the wave of new mobile devices; and 4) Mobile Intelligent Roaming to deliver handoff for mobility applications across public and private networks.

Delivering a platform is only 10% of a solution; the other 90% comes from an ecosystem of partners. The Cisco Motion ecosystem includes business application partners such as Oracle, Philips, AeroScout, PanGo, airetrak, Intellidot, Oat, et al. Client or end-point partners include AeroScout, Nokea, PanGo, Intel and airetrak.

Cisco gets credit for delivering the most comprehensive vision plus technical and business architecture for mobility services in Cisco Motion. MSE offers a great rallying point for Cisco partners and the creation of an ecosystem, but it needs to expand both the number of partners and services delivered to applications via MSE. Cisco also has to remain competitive with its in-segment competitors while offering great application integration value to business and IT leaders. As the WLAN market transitions to 802.11n and meshing, network technology will gain the spotlight, and Cisco needs to keep up with that while increasing its application value proposition through Cisco Motion. This is a tricky balance, but it's a task Cisco has done so well with previous initiatives.
While Cisco continues to put the technical pieces together to deliver the network as the business platform, it needs to do a better job at organizing, growing and galvanizing its Cisco Developers Network (CDN) to offer business and IT leaders thought-leading networked-based application solutions. Cisco Motion is a good step in that direction.

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By Ruckus Wireless

Businesses are struggling with the complexity and cost of installing and managing large-scale WLANs. Wi-Fi meshing is a solution to this problem. An enterprise mesh WLAN is made up of a group of cooperating APs, only some of which are directly attached to Ethernet. The APs form a wireless topology to route client traffic between any member of the mesh and the wired network. Meshing greatly reduces, if not eliminates, WLAN cabling costs and delays as well as AP placement constraints. But despite these compelling benefits, most enterprises have not overcome their concerns over the performance, reliability and complexity of mesh WLANs to take advantage of it on a broad scale.

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By Ruckus Wireless

With physical data rates up to 600Mbps, many believe that 802.11n will replace wired networks within the enterprise and at home. But there's significant disparity between the 802.11n promise and the actual throughput experienced by users of the current generation of 802.11n systems. The most overlooked and under-optimized aspect of commercial 802.11n systems is the control over radio frequency (RF) variability. A robust, responsive RF layer is central to wireless network performance, particularly for Wi-Fi which operates in the open spectrum. It is ironic that most of the system products based on 802.11n, designed to make maximum use of the RF domain, do little in this regard beyond integrating more radio chains and antennas.

Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi technology combines advances in miniaturized multi-element antenna design and sophisticated RF routing software to direct signals onto the best paths in real time to deliver the highest possible performance and reliability in ever changing RF conditions. It also features client- and media-intelligent QoS to optimize multimedia transmissions. With 802.11n, Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi has been extended to optimize antenna operations with multiple radios and intelligent channel utilization software to overcome many of the challenges in realizing 802.11n's true potential.

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By Extreme Networks

Wireless LANs have become pervasive in today's business environment. Mobile applications are driving innovations in wireless LAN technology as the exponential growth in users has put increasing demands on wireless bandwidth. This paper discusses the emerging 802.11n WLAN technology and suggests migration strategies for Enterprise customers.

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With every IT paradigm transition comes not only increased bandwidth requirements, but an increased reliance on network services such as security, remote VPN access, QoS, and application classification to support a wide variety of corporate applications. Also new WAN services such as Metro Ethernet and 3G wireless are redefining WAN design. Between these demanding new applications and WAN options, lies the aggregation router, which has been primarily a narrowband device connecting sites via Frame Relay and MPLS, and thus has presented a bottleneck to new real-time collaboration technologies. This is all about to change, because a new era of WAN design has emerged. New router platforms are rare as their life-cycle is usually greater then a decade. So when one is announced it's the beginning of a long industry cycle and when it's Cisco who's making the announcement you know that it's an industry-changing event. Cisco has announced its Aggregation Services Router, or ASR, 1000 Series, which is focused on the high-end enterprise WAN and service provider edges. The ASR value proposition is rooted in a reduction of appliance hardware, lower WAN cost through aggregation and lower operational spend thanks to management break-throughs. Marie Hattar, Senior Director of Network Systems and Security solutions marketing at Cisco Systems is my guest as we dive into the ASR and new WAN design options it enables. To get the cost out and performance into your WAN, listen to this podcast.

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The edge or access of a network connects all end-points into an enterprise network infrastructure. The network edge is made up of wiring closet switches, which are usually fixed Ethernet switching devices. The market for wiring closet switches is evolving.

In the previous decade IT organizations had traditionally pursued an edge network that utilized shared hubs and switches to provide connectivity to end-points. The primary buying criteria was price per port with low price being paramount. These switching devices possessed few network services such as layer 2 forwarding, Virtual Local Area Networking (VLAN), Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and a configuration tool as their primary network management capabilities. In short the old network access model provided best effort connectivity services with little to no operational control.

As a result of these past decisions, edge/access security was limited, with Layer 2 security measures often implemented haphazardly. Multiple VLANs were relied upon to maintain separation of user traffic and provided limited access control. Most switches relied on RIP as an interior gateway routing protocol but limitations in its algorithm could lead to sporadic outages that would render the network unusable.

From Commodity to Strategic

IT departments saw wiring closet switches as commoditized networking equipment, with little differentiation between vendors. As a result, purchasing decisions were typically made solely on the basis of upfront acquisition cost with little regard for the increased lifecycle costs these purchases incurred on operations. Large organizations that focused their decisions on acquisition costs had soon assembled an enterprise network made up of equipment from different vendors throughout their wiring closets, distribution and core. Equipment from multiple vendors made effective management difficult and the multiple management systems required that these organizations keep a large staff with diverse skills to maintain network functionality.
Wiring closet switch manufacturers have been driven to deliver increased network services in their products due to changing enterprise network demands, discussed below. As a result wiring closet switches and the network edge in particular have transitioned from being a commodity connectivity service to a strategic enabler of new IT applications and services while being the first level of defense to mitigate against internal network threats and attacks. This is a fundamental change in enterprise network design upon which business and IT leaders need to assess and review their infrastructure.
A new category of wiring closet switches has recently begun to appear on the market. These switches are not to be viewed as commodities. Instead, these switches offer a host of new features that allow vendors to compete on multiple different fronts beyond traditional price per port metrics. It is important for executives responsible for purchasing decisions to understand this new basis of competition and to take into account not just their organization's current needs but also heretofore unconsidered future needs before selecting wiring closet switches and designing the next generation edge network.

Enterprise Trends

A new set of enterprise trends are forcing IT executives to review projects, programs and priorities as they seek to drive down Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while extracting additional value from their enterprise network. Business executives expect their IT departments to meet continually growing demands for an increased number of networked applications and associated performance without significant year over year network expenditures. To manage this requirement IT leaders seek to purchase network switches that possess more forward-looking designs and significant upgradability than what was provided by the previous generation of equipment.

IT Application Infrastructure Changes: There are fundamental changes taking place with IT applications and communications, which are forcing new network edge requirements into the market. New applications, communications and data center strategies are creating a new dynamic in mixed traffic patterns and increased desktop bandwidth requirements.

A New Era in Communications Has Emerged: IP telephony and now Unified Communications (UC) offer strong economic advantages, prompting business and IT leaders to adopt this technology.

Power Over Ethernet (PoE) Distribution: The demands on the network continue to grow as additional devices are deployed throughout the enterprise. WLAN access points, video surveillance, IP phones, specialty devices such as health care instrumentation, point of sale devices and soon even laptops will require power distribution from the edge of the network.

The Network Edge Is The First Level of Defense: All prior generations of wiring closet switches are less secure than today's devices. Network Access Control (NAC) and application policing has increased in importance for organizations committed to protecting the integrity of their network, the privacy of their data and providing compliance to various government and industry regulations.

Total Cost of Ownership: The network edge and wiring closet switches in particular have a total cost of ownership break down of 20% capital spend and 80% operational spend according to Gartner Group. While new wiring closet switches may be more expensive from a capital acquisition point of view, their operational cost is lower and the total dollar spend over a three-year period will also be lower while delivering increased value to the enterprise.

A New Class of Wiring Closet Switches Emerges

Wiring closet switch suppliers have recognized the above enterprise trends and responded to the growing needs of their customers with a new type of wiring closet switch that adds significant functionality over and above previous switch generations. These suppliers are succeeding at delivering increased value to IT organizations and in the process transforming the commoditized network edge into a strategic IT asset. These new switches build upon the capabilities of the previous generation and enable a host of new applications such as UC, enterprise-wide mobility and enhanced security features that provide a new degree of protection against internal security threats.

Intelligence and network services are being distributed to the network edge or access, allowing wiring closet switches to support enterprise transitions in IT application infrastructure and communications, adding business value in the process. This new class of wiring closet switches includes the following characteristics:

Quality of Service: New wiring closet switches tag applications at access to guarantee priority throughout an internal network and active monitoring.

Power over Ethernet (PoE): Power is distributed over Ethernet cables, enabling new classes of devices to emerge and operate in environments that lack electrical infrastructure.

Integrated Security: Both integrated security features and the support of security appliances implement strong access control and application-policing, bolstering internal threat defenses.

Wireless Local Area Networking: WLAN integration, which includes access point PoE and controller support, increases WLAN coverage. Further common network management interfaces streamline operational support for both wired and wireless networks.

Unified Communication (UC): UC support via PoE to power IP phones and UC end-points plus unique UC configuration profiles to ensure reliable and stable UC operation.

Application Intelligence: Application intelligence or the categorizing of applications as they enter the wiring closet and either mark them with QoS or discard the application, affording application policing at the network edge.

Layer 3: Full layer 3 forwarding enabling all the value associating with routing including segmentation and aggregation are now included in some wiring closet switches.

In addition to the above network services, wiring closet switches have become more powerful from a performance point of view, while engineers have increased switch reliability, availability and manageability designs. Power supplies are more efficient and serviceable, reducing power consumption and service outage. Bandwidth and packet processing performance have increased to support higher densities of 1 and 10 Gbs Ethernet while offering clever approaches to ease the transition to higher LAN speeds.

The New Basis of Competition Emerges

This new category of switches has redefined the basis of competition among switch vendors. These advanced features allow for a degree of differentiation that was not possible for the previous generation. Organizations must assess their needs and begin making decisions based on a host of new factors besides initial acquisition cost. The following nine items are the new basis of competition among wiring closet switch suppliers.

Future Proofing: Future proofing is found in backward and forward migration strategies to utilize past investment as part of upgrades. Another aspect of future proofing is acquiring wiring closet switches with more than enough packet processing performance to meet existing requirements and those unforeseen demands.

Transitioning From 1Gb Ethernet to 10Gbs Ethernet: 10Gbs Ethernet is the future of networking, with more than 1 million 10Gbs capable ports shipped in 2007. If the past is a guide to the future, then over time more and more 1 Gbs Ethernet ports will upgrade to 10 Gbs placing strain on wiring closet packet processing performance while driving up 10Gbs port density requirements plus downstream distribution and core switch capabilities.

Power over Ethernet (PoE): PoE is a standard wiring closet requirement as it enables a wide range of devices to exist in areas that are not wired for electrical power in addition to being convenient and an efficient power distribution method.

High Reliability and Availability: High availability switch features ensure that the network edge does not suffer downtime. Some wiring closet switches implement a stacking feature to increase port density when needed, avoiding larger than needed capital acquisitions. This is an effective approach to scale and in some cases availability; however care must be applied when researching the stacking mechanism.

High Performance: As an ever-increasing amount of traffic is placed upon the network, performance remains an important differentiator between switches. The ability of this latest generation of switches to handle the load imposed by voice and video traffic in addition to the standard application demands is critical.

Reduced / Contained Operational Costs: To reduce the largest and most expensive component of the network edge's TCO, switch features that minimize operational impact should be exploited.

Consistent Network Management: Consistent network management means leveraging the same supplier for the network edge, distribution and core.

True Layer 3 Support: To support all the above-mentioned trends and unforeseen applications, wiring closet switches are required to support full layer 3 forwarding.

Support of UC, Mobility and Security: This basis of competition is one of the most important attributes to the new network edge. Wiring closet switches need to support both standard interfaces and services for UC, mobility and security so that mixed vendor solutions may occur.

The new basis of competition among wiring closet switch suppliers is based upon switch attributes, scale, and features which reduce operational requirements and spend plus possess the ability to not only support but add value to UC, mobility and security. In the upcoming Lippis Report “Wiring Closet Switches Enable New Applications And IT Services: Intelligence Enters Network Access” we review various suppliers against the above basis of competition.

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802.11n offers impressive improvements in rate, range, and price/performance thanks to significantly higher processing and power consumption than older WLAN Access Points (APs). A key question in the decision to deploy 802.11n APs is whether there is enough power delivered over 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch ports or compliant power injectors to run these Aps, since 802.11n's increased bandwidth and processing may require more than the 12.95 Watts provided in 802.3af switch ports. I interview Craig Mathias, a Principal at Farpoint Group and author of the recent report “802.11n Access Points and Power over Ethernet: Key Considerations” and Luc Roy, VP of Enterprise Mobility at Siemens Enterprise Communications which is shipping an 802.11n AP that operates with 802.3af PoE. Craig tested the Siemens AP3620 802.11n APs and shares the results.

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By Cisco Systems

As the network has become an integral part of the enterprise and small- to medium-sized business, new applications have added new devices onto the network infrastructure. From IP telephony clients to new IEEE 802.11n wireless access points, the requirement to provide increasing levels of power to network end devices has grown dramatically. Cisco® was the first to develop the capability of providing power network end-points when it enabled power from an Ethernet switch port to its Cisco IP phone. From there, Cisco began work with numerous other vendors within the IEEE to create a standards-based means of providing Power over Ethernet (PoE). PoE is now a widely adopted IEEE 802.3af standard. Cisco Enhanced PoE is Cisco's extension to the IEEE 802.3af standard that supplies greater amounts of power per port. By expanding its PoE support to deliver more than 15.4 watts (W) per port, Cisco offers greater flexibility and mobility to users while offering greater operational manageability to network managers.

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Local Area Network (LAN) changes have ebbed and flowed on a nearly consistent five-year basis. In 1990 the worldwide $100 million dollar plus 10Mbs shared Ethernet market was emerging as the LAN standard. It was only five years later that the introduction of 100 Mbs fast Ethernet and the introduction of Ethernet switching usurped 10Mbs shared Ethernet. Between 1995 and 2000 two very important introductions were made to switched LANs: virtual local area networking (VLANs) and 1 Gbs Ethernet. Now 10Gbs Ethernet modules and switches are the norm as price points and port densities have made 10Gbs downlinks and desktop connections economically feasible.

Now with every new generation of LANs, the market has grown by billions of dollars. The transition from shared to switched LANs was explosive, growing a $5.2B market in 1995 to over $14B in 2000 and expecting to grow to over $18B in 2010. This four times market expansion was due to the transition from shared to switched LANs plus favorable price/performance characteristics thanks to an order of magnitude increase in speed nearly every five years. There is no lack of innovation in the wired Ethernet market as many of the large firms will be offering 10 to 100G data center platforms this month and Power over Ethernet requirements are driving new shipments.

There has been a school of thought in the industry that WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks) will cut into wired Ethernet growth, but it has not happened. WLANs have been an explosive market with high double-digit annual growth. WLAN's industry market size is approximately $1.6 billion, representing a little more than 10% of the switched Ethernet market. The Dell'Oro Group estimates that only 15 percent of large enterprises have deployed WLANs, meaning that WLANs are very early in their corporate adoption rate.

From a bandwidth provisioning point of view WLANs are where shared Ethernet was in the early 1990s, meaning that x amount of bandwidth is shared among access point users. From a security point of view WLANs are decades ahead of where shared Ethernet was in the 1990s, to the point where WLANs are more secure than wired Ethernet. And yes, WLAN deployments will continue to increase based upon their current technical architecture where dependent access points and wireless LAN controllers account for nearly three quarters of the market revenue. This architecture extends the shared bandwidth of WLANs so that IT leaders can build large networks, and will drive penetration to reach almost 30 percent over the next 5 years, according to the Dell'Oro Group.

But WLANs are on a technical architecture trajectory similar to Ethernet. As mentioned above, Ethernet was first a shared medium. To increase Ethernet's usefulness different media was used, coax, twisted pair, fiber, etc., and bandwidth was increased. This is where WLANs are today. We have 802.11a, b, g, n, etc., that are standard shared bandwidths. Innovations in RF management, network services placement via controllers, etc., increase WLAN reliability, network coverage and manageability. 802.11n is just starting to be offered by all the major networking and WLAN players. 802.11n is an emerging, next-generation wireless standard that will trigger significant upgrades to existing WLAN deployment and wired infrastructure to support increased down stream bandwidth loads. In addition, with the increased price tag of 802.11n, expect WLANs to garner an increased share of networking budgets. What will drive 802.11n projects into existing enterprises and new greenfield deployments is not only its performance increase from 54 Mbps available in 802.11a and g, to now 300 Mbps within 802.11n but its MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) technology which significantly increases reliability of the wireless network for all WLAN clients, that is 802.11a, b, g and n.

Companies such as Cisco, Aruba Networks, Motorola, Ruckus Wireless, Meru Networks, Trapeze Networks et al., have capitalized on the market need for more robust WLANs. To help scope the enterprise WLAN space, Cisco is the dominant WLAN provider with 65% share followed by Aruba at approximately 10%. Motorola, thanks to its acquisition of Symbol Technologies is another major enterprise player. Ruckus Wireless is a high-growth WLAN newcomer entrant into the emerging small- to medium-sized business. With nearly a $1B of market cap and just 10% enterprise WLAN share, Aruba Networks is a bell weather to the health of this market.

What drove the Ethernet market from hundreds of millions of dollars in market size to billions was the introduction of switching. To capitalize on this new market twenty plus companies were VC funded in the early 1990s. Firms such as UB, Synoptics, Cabletron, Kalpna, Synernetics, Crescendo/Cisco, Alantech et al., innovated and educated the market to the value of switching.

Clearly different requirements call for different solutions. Today's mobile enterprise is driven by extending unified communications over WLANs, location-based services and the huge increase in laptop computing, for example. Laptops and desktop computing drove the WLAN market over past five years, but this next business cycle will be driven by a sharp increase in both the quantity and diversity of Wi-Fi devices. Wi-Fi is being built into everything from single- and dual-mode phones, medical devices, printers, manufacturing scanning devices, Wi-Fi RFID tags, etc. In fact, it's estimated that there will be up to 1.5 Billion new Wi-Fi devices shipping to the market in the next three years alone. With a 15% current coverage model, and very little 802.11n deployed, it is safe to say that the average enterprise WLAN isn’t ready for these Wi-Fi devices, which will be both sanctioned by business leaders and therefore, find their way into the enterprise.

As WLANs become pervasive, and they will be pervasive, their shared bandwidth architecture will give way to a scheme, which segments bandwidth and offers wireless switched service. Just as wired LANs moving away from a shared medium to a switched architecture increased scale, network performance and design options, WLANs will need such a transition in the future to accelerate its adoption and meshing may be the way.

Meshing transitions a shared WLAN into a switched WLAN architecture by offering segmentation of user access and backhauling. A wireless mesh network is made up of radio nodes in which there are at least two pathways of communication to each node. The coverage area of radio nodes working as a single network becomes a mesh cloud. Access to the mesh cloud is dependent on the radio nodes working in harmony to allocate bandwidth and access thus increasing bandwidth and reliability through redundancy. Faulty radio nodes are bypassed as wireless mesh networks self heal. To deliver on segmentation, wireless mesh utilizes routes between radio nodes. Wireless mesh nodes forms paths or hops, which connect together to form the wireless mesh network. WLAN meshing is being standardized in project IEEE 802.11s

WLAN meshes may do the same to WLANs that switching did for Ethernet, that is increase network design options, network diameter, reliability, availability and performance. While it may take as long as 2012 until WLANs start to slow down wired Ethernet port shipments, there's no question that WLANs are on the same trajectory as wired Ethernet. Expect to see existing WLAN providers and a flurry of new WLAN companies touting mesh WLAN solutions over the next 18 months. Before meshing comes into its own, 802.11n will have reached its natural adoption and deployment rate, which could be a five-year span. These start-ups will have to overcome meshing's current liabilities of lower WLAN network performance. But this was the same hurtle that early Ethernet switch companies managed too. As existing and new companies enter the mesh WLAN market, increased price/performance ratios and market adoption will follow as will the emergence of the multi billion dollar WLAN enterprise market.

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Selina Lo the CEO of Ruckus Wireless joins me to discuss the emerging mid-tier enterprise WLAN market that Ruckus Wireless finds itself in the envious position of being alone within. Ruckus Wireless is the expert on RF and antennas for high performance and stable WLANs. Radio communications are subject to unpredictable behavior due to environmental dependencies and various flavors of interference. Yet it's possible to effectively mitigate many of these impairments through continuous intelligent selection of system operating parameters and a sufficiently agile antenna system. WLAN reliability has plagued enterprise WLAN deployments since their inception. Ruckus has invested into engineering solutions to these problems developed over the past three years supplying service providers with over 1 million WLAN solutions for IPTV services around the world. Their intellectual property and mid-tier market requirements could not be more aligned. If you are in the hospitality, retail, education or just a mid-tier enterprise company that needs a stable and easy to deploy WLAN solution, then you need to listen to this podcast.

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A warm Happy Holiday wish to all Lippis Report subscribers, supporters and their families. We have a special Lippis Report for you. Zeus Kerravala and I review the important and game-changing trends of 2007 and predict what 2008 has in store for business and IT leaders. We then take a further look out to 2012 and paint a picture of what the industry will look like. We provide this analysis in both written and podcast formats.

2007

2007 was the year that enterprise communication vendors restructured with Avaya going private, Cisco buying WebEx, Shoretel going public, Microsoft entering the market and joining forces with Nortel et al., Siemens Communications being spun off from Siemens AG, Mitel acquiring Inter-tet, etc. In addition 2007 was the year that the software industry focused their interest in Voice over IP (VoIP) and Unified Communications. In addition to Microsoft’s October OCS launch, IBM came out with its UC² initiative while Citrix’s CEO Mark Templeton clued in its developers on how to do Click-to-Call in a Citrix environment. Microsoft, IBM and Citrix’s participation is a big step for the communications industry to move forward and transition to a software industry. 2007 was the year that enterprise communications was totally restructured. We’ll see more restructuring going forward but the big story in 2007 is a radical change in enterprise communication suppliers.

Many business and IT leaders scratched their heads trying to figure out NAC (Network Admission Control) to see how they could deploy it and put it into their network. A lot of them were confused by the complexity associated with rolling NAC out on a wide scale. 2007 was also a year where tighter integration between wired and wireless LANs, as well as mobile and fixed communication integration occurred as smartphone devices took off.

2007 was also the year that application fluent networks came of age. Riverbed took off with a very successful IPO while F5 had a great growth year and Cisco bolstered its offering by adding Application Intelligence in its Catalyst 6500 product line. When talking to CIO’s and IT managers, one of the areas of increased budget and spend will be network technology that directly impacts application performance.

If 2007 was about enterprise communication firms restructuring, mobile communications and application fluent networks what does 2008 have in store?

2008

The Year of Unified Communications: 2008 will be the year of Unified Communications with Microsoft being a top three enterprise communications vendor. In fact, they will be a top two vendor with Cisco. Avaya will be a strong three, but nearly every business and IT leader will be evaluating OCS next year. This will have profound industry implications as many vendors who did not join the mainstream and kept to their own siloed proprietary communication solutions will fail. If ’07 was the year a few software companies got interested in UC then 2008 will be the year that the ISV (independent software vendors) community gets interested in VOIP, which will be driven largely by Microsoft and IBM. Some of the implications of this trend will be that high-end desktop phone sales will drop like a rock as UC and Smartphone sales skyrocket. The Apple iPhone will ship over 16 million units in 2008. We’ll see SIP trunking take off as a preferred way to connect Unified Communication islands and provide inter-enterprise UC links. In addition, managed service providers will increasingly offer hosted UC to the SMB market.

More Corporate Apps go Mobile: 2008 will also be the year that mobility will extend applications beyond email and calendar access. In short, we will start to see main corporate applications go mobile. Right now when you’re mobile with your Blackberry or IPhone you really only have access to corporate email and calendar. The big contribution that Blackberry made (and other smart phone vendors are following suit) is that they didn’t try and mobilize the application like exchange. Microsoft spent years trying to make Pocket Outlook work and it worked pretty poorly. What RIM did was take the application from Outlook and from exchange and give it to you in a format that’s usable. We’re starting to see a few small companies do the same for many corporate applications such as Dexterra Software that provide the same approach for CRM systems. The thinking here is that when users are mobile they don’t necessarily want the application, what they want is very specific information from their applications depending on what they are doing. 2008 will be the year that we start to see broader use of mobile corporate information.

2008 will be a very active M&A year. There are hundreds of start ups that are well financed and working in good niche areas while the industry has a group of very wealthy companies, particularly Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. They’ll continue to buy at their already aggressive trends. We’ll see Microsoft pick up twenty, IBM pick up twenty, and Cisco at least pick up ten but probably between ten and twenty companies.

Green IT Drives Data Center Virtualization: Green IT, which has been an initiative in Europe, will become an issue in the U.S. finally. The EPA just finished a study on data center power and cooling energy consumption which will drive change. Almost every major organization has a corporate social responsibility officer to assure that environmentally friendly processes are in place. However IT generally falls outside the realm of the corporate social responsibility officer but IT will start to be measured by this office in 2008. When that happens Green IT will be a corporate mandate and possible government mandated regulations around power and cooling will be initiated. This will change the way IT buys and builds data centers. One of the big evaluation criteria, by the end of next year, may be power and cooling efficiencies, which may change data center supplier market share. As power and cooling efficiency becomes data center table stakes, virtualization will go beyond power, space and cooling savings and efficiencies moving into networks where many-to-one management and one-to-many service distribution efficiencies are gained.

Application Fluent Network Appliances Integrate More Services: Application fluency appliance vendors will integrate more services in 2008. In 2007 IT departments bought F5 equipment for their data center, Riverbed, Cisco and Juniper for their branch, etc. Applications respond to different techniques based on where that technology resides. Some applications respond positively and some negatively to different application delivery technology. For that reason, in 2008 application fluency appliances will start to integrate WAN optimization, layer 4-7 and SSL-VPN technologies et al, to create what we think of as an application delivery market. The implication will be that the vendor community will be rationalized. Riverbed will seek to broaden their product line but Citrix, F5, Cisco, and Juniper have been collecting these components for a couple of years. One of those companies is going to come out with an end-to-end story.

Network Security Architecture Gets Rationalized: NAC, NAP, and Cisco’s recent TrustSec, will define the core of a compliant ready network.

Mid Enterprise WLAN Market Booms: There is a new enterprise wireless LAN market that is starting to take shape, which isn’t being addressed by Cisco, Aruba, Meru, Trapeze et al. Look at Ruckus Wireless to break out in 2008.

So 2008 is the year of UC, Microsoft will be a top three VOIP vendor and we’ll see more kinds of enterprise mobility expand outside of existing applications. We’ll see developers being heavily recruited by Cisco, Microsoft, and Avaya to build upon their UC platforms; NAC, NAP, and TrustSec are the architectures for compliant ready networks, Green IT hits the U.S. corporate market. SIP trunking takes off in 2008. The application delivery network market will restructure, mature and force industry consolidation.

Now Zeus and I look out to 2012 to see what the future of networks and communications has in store for business and IT leaders or vice versa.

2012

By 2012, Telepresence will be available in approximately 40% of organizations as video is a common form of corporate communications. By 2012 Telepresence will be used by inter company communications, not just intra company.

By 2012 the VOIP market will be enough of a software play that business and IT leaders will implement open source telephony reaching 10% market share.

By 2012 there are only four enterprise communication suppliers in the market with revenues greater than $5 billion and that includes Microsoft. So there are three others including Cisco, Avaya and IBM with Citrix being a dark horse.

By 2012 Microsoft will have between 25 – 30% UC market share.

By 2012 phone tag and voicemail usage is nearly gone from corporate communications, replaced by present-based IP communication.

By 2012 more than 50% of global 2000 concerns appoint a chief communications officer responsible for communication-enabled business processes (CEBP) where CEBP is systemic and common as it’s a contributor to corporate annual productivity.

By 2012 the Apple iPhone is the second largest player in the advanced OS Smart phone marketplace, but Apple is still half the size of Microsoft.

By 2012 there are only three enterprise LAN switch vendors that have revenue above $600 million, Cisco is one of the three. We predict the other two to be Foundry and ProCurve.

By 2012 you will start to see Fiber channel and infinaban market share fall as Ethernet technology continues to mature and becomes the preferred networking technology in the data center.

By 2012 wireless speeds will be fast enough to start negative growth in the LAN switching market.

Thank you for a great year everyone. Happy Holidays,
The Lippis Report Staff

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By Ruckus Wireless

Administrators of small-to-medium businesses or independent hot spots at hotels, stores, transportation centers, and other public venues are often frustrated by the limitations of wireless consumer products and have no time or budget for enterprise-class solutions. These companies need an affordable, easy-to-use alternative that is still robust and scalable enough to extend the reach of their wireless LANs, support existing and next generation services and provide reliable and predictable Wi-Fi performance.

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges associated with operating a small-to-medium business WLAN or public hot spot. It explains the benefits of a self-configuring platform that can deliver Wi-Fi more reliably to increasingly diverse devices and applications, covering larger areas and higher user densities, while minimizing total cost of ownership. Finally, this paper introduces the Ruckus ZoneFlex wireless LAN system and its attempt to fill the gap between current low AP and high-end WLAN platforms.

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by Ruckus Wireless

This black paper provides detail on spatial multiplexing which can significantly increase data throughput as the number of resolved spatial data streams is increased. Each spatial stream requires its own TX/RX antenna pair at each end of the transmission. It is important to understand that MIMO technology, a major architectural element of 802.11n radios requires a separate radio frequency (RF) chain and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for each MIMO antenna. This increasing complexity ultimately translates to higher implementation costs as higher-performance systems are required.

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By Avaya

Have you ever wondered why the sound quality on your phone seemed so poor after listening to your iPod? The reason? Limited bandwidth thanks to 20th century compromises between cost and quality resulting in narrowband audio. Today’s network infrastructure is not limited to these old constraints and much higher audio bandwidth is available. This paper explores the possibilities for better sound quality within IP telephony through the introduction of Wideband Audio technology and the business implications for improved productivity that the new wave of sound can offer. It will also explore how Avaya, one of the leaders in IP Telephony, has chosen to exploit the productivity potential for Wideband Audio in its new line of telephones. With all the time spent on communications in a typical day, improving audio quality makes for an improved work experience.

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Bill Kish, Chief Technical Officer of Ruckus Wireless, talks with Nick Lippis about enterprise Wireless LANs and the new 802.11n standard. With the increase in bandwidth, spectrum and power of 802.11n many IT leaders are now starting to think through how to incorporate 802.11n into their network architecture. Backbone link speeds, access point and WLAN controller placement, security, power over Ethernet, wireless bandwidth and spectrum power are all factors which plug into the calculus of next generation WLAN deployments. Bill Kish is uniquely qualified to talk on 802.11n as he is an active participant on IEEE project 802.11, the organization creating the standard. He is also a co-founder of Ruckus Wireless, and their CTO. Bill offers a vision for how the industry will progress that I buy into. Here’s a hint, think of 802.11n as a platform not just a product.

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With the communications industry transitioning toward a software and service model we thought it appropriate to ponder and highlight a few cool applications. As most Lippis Report readers and listeners know, communication silos are in the process of being integrated into office productivity and mobile computing application software thanks to unified communications. The days of transiting from the phone, to email, to IM, to voice mail, mobile endpoint, etc., will soon be gone. These applications will be available as a single launch point on a desktop, laptop and mobile device near you. With unified communications being that single launch point and communication vendors such as Avaya, Siemens, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, ShoreTel, et al exposing their features to a web services application development layer, business and IT leaders will be equipped with the tools to inject communications into business process speeding up workflow or creating new processes altogether. It’s an amazing time. During Microsoft’s October 16 Office Communication Server launch, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Chairman, used the term Communications Enabled-Business Processes. This is the first time that I can remember that the software industry used the same terms to describe the same opportunity as the communications industry. Bottom line, software and communications are in synch on the new opportunities ahead in this new era of communications. With these two huge industries motivated to work with each other, an explosion of new cool communications applications will be the result.

It’s impossible to predict what kind of new and exciting applications will be a result of unified communications now that all major software and communication concerns are courting independent software vendors (ISVs) to write to their platforms. One thing is for sure, innovation and creativity is about to be unleashed on an IT area that has been static for decades, with the exception of the mobile market. What is presented below are categories of applications that will have ecosystems around them to customize to the individual or business or both.

Unified Communications: Very Cool Application

Many companies are using the term Unified Communications (UC) to describe different things. Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications while others use it to describe integrated communications.

Unified communications can be thought of as a super-set of IP-based communications. IP-based tools, such as web conferencing, audio conferencing, and video conferencing, unified messaging and instant messaging, have been around for a while. Unified communications is the super-set of all of these tools accessed through a unified method. That is, access to people and information is managed through one interface; no longer does the user need to have separate tools to drive separate communication applications. Access is integrated so that from an instant messenger chat session, for example, a single “click-to-call” or “click-to-conference” button will conference somebody else in. In the near future, unified communications will be brought into other business applications to enhance work flow in the communications process. But for now, UC is the coming together of various collaborative applications and communications tools which have existed for a long time.

For the end-user, UC is an experience that simplifies work and increases productivity by reducing delay in accessing and communicating with others. Some cool applications here are Avaya’s One-X platform, the Microsoft Office Communications Server or OCS, Cisco’s Telepresense conferencing system and many others.

The IPhone: Very Very Cool Application

One can argue if the IPhone is a product or category. I say it’s a new category of UC mobile devices. It provides integrated access to messaging, email, visual voice mail and voice communications. These communications applications are integrated and bundled within most other IPhone applications. For example, point the browser to a site with a phone number on it, click on the phone number and the IPhone dials it. Search for a Starbucks on the maps applications and up will come email and phone numbers for a number of Starbucks on which the user can click and launch the email or phone application. With Apple now opening up the IPhone to 3rd party ISVs, and potentially other mobile providers and enterprise IP telephony players, the Iphone fits into one of the coolest applications on the market today.

Voice Portal: Cool Application

The voice portal is a Web portal that can be accessed by voice commands via an ordinary phone. Any type of information, service, or transaction on the Internet could be accessed through a voice portal. While voice portals are not new, their interest to ISVs has grown significantly as it allows web sites to be more accessible. For example, a mobile user with a cell phone might dial in to a voice portal Web site and request information using voice or Touchtone keys and receive requested information from a special voice-producing program at the Web site. Voice portal interaction may involve audible speech, speech recognition or a telephone keypad interface. Depending on the user’s needs, voice portals automate call routing to access information from a variety of sources and web page content or route request to live agents.

A consumer voice portal provides general access to information; an enterprise voice portal provides customized access to customer support. Consumer voice portals were available back in the late 1990s. The early services integrated text-to-speech and speech recognition with Internet-based technologies such as databases. Types of information commonly accessed through a consumer voice portal include weather, sport scores and stock quotes.

Enterprise voice portals are more interesting as they manage inbound and outbound voice traffic and agent controls to manage calls within the enterprise.

Avaya, Cisco and Genesys are among the leading providers of customer premise-based enterprise voice portals.

CEBP: Very Very Cool Application

There is an emerging market for Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP). Late last summer the IP telephony industry accelerated its software focus with Unified Communications and CEBP initiatives and offerings from all major suppliers. Unified Communications is in essence a single launch point or portal to gain access to multiple communication applications with tools such as click-to-call, instant messaging, click-to-conferencing, and many others. CEBP injects communications into business process to reduce human and system delay, hoping to speed workflow and increase the response of an organization to business events. Unified Communications is being delivered to market via packaged software and massive distribution channels thanks to Microsoft and IBM. CEBP is different. Each enterprise will have a unique entry point for CEBP based upon their process improvement priorities, funding, and project business case strength.

CEBP, by definition is a custom project. There are business process modeling consulting organizations, which are today’s efficiency engineers, working through business process to save an organization time and money. But CEBP promises to be much more; it promises to deliver a new kind of agile and competitive organization that can respond to business events quickly, satisfy customers more deeply, and in the process create competitive barriers of entry. There are tremendous opportunities for companies who analyze innovative communications technology like CEBP as it presents a new paradigm for business communications. CEBP promises to contribute to better corporate decision making by inserting human decision making at the right time with the right people and providing the right context to decision makers through multi-channel communications.

CEBP will in effect link front-end applications with back-end data center applications through communications. For example, Whirlpool business executives are summoned into a meeting when its stock price falls or rises by an extra-ordinary amount. Once the stock price change event hits this threshold a communication process is invoked which notifies the group of business executives that a meeting is being scheduled to review the cause of the stock price change. There could be a supply chain, customer, manufacturing, distribution issue, etc., which is impacting the stock price, which the executives can address. This is but one example of how front-end applications are linked with back-end business applications through communications. In short, CEBP will not only hasten existing business process but will help create new ones that allow organizations to be more agile and responsive. This is a very cool application category that includes system integrators, software and communication vendors as well as consultants.

Contact Center Business Intelligence: Cool Application

Contact centers contain the deepest and widest customer information available to business leaders. UC with its federated presence information will allow agents to expand their pool of knowledge workers, allowing them to bring the right person into the right discussion at the right time to answer a customer’s question or cross/up sell them. The exhaust of contact center data, that is verbal discussions and transactions needs to be minded to deliver business and IT leaders with business intelligence.

Business executives yearn for insight into what their customers want and think to make better products and services while increasing their brand and loyalty. Contact center recording systems collect thousands of customer interactions and transactions each day. Yet, this wealth of data provides little in the way of automated analysis or actionable information from which executives can formulate strategy or change processes, either to improve quality or to realize new business opportunities.

While business intelligence has been floated around the industry for over five years with little progress, UC and CEBP offer new tools to bring customer experience management to a new level and offer executives customer insight previously unavailable.

Fixed Mobile Convergence: Very Cool Application

I am redefining the term for enterprise-based fixed mobile convergence (FMC) with Mobile Unified Communications. FMC is the linking of fixed telephony end-points such as desktop phones and messaging with mobile devices. Unified Communications is making FMC obsolete as business and IT leaders search for solutions to provide mobile executives with the same features on the road as they have in the office. All the major IP telephony providers are busy extending their UC features and interfaces to mobile devices, which far outstrips the single vmail box, PBX features on mobile phones and fixed/mobile phone ringing tricks provided by FMC. IP telephony companies such as Avaya have purchased Traverse Networks to extend their mobile UC offering while Cisco purchased Orative to do the same. The offerings of both companies deliver value far above traditional FMC capabilities.

To make this point, we’ll focus on Avaya’s FMC to Mobile Unified Communications MUC offering. Clearly there are many other firms such as Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent that are on the same FMC to MUC journey but with limited space, we’ll focus on Avaya for now.

Avaya has an over-arching mobility umbrella, which is referenced internally as the One-X experience for mobility. The goal is to provide executives with the same communications experience when moving from a fixed desk environment to a mobile environment. To achieve this common experience the features and capabilities available in a fixed environment transpose out to a mobile environment. What’s meant by mobile environment are devices that are not only a cellular phone, but also PDAs and softphones. The key is to provide the same rich PBX functionality on mobile devices as are available on fixed station sets, so executives have access to features such as call transfer, hold, and about 20 other features that are typically exposed, without needing to learn anything new. In addition to the One-X experience Avaya has conducted integration with Microsoft, Lotus Notes, Dominos, IBM Websphere and others that are both fixed and mobile.

Over this next business cycle, there will be more categories and many new cool applications. Welcome to a new era in software communications.

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By CheckPhone

A SIP security gateway can provide comprehensive, scalable, flexible security and connectivity for remote and mobile VoIP users. The emergence of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) as the standard of choice for real-time IP communications is fueling the convergence of previously separate applications including telephony, Email, Instant Messaging and Online collaboration. But by combining aspects of networking and telephony, VoIP presents a unique set of security challenges. Administrators are struggling to find ways to provide a service with the quality and reliability of traditional telephony, while mitigating the same risks and threats faced by online services like port 80 and email Unless these issues are properly addressed, critical business applications can be left open to attack or abuse resulting in service disruption, financial loss and legal liability. This paper describes a mitigation approach which includes VoIP over VPNs and associated techniques to close VoIP vulnerabilities.

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By Cisco Systems

As applications are being centralized and users become increasingly distributed, the performance limitations of a WAN such as limited bandwidth, significantly longer latency, and packet loss are seriously slowing down application delivery. Cisco® Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Cisco Performance Routing (PfR) can work together to intelligently optimize application delivery across the WAN-at both the application level and network level.

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There is a buying shift taking place in the WLAN market marked by a new basis of competition which values unification with wired networks. The shift places an advantage to those with LAN switch infrastructure market share. All the big network infrastructure players such as Cisco, ProCurve Networking by HP, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Nortel et al., are focusing on unifying wired and wireless networking from a user experience, management and service level perspective. At the same time upstarts such as Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, Meru Networks, Ruckus Wireless and others offer WLAN approaches that either overlay on top of existing network infrastructure or they offer both wired and wireless devices. In this Lippis Report we analyze the unified wired and wireless
services from Cisco’s unified networking, ProCurve Networking by HP, Aruba’s Mobile Edge Architecture and Trapeze’s Smart Mobile architecture. We’ll address this topic in two parts. The first part presented here is a requirements statement based upon our consulting work with large enterprises. The second part, to be published in November is a supplier assessment against these requirements. Most IT decision makers want to cut to the chase and find out which suppliers we favor so we provide a sneak peak here.

The market for WLANs is shifting from a separate overlay deployment to an integrated or unified WLAN and wired LAN implementation. This shift in requirements and features opens the door for established infrastructure providers to leverage their large installed base of Ethernet switching to address a new multi-billion dollar market by offering unique unified features. These features include management integration with LAN systems, consistent user/client services, enhanced guest access administration and voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) services. Cisco offers the vision and solution set with a wide range of products and features. ProCurve’s new ZL WLAN controller offers a simple approach to unifying wired and wireless networks. Aruba offers both wired and WLAN connectivity in its controllers but lacks switched Ethernet market share, which limits its ability to integrate with LAN infrastructure and management. Trapeze is a pure play WLAN overlay, which does not integrate with LAN infrastructure. Ruckus Wireless is entering the enterprise market soon and we’ll provide perspective when they announce. Since access points dominate the cost of ownership for a WLAN solution, this market can be modeled as a razor/razor blade market. Innovation in user licensing which lowers the cost for the controller (or razor blade) should drive many razors (or access points).

Enterprise Market Demands A Unified Mobility Solution

While mobility is a broader topic than wireless LAN (WLAN) access including Virtual Private Networking or VPN, cellular, location services, Radio Frequency ID (RFID), etc., in this Lippis Report we focus on the movement to unify wired and wireless local area networking. It’s within the context of WLANs that we will use the term mobility.

There are multiple drivers for mobility solutions in the enterprise market. Mobility is a key attribute of networking that allows enterprises to unlock their business process from fixed points. Wireless networking is one of the key structural components of an overall mobile strategy. For example, over the past two years WLANs have entered prime time for corporate networking thanks to architectures which increase ease of deployment and management plus significant advances in security, specifically the WPA and 802.11i standards. Architectural arguments and choices have shifted from thick vs. thin access points to integrated vs. overlay and now to a unified approach to WLANs and wired LAN networking.

Market requirements for a unified wired and wireless LAN approach to network access includes client, infrastructure and netops dimensions. Client access should be consistent, independent of wired or wireless network access method. Ideally WLAN access points and controllers should be deeply integrated into existing network infrastructure and tightly linked to management, control and security services. The higher the level of integration of WLAN with wired infrastructure the lower the operational cost, as common tools and interfaces increase netops productivity while training requirements are minimized.

The value of a unified wireless and wired network where access points or radios are low cost and widely distributed and communicate to WLAN modules embedded into LAN switches offers benefits to netops, the client or end-user experience and guest access. Unified WLANs and wired LANs are accomplished through integration of hardware, software, management, network security, and protocols.

A unified WLAN and wired network needs to include the following considerations:
Wired Infrastructure Integration

To integrate WLANs with existing wired LAN infrastructure the following essential components are needed:

• Wireless encryption protocols such as WPA, 802.11i, etc.
• Identity Management for wired and wireless access control
• Rogue AP detection
• Built-in stateful firewall to defend against external intruders, which may be integrated into controllers as separate appliances
• Network Address Translation (NAT)
• Built-in Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to track commonly known wireless attacks onto the network and alert netops
• Network Access Control (NAC) to provide a consistent user authentication experience
• Management, monitoring and configuration via existing wired management platform
• Identity management integration to define user access policies, which are common to wired and wireless access providing users with true mobility
• DHCP server in case a WLAN, separate from existing wired infrastructure, is desired

Enhanced Guest Access and Administration

A guest contingent work force requirement is pervasive in the global economy as it allows collaboration between employees, consultants, suppliers, partners and contractors. But guarantees of appropriate levels of security need to be in place to protect a corporation from inadvertently opening its network and IT resources to unauthorized access. Of particular concern to netops has been the large amount of time and resources consumed during administration of guest access.

There have been few options for guest wireless network access administration. Common practice is that netops would advertise a WLAN network guest account, which would direct guest traffic via routing and Access Control List (ACLs) to a corporation’s DMZ and the internet. This is a limited capability. Netops would not know who was using the guest access service nor have tools to track its bandwidth utilization.

Guest access capabilities need to be more granular in their definition and easier to administer. With a unified network there could be multiple guest administrators setting up guest accounts. For example, upon the arrival of a customer, a business leader could establish a user name and password assigned to a guest access group and configure its policy, which specifies the length of time access is available to the customer.

Combining the guest access group with identity management offers netops an even more powerful set of options in the administration of guest access accounts. Many IT leaders are uncomfortable with adding temporary users into network and IT databases. Identity management provides netops with a way to push the operation and control of guest users to business leaders, allowing them to set up group administration while being confident that netops is still in control of security and how guests gain access to the network. This eliminates requiring netops to perform extensive work in provisioning temporary guest access based on an event, i.e., sales training, customer visits, etc. Netops can set up multiple guest access accounts at which multiple WLAN controllers can all point and share a common area where guest accounts can be created, maintained, and deleted. This is a key unified networks feature where a centralized location can host a database of guests’ accounts which can be maintained, easing administration and closing the vulnerability of undeleted guest accounts.

Client Experience

The user experience of wired access sets the performance expectation during wireless access. While bandwidth is still much greater on wired networks, WLANS continue to close the bandwidth gap and are in fact more secure than wired connections. Many past WLAN frustrations can be eliminated with a unified WLAN and wired architecture. Corporate users have been frustrated when locating a wireless network, authenticating the wireless network, losing connections while roaming through a campus or office building and questioning the security of their access. One of the largest complaints about WLANs has been the inability to roam.
Roaming

Layer three roaming is enabled by having WLAN controllers or modules embedded in the network fabric. There are two deployment options for layer three roaming, which depend on the number of controllers or modules deployed across the network fabric. In a single module scenario, IT leaders would deploy multiple radios across layer three boundaries where traffic is tunneled across subnets to the single module. In a multiple module scenario where all modules participate in controlling traffic from radios scattered across multiple subnets, the modules set up tunnels among each other and route traffic as wireless clients roam between subnets and network segments. This provides a consistent user experience as they roam throughout the network.

VoWLAN Support

New applications, such as voice over wireless LAN (VoWLAN) are posed for rapid mainstream adoption. IT leaders desire to future proof their wireless investment to address future application requirements such as VoWLAN. The roaming discussion above is critical to maintain voice connections while roaming with VoWLAN handsets. Wi-Fi WMM (multimedia) support, which provides QoS functionality in wireless networks by prioritizing wireless traffic from different applications offers future proofing too. SpectraLink voice priority (SVP) support, which prioritizes SpectraLink voice IP packets, sent from a SpectraLink NetLink SVP server to SpectraLink wireless voice handsets enable VoWLAN service. Unscheduled Automatic Power Save Delivery (uAPSD), also known as 802.11e power save extends the battery life for Wi-Fi devices such as VoWLAN handsets. All of these features are key to future proofing the unified network.
Unified Network Design

There are two basis approaches to unified network design. The first is to place wireless services (controller or module) located at the network core or distribution level embedded in Ethernet switches. Though simple to deploy and maintain, this network configuration has limitations worth noting. Wireless traffic transverses the network headed to the core switch where the WLAN module is placed. But encrypted (if clients use wireless encryption) user/device authentication and traffic ingressing the network has not been challenged or verified, making the network vulnerable to exploits. Network latency may be increased during the back and forth journey between end-point and core switch, having a negative impact on real-time network applications such as VoWLAN.

The second alternative is to deploy wireless services at the network edge. This deployment offers several advantages over wireless services at the core or distribution level. User/device authentication occurs at the edge of the network before traffic can enter into the network, mitigating the above vulnerability. Built-in RADIUS authentication and DHCP service, firewall, static ACLs and identity management are dynamically assigned and user-based network policy is enforced at the edge of the network to ensure safe and appropriate network access. Traffic is classified and efficiently routed at the edge of the network. In addition, PoE can be more effectively and efficiently administered to radio ports/access points. Also with layer 3 roaming, mobile users transverse routed boundaries and subnets.

With a unified network infrastructure, which includes the components mentioned above, the following type of fail over services are enabled. Self-healing access points or radios allow a controller to detect a failed radio and adjust the RF coverage accordingly to provide appropriate access. RF adjustment based upon an aggregated network view, thanks to distributed data collection, can identify RF interference from Bluetooth or wireless headset devices, for example and adjust RF power accordingly. As controllers or modules are integrated into switch chassis/fabric they share the power redundancy already designed into LAN switching products to provide consistent service in the case of failure.

NetOps Integration

With WLAN service deeply embedded in LAN switches and associated management, netops is able to integrate the configuration, monitoring and management of WANs through a common set of management tools. Further, as NAC and identity management and other network security services have been built around the LAN switch architecture, these services are then integrated and offered to WLAN clients, easing netops administration of WLAN services.

In short, netops is offered a single pane of glass management for wired and wireless: device, policy and access management. User-based policies are defined once, centrally in the network, and then applied consistently throughout the network independent of access method. This provides a scalable framework. As new capacity is required for additional users, controllers are added to LAN switches and radios adjust their power and bandwidth accordingly while centrally defined policies are applied in lock step with existing devices. This framework inherently reduces operational expense as network administrators are not repeating tasks such as defining access control policies unnecessarily.

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For many business and IT leaders Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) means cheap, low cost IP phones. And while there are low cost SIP phones available, holding on to that concept only allows you to miss the main point, which is that SIP is an ecosystem and fundamental to a new era in communications. True, the IETF’s SIP goal was to create a protocol for setting up and tearing down real time sessions over IP packet networks. But SIP has transcended that goal by emerging as a framework which engineers leverage to architect IP communication solutions. There are three aspects to the SIP ecosystem: SIP connections, SIP end-points and the SIP platform. In this Lippis Report we explore the SIP ecosystem as the underpinning of unified communications.

The SIP ecosystem:

There are three aspects of SIP. First SIP connections which consist of SIP trunking, gateways and peering offered by various service providers and equipment suppliers. There are a wide range of SIP end-points including soft-phones, hard-phones, fixed and mobile end-points which make up the second component of the ecosystem. Linking SIP connections to end-points requires a SIP platform which is a switching mechanism establishing and disconnecting sessions and offering application developers hooks to create and customize communication applications. In short, the communications industry has divided itself into these three areas, making up the SIP ecosystem.

Connection Points: SIP Trunking and Peering

The connection segment of the SIP ecosystem provides links into service providers via SIP trunking and between service providers via SIP peering. SIP trunking is being provided by many of the equipment suppliers such as Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Alcatel, ShoreTel, Mitel, et al. natively without the use of separate gateway device or appliance. The value proposition of SIP trunking is one of lower communication cost and simplicity thanks to its being able to provide a service provider with a single SIP link (T1, DS3, etc.) A single SIP trunk provides the transport of many simulation SIP sessions vs. the alternative of linking buildings with private lines to support SIP traffic or overloading existing enterprise WANs and routers with backhauling inter-company SIP traffic. SIP trunking simplifies numbering too. In short SIP trunking delivers traffic aggregation, addressing, and naming complexity reduction, which lowers operational and facilities cost.

The number of service providers offering or announcing SIP trunking has grown considerably over the past 24 months. In North America SIP Trunking is either available or soon will be from AGN Networks, AT&T, BandTel, Global Crossing, Onvoy, Paetec, Verizon Business, McleodUSA, Qwest, and TelePacific. In EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) SIP trunking and peering is being provided by Arcor, Belgacom, British Telecom, Colt, Deutsche Telekom, Proximus and QSC. CALA (Central America/Latin America) SIP service providers include Embratel, Telefonica and UNE – EPM Telecommunications. In Asia and Pacific (APAC) KT (Korean Telecom), SingTel, TFN (Taiwan Fixed Network), and TOT (Telephone Organization of Thailand) are SIP service providers. This level of global SIP support is a testament to the interoperability that SIP provides. For example, SIP end-points are different across the world thanks to the multitude of suppliers yet all can connect and communicate via SIP trunks and peering points between the above SIP service providers.

SIP end-points

SIP end-points are not about cheap phones. SIP offers end-point value well beyond a price point. Perhaps the most prevalent SIP end-point will be the soft-phones available from Microsoft and IBM as both use SIP as the cornerstone to their unified communications products.

SIP is opening up end-points for customization, greater user control, branding, etc. SIP allows extending features and functions between hard-phones, soft-phones and mobile phones. In some SIP product lines such as the Avaya one-X, users enjoy the same user interface independent of hard-phone, soft-phone or mobile phone, providing consistency, ease of use and some very cool features such as call logs, especially missed calls, and twinning of devices. Twinning devices rings both desk and mobile phones so that if you’re not at your desk, but you’re walking around the building or outside SIP is ringing both your phones.

Whisper paging is another cool feature that’s becoming very popular and in demand. Whisper paging allows an assistant to break into a boss’s call with only the assistant and boss hearing each other. In essence the assistant is able to whisper a message into the boss’s ear and ask if they’d like to take the call. These are the types of features that are traditionally available in the PBX space, but completely non-traditional on mobile devices. What SIP has permitted is to extend some of those features and functions all the way out to mobile devices. In addition to these feature examples, many IP telephony providers are adding features such as web browsing to their SIP phones, which enable customization and new services.

True, the IETF SIP standard defined a limited number of features such as place call, forward call, three-way local conferencing, put call on hold, transfer call, etc. And many suppliers are extending the feature set through SIP extensions, which can be a double-edged sword. On one side SIP extensions increase the feature set, on the other side some suppliers may build proprietary extensions which operate only with their SIP platform, locking customers into their architecture for years to come.

While most, if not all, SIP end-point providers deliver on basic features, where differentiation occurs is in the extension of traditional PBX features to SIP phones. For example, not all SIP phone providers are able to provide bridge line appearances because there is no SIP RFC standard. Bridge line appearance allows an administrative assistant to know if the people he/she supports are available to take a call. There is a draft, which describes how to do bridge line appearances or the busy indicator of somebody else’s appearance. In SIP the leveraging of presence can deliver a wide range of older PBX features and as well as new ones. There is a method to extend SIP that is compliant to the SIP standard as well; the spirit of SIP using presence to provide bridge line appearances is an example of that method. Business and IT leaders should select SIP vendors carefully and choose those who implement SIP per IETF draft and the RFCs.

The bottom line: SIP end-points are not cheap phones but are becoming feature rich communicating devices in many form factors and price points.

The SIP platform:

While SIP end-points get most of the press attention, the SIP platform receives the lion’s share of business and IT leader attention. Large corporate IT staffs are spending approximately 25% on SIP end-points and 75% on the SIP platform. Not only does the SIP platform demand the lion’s share of acquisition dollars but a lot of time is being spent on planning how the SIP platform will fit into an IT infrastructure.

Most of the hard SIP work was in the establishment of the protocols and framework, which defines the SIP platform. The industry has looked at the two edges of the SIP ecosystem (end-points and connections) but not enough on the platform in the middle. In order for the two edges to work end-to-end you need the middle. The SIP platform provides session establishment and management, a presence server, a registrar and the platform proxy. Beyond the basic session services the SIP platform is also providing a development environment, which allows IT developers to either customize specific communication applications or call upon SIP services to add value to structured business processes. In the real world the SIP platform will be the evolution of Avaya’s communication manager and its ubiquity application development platform. For Cisco it would be the evolution of call manager with its Reactivity acquisition. Perhaps the best example of this is the Ubiquity SIP A/S, which is the SIP Application Server. There is a whole developer network that has been formed around SIP A/S resulting in a wide range of applications.

A New Era In Communications

The SIP ecosystem is changing the communications and computing industry. With Microsoft and IBM entering into the market, it’s clear that the days of the $600 desktop phone are limited. The reason? Microsoft and IBM will give back to IP telephony providers approximately $8 per soft-phone license. In essence Microsoft and IBM are gearing up to be the new distribution channel for enterprise communications. The revenue loss due to the dwindling of the $600 per fixed phone will have two results to the enterprise IP telephony providers. First there will be consolidation and fewer IP telephony providers over this next business cycle as there will be less revenue to support the current number of vendors. Second, those IP telephony providers who embrace a software and services model will be better equipped to navigate the industry change. While soft-phones and mobile/PDA phones will grow at the expense of fixed desktop phones, those IP telephony firms who add value to their soft- and PDA platforms will be better positioned to increase margin well beyond what their desktop phone revenue stream provided.

Expect all IP telephony providers to compete aggressively on unified communications with feature richness and SIP platform robustness. Adding “chargeable” value to PDA and mobile phones will be key to success. Bolstering their SIP platform to go beyond basic SIP services to include an application development environment will be key too as this is where professional services and customized solutions reside. We have entered a new era of communications, one that is marked by openness, software and integration and SIP at the center of it.

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By Vantrix Corporation

This white paper describes an architecture which leverages mobile devices to deliver video surveillance thanks to SIP user agent. The Vantrix Surveillance consists of two modules: a camera controller, in charge of the monitoring, event detection and streaming from cameras and other sensors; and a security server, which stores all recorded events and interfaces with the end device via the Internet or wireless networks. These end devices may be computers, SIP user agent devices or regular cell phones.

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I have a great family. They gave me an iPhone for my birthday recently and it lives up to the hype. It does the best job at blending computing and telephony in a mobile device. The networking aspect of the iPhone is impressive. It’s a dual mode phone supporting AT&T’s edge network and wifi. Walking or driving around you enter and leave hot spots while nearly always being connected to the AT&T wireless network. You find yourself looking for a hot spot to boost your bandwidth to download content or connect back into the office. I process data more than voice so dual mode offers me a way to get data faster. The iPhone does a great job at dual mode for data, but does nothing for voice. Dual mode operation for voice provides continuity of a voice call while traveling in between WLANs and cellular networks taking advantage of lower cost communications. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) leverages dual mode end-points by providing WLAN/Cellular mobility plus dual ringing where an enterprise’s IP telephony system can ring the executive’s multiple extensions simultaneously in an effort to make the executive more accessible. This enables executives to have a single telephone number and voicemail box too, simplifying voice message management. Vendors approach dual mode based upon their expertise. The computer and data companies approach it from a data perspective while telephony firms approach it from a voice perspective. Both should approach dual mode from a seamless mobile collaboration perspective blending both voice and data dual mode operation to deliver the best experience to the executive.

There is an industry trend to integrate unified networks (WLANs + wired LANs) and unified communications to improve reach and business responsiveness. Industry insiders describe the extending of IP telephony features to mobile end-points such as cell phones, PDAs and smart phones with the term “fixed mobile convergence”. The level of integration associated with fixed mobile convergence is usually limited to providing users with a single v-mail box and ringing either their mobile or desktop phone when an inbound call is placed. The linking of unified networking and unified communications offers a richer set of business experiences such as collaboration, calendar syncing, data application access, paging, push to talk, group-based dialing, and many more. In short, unified networks and communications is a platform which provides geographic and networking independence to application and communication access. As business process goes mobile so too will IT and in the process enable new revenue generation and customer experience options which business leaders are exploiting.

Beyond FMC

First Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is an awful term, used only by vendors, service providers and analysts; it is not relevant to enterprises. What enterprises are trying to do is provide good collaboration and access to data applications and employees everywhere. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) speaks to the voice aspects of employee, customer, partner or supplier voice communications. The vendor community needs to start thinking of mobility from a Seamless Mobile Collaboration (SMC) perspective as this is the end goal which business and IT leaders are interested in deploying. Yes, SMC enables employees to work from a remote site, have a single voice mailbox and a single phone number, but this is just a starting point. The vision for mobility is one that is enabling a Seamless Mobile Collaboration experience across any access network, linking executives into business communication systems and their business network. So where is the increased value that’s being offered to business and IT leaders as they start to implement an SMC strategy?

Seamless Mobile Collaboration Promises

The value that SMC offers to business is wide spread. SMC turns into increased productivity, which translates into an improved bottom line. Ultimately SMC delivers efficiency by allowing people to connect to their colleagues, partners, customers and suppliers in a more simplistic and user friendly way as SMC eliminates the concern and complexity of the access network. In other words, an executive does not need to be concerned if the person they are reaching is on a cell, WLAN, or wired LAN access network. You just communicate, either via voice or any data communication modality such as email, IM, conferencing, etc. Also message management is easier too as executives do not need to manage the complexity and inconvenience of multiple voice mail systems, multiple phone numbers, checking multiple voice mailboxes and in the process missing calls while you’re trying to retrieve old ones.

For IT leaders, SMC promises reduced cost of operations thanks to the efficiency of managing a single network and communication system. While the industry has made great strides to converge all their networks under Ethernet and IP on the network side and to add IP telephony to this converged network, it still struggles to integrate WLANs and VoWLAN to this converged network. In addition cellular networks are separate physical and logical entities today too, with email and at times IM being the only common service between cellular and corporate networks. Most IT organizations are managing office communications systems with wired phones, while they manage mobile systems separately. In the future SMC offers a strategy to combine these networks under one management platform and one set of security policies while providing common services. While this level of consolidation has always proved to reduce operational cost over time, more importantly SMC will add material value back into the organization by allowing people to perform their workflow independent of physical location, thus creating business value.

Seamless Mobile Collaboration In Retail

For example, in retail there are different employee profiles that require different types of SMC. Retail associates who assist customers as they enter a store looking for a product need an SMC solution that gives them the freedom to roam within their campus or retail store environment. A VoWLAN (Voice over WLAN) solution is ideal as this provides them roaming mobility freedom. VoWLAN can be combined with a push to talk capability so that the associate can access a group of associates and the manager on duty to address a customer’s question. In addition a customer may be calling from home with a question, which can be routed to an associate on the retail floor to check inventory or address a question. A regional or branch manager whose work requires them to be primarily mobile between multiple stores has a different set of mobility requirements. This manager requires a different type of solution, one that’s based on their cell phone, since a large percentage of their time is spent traveling between stores. They’re probably going to have a fixed office phone too, as they are part of the executive management chain.

Solutions such as Cisco Unified Mobility or Cisco Mobile Communicator, Avaya’s extension to cellular, Siemens’ HiPath MobileConnect, DiVitas Networks, Tango Networks, Kineto Wireless, NewStep Networks, Agito Networks, Ascendent acquired by RIM, all forward calls from office to cell phone allowing users to have a SMC experience, whether they’re inside a store or traveling in between them. In short there are different SMC scenarios based upon job type and requirements, but one thing is for sure: every person working in the global economy will benefit from some form of SMC. So how do business and IT leaders start moving towards a SMC vision? How should they begin the process in determining which solutions they should consider?

Seamless Mobile Collaboration: How To Get Started

There are three simple steps that you as business and IT leaders can take to begin this process toward SMC:

Related Podcast: Custom Cisco Based Unified Communications Applications

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1. The first step is starting to profile mobile workers within your organization. As mentioned in the above example, some firms have mobile workers who stay within a building or cluster of buildings, while other mobile workers travel outside of their building as well as being mobile inside. Profiling mobile workers is a first key step.
2. The second step builds upon the mobile profiles by adding job requirements and end-point device needs. Again some may require a standard cell phone, others may require a more enhanced device because they also have the requirement for mobile email or other mobile applications, and still others may need ruggedized devices for their job profile. Perhaps they work in a warehouse or in an outdoor environment where ruggedization is critical due to the device use.
3. The final step is analyzing mobile worker profiles and the different end-point device types needed to support their job and specific applications. Business and IT leaders should consider which business areas are most critical to improving customer responsiveness, competitiveness, productivity, etc. Think of the mobile profiles and key corporate objectives. What you will find is that one class of mobile workers will have the biggest impact on that business objective. This is where business and IT leaders should begin the process of enabling Seamless Mobile Collaboration.

Seamless Mobile Collaboration: It’s Not Complex

One topic that confuses many IT managers is that they believe to realize SMC value they must first deploy a Unified WLAN and Wired network, then add Unified Communications, and then extend Unified Communication to mobile end-points. In the retail example above, SMC was achieved with a mix of technologies such as IP, WLAN, VoWAN, legacy phone systems, etc. SMC can be delivered with a host of different technologies. SMC does not require a complete pervasive deployment of Unified Networking plus Unified Communications before you can start to get SMC benefits to your mobile end-points. It comes back to identifying business goals that can be achieved by equipping employees with mobile technologies to deliver value. In the retail environment increased customer service was the goal, which was achieved by deploying a WLAN and enabling VoWLAN capability which gave that business the best return as they were goaling to improve customer experience and responsiveness. While this is a good place to start for the retail stores, it doesn’t require that IT deploy that same solution in their corporate headquarters. It comes back to analyzing business processes and objectives first and the SMC solution will follow. With the first SMC project completed it will surely build and extend to processes, divisions and/or organization once the business experiences the value created.

With all of that said, once the iPhone is equipped with FMC it will deliver the best SMC as moving between voice and data wireless networks will be seamless. And I can thank my family for giving me not only a great birthday gift but good fodder for this Lippis Report.

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With wireless networking being more secure then wired, IT leaders have been able to deliver solutions to meet a global mobility need; and there are multiple mobility need drivers. For starters business process knows no time zones, thanks to corporations seeking competitive advantage by creating global virtual teams and personalizing customer experiences. A new generation of workers demand mobility solutions in their work environment and personal lives. Unifying wired and wireless networks also delivers business continuity attributes. And as on-line communications reduces face-to-face meetings, travel and real estate requirements, unified networks contributes to a lower carbon foot print and a Green friendly work environment. For CIOs and CFOs unified networking is smart business too as it enables cost reduction through network and service integration. Chris Kozup Senior Manager Mobility Solutions Marketing for Cisco Systems is my guest as we discuss strategies for unifying wired and wireless networking. Enjoy, Nick

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There is an industry trend to integrate unified networks and unified communications to improve reach and business responsiveness. Industry insiders describe the extending of IP telephony features to mobile end points such as cellphones, PDAs and smart phones with the term fixed mobile convergence. The level of integration associated with fixed mobile convergence is usually limited to providing the user a single v-mail box and ringing either their mobile or desktop phone when an inbound call is placed. The linking of unified networking and unified communications offers a richer set of business experiences such as collaboration, calendar synching, data application access and much more. This experience is called Seamless Mobile Collaboration. Lynn Lucas, Director of Mobility Solutions for Cisco Systems joins me to discuss how mobility plus unified networks and communications are evolving to deliver business value. Enjoy, Nick

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By Avaya

It’s well known that wireless headsets make office and mobile professionals more productive. Technology advances have made wireless headsets practical and increased product choices. A manager responsible for

the smooth functioning of a business needs to select wisely to get the full convenience, compatibility, and productivity benefits of wireless headsets. Choices of radio technology, range, user density, security, cell phone and Wi-Fi compatibility can be confusing. This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the technologies available today: analog, DECTTM (Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology) and Bluetooth®.

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by Avaya

Avaya has recently introduced three wireless headset systems for professional use, and all three are built on the DECT 6.0 technology. DECT 6.0 products, which operate in the 1.9GHz radio band, offer the best audio quality and best range/battery life balance on the market. The AWH65, an evolution of the AWH55 wireless headset system, is the first headset in the US to take advantage of the newly available DECT 6.0 technology. The AWH65 was followed by two additional systems for office and contact center use: Supra Elite Wireless and AWH75. Avaya headsets complement the existing family of office products, and take audio quality to the next level with DECT 6.0

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by Avaya

Decision makers in the enterprise are increasingly faced with more choices regarding their phone systems and associated equipment. IT professionals must make critical decisions about their company’s equipment, yet have less time to evaluate various options. The purpose of this white paper is to provide specific information regarding wireless headsets to ensure the purchase of the equipment that best fits the needs of your organization.

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By Luc Roy, VP Product Planning, Siemens Communications

So, what´s the big deal about Voice over Wireless LAN (VoWLAN) anyway? What is a dual mode phone and how does Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) work? These are the questions that many early adopters of WLAN technology are asking as they consider adding voice services onto their existing WLAN. At the same time smart companies that are new to WLAN technology are looking to future-proof their investment by deploying voice-ready WiFi networks from the start. For both new and existing WLAN customers, a little planning and analysis now will save a lot of time and money in the future.

Why all the new interest in VoWLAN and FMC? The short answer is that for many enterprises VoWLAN and FMC have the potential for large cost and productivity improvement benefits. FMC and dual mode cellular devices are beginning to deliver on the promise of a single device with a single phone number using a single voice mail.

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By Cisco Systems

Organizations worldwide have reworked their business processes to take advantage of such powerful new technologies as the Internet, IP communications, and mobility. But even with a plethora of options to reach fellow employees too often employees still cannot reach one another efficiently. The result is delay in business processes as project participants must wait for returned phone calls or e-mail before proceeding. Cisco Unified Communications is helping businesses communicate more efficiently by extending and enhancing the mobility component of Cisco Unified Communications. The combination is allowing knowledge workers who are mobile to also enjoy the efficiencies and speed of Cisco Unified Communications.

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By CipherOptics

Recent improvements have made Layer 2 WAN services a viable, scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional WAN services. Extending LAN traffic across the corporate backbone at native speed is welcomed as application performance is significantly improved. While there are many Layer 2 services available such as Metro-Ethernet, Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) and private Ethernet Line Services, all require encryption services to protect corporate IT assets.

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By Avaya

Avaya and IBM have leveraged their considerable individual technologies and platforms and roadmaps to create a combined vision to make real-time and non-real-time collaboration a reality for enterprises.

Integrating the powerful communications applications from Avaya with market-leading IBM Lotus software for business applications results in unity of communications. This unity removes the barriers of time, geography, isolated applications, messaging formats, communication modes, and choice of device. Information and communications are then liberated from virtually any access limitation. The mantra of anytime-and-anywhere communications is now being united with any way.

Learn how enterprises can now increase productivity in measurable ways by allowing:

• “click-to-communicate” from familiar desktop interfaces;
• integrate in-house audio and Web conferencing to reduce expense and make meetings more effective;
• integrate e-mail, voice mail and calendars into a single client;
• reduce total cost of ownership on server management;
• extend functionality to mobile and remote workers

Also learn when and how to make integration decisions as well as the unique capabilities afforded by the powerful combination of Avaya/IBM by downloading this white paper.

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I am redefining the term for enterprise-based fixed mobile convergence (FMC) with Mobile Unified Communications. FMC is the linking of fixed telephony end-points such as desktop phones and messaging with mobile devices. Unified Communications is making FMC obsolete as business and IT leaders search for solutions to provide mobile executives with the same features on the road as they have in the office. All the major IP telephony providers are busy extending their UC features and interfaces to mobile devices, which far outstrips the single vmail box, PBX features on mobile phones and fixed/mobile phone ringing tricks provided by FMC. IP telephony companies such as Avaya have purchased Traverse Networks to extend their mobile UC offering while Cisco purchased Orative to do the same. The offerings of both companies deliver value far above traditional FMC capabilities.

To make this point, we´ll focus this Lippis Report on Avaya´s FMC to Mobile Unified Communications MUC offering. Clearly there are many other firms such as Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent that are on the same FMC to MUC journey and in another Lippis Report we may profile each of these firms.

Avaya has an over-arching mobility umbrella, which is referenced internally as the one-X experience for mobility. The goal is to provide executives the same communications experience when moving from a fixed desk environment to a mobile environment. To achieve this common experience the features and capabilities available in a fixed environment transpose out to a mobile environment. What´s meant by mobile environment are devices that are not only a cellular phone, but also PDAs and softphones. The key is to provide the same rich PBX functionality on mobile devices as are available on fixed station sets, so executives have access to features such as call transfer, hold, and about 20 other features that are typically exposed, without needing to learn anything new. In addition to the one-X experience Avaya has conducted integration with Microsoft, Lotus Notes, Dominos, IBM Websphere and others that are both fixed and mobile.

Early FMC: Extension to Cellular

A few years back Avaya released the extension to cellular capability, which is the basis of its FMC offering. Extension to cellular provides dual ringing, meaning that an executive can ring multiple extensions. This enables executives to have a single number and single voicemail capabilities. One can call your enterprise phone and that rings you on your multiple devices as you wish. Also a single voicemail box provides access to both fixed and mobile messaging. Then Avaya added the ability to use PBX features through the extension to cellular capability.

During 2005 Avaya released a software client to make it easier to use those features on Nokia phones. This is called the one-X Mobile Client. What Avaya has done is continue development on the one-X Mobile Client and now has released a dual mode version, which allows executives to switch between GSM and Wifi. When executives are in the campus the dual mode phone will use SIP over WiFi for communications and while outside the campus or office building the phone switches back to GSM.

Dual Mode Phones

The extension to cellular, dual mode capabilities and one-X Mobile Client combine into a flexible mobile experience, which many in the industry find interesting. Interest in the WiFi portion of the dual mode phones are rooted in a least cost routing play where IT departments are able to reduce cellular cost by shifting mobile minutes to their IP telephony infrastructure when employees are roaming within their buildings. In fact, many executives use their mobile devices as their main communicating end-point even when inside an enterprise campus. There´s also a single mode GSM-only phone with Windows Mobile support on the horizon which provides all the One-X features such as conferencing, transfer, hold, single voicemail, and single number and about 20 other common features.

The Avaya FMC capabilities are inherent in its communications manager server whereas many other solutions in the industry require an additional server or a third party box to deliver FMC features. That will tend to drive up solution cost. Building on this FMC foundation Avaya is now extending the feature set into a Mobile Unified Communications environment.

Enter Traverse Networks and Mobile Unified Communications

With the Traverse Networks acquisition Avaya is able to bring in additional capability such as visual voicemail where voicemails actually appear on a mobile device visually. Voicemail looks like an email allowing the executive to manage, listen, call back parties, forward, etc., voicemails. Another cool feature is the ability to synchronize call logs between an enterprise desktop phone and mobile device. Profiling is yet another MUC feature giving the executive control over who can call in, who is put into voicemail, who is transferred, etc. Traverse provides Avaya with the ability to provide MUC over a variety of phones and end-points such as the Blackberry, Nokia and others.

Mobile is Not Just Wireless

Being mobile doesn´t mean wireless; it also means being remote and leveraging VPN technology to communicate. Avaya offers a VPN phone, which is essentially a desk set phone that operates remotely over a VPN. It works like this: you take your desk set, which has VPN capability in it and is programmed to your corporate VPN. Many executives take it home when working remotely and plug it into their home router and it VPNs back into the corporate network transferring all the office phone features to the home office.

Making Mobility Easier

Avaya has added specific buttons for mobility. For example, the call forward capability has its own button. On the new 9600 series phones there is a hard key to transfer a call to a mobile end-point to keep busy executives on the go. It´s simple in that once an executive hits the transfer button in mid- sentence her cellular phone will automatically be dialed and the call is moved so the conversation can continue while she walks out of the building.

In short what Avaya is doing is not just about mobility, but how do you seamlessly go between both fixed and mobile environments. Most executives travel between a mobile and enterprise environment and back continually during the day. When executives are mobile within a campus or building Avaya has a fairly rich grouping of WiFi only phones, which are perfect as a campus/building roaming communicating device as they eliminate cellular minutes from being consumed within the office.

FMC vs. MUC

Avaya is known for its survivability and its core IP telephony infrastructure. That ties right into its mobility offerings. Mobility also comes into play as a major factor in disaster planning and business continuity, offering employees options and capabilities to communicate without an office setting. FMC provides a simple set of mobility voice features which will be rapidly outdated as companies such as Cisco, Siemens, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft/Nortel and Avaya extend their unified communication portfolios over mobile end-points.

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By Firetide

Wireless networks provide mobility for laptop and PDA users who no longer need wires to stay connected to their workplace and the Internet. Ironically, the very devices that provide wireless service need lots of wiring themselves to connect to private networks and the Internet. This white paper presents a viable alternative to all those wires – the wireless mesh network. The paper covers basic mesh concepts and technologies, key capabilities needed to deploy an effective and robust solution, and target applications in both private and public networks.

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By QuesCom

When multi-national corporations connect their VoIP traffic through traditional global service provider offerings, cost usually soars. But GSM infrastructure can be leveraged to provide site-to-site connectivity for both intra- and inter- country communications thanks to GSM gateways and SIP trunking.

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by Avaya, case study

With continuing growth and separate telephone systems across 26 locations, Grene Vision Group was unable to operate effectively as a single company. It deployed Avaya Media Servers, Avaya Media Gateways, and Avaya telephony applications in a networked IP telephony architecture to gain interoperability, mobility, scalability, and availability.

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By Avaya, case study

Providing mobility services and tools for its highly mobile workforce would not only help the company meet its business goals but would also create an in-house model for Avaya customers who were implementing mobility strategies in their own businesses. With a focus on the same mobility strategies prescribed to its customers, Avaya implemented IP Telephony-enabled mobility applications to equip its employees with wired and wireless mobility solutions, allowing them to conduct business seamlessly whether in the office, in a remote location or on the road.

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By Avaya

An account representative working from a customer site. A shipping supervisor roaming the warehouse floor. A salesperson living in airport lounges and hotel rooms. Business has seen the future, and it´s mobile. According to the Yankee Group´s December 2006 Report, Enterprises Strive to Better Connect the Mobile Workforce, in the US more than 50 million workers will be mobile in 2007. This represents 42% of the workforce ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ an increase of 31% since 2002. Many companies now spend more on wireless than wireline ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ in some cases, without even knowing it. And the trend towards a fully mobile workforce is expected to accelerate. Mobility provides convenience, flexibility and efficiency and is also a key component of both business continuity planning and a Unified Communications strategy.

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by Cisco Systems

Cisco offers a full portfolio of products with which to build a network that is fully converged end to end. Having this broad scope requires Cisco to understand the unique requirements of each of these places in the network and how they must all work. With the introduction of the new Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Supervisor Engine 32 Programmable Intelligent Services Accelerator (PISA) and the Cisco 7201 Router, Cisco expands its WAN services aggregation portfolio with offerings that help ensure business success through the consistent, secure, and optimized delivery of advanced technologies and services.

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As wireless LANS become more prevalent in enterprises, however, legitimate concerns about security and reliable service must be addressed. Today more than ever, it is crucial that key mobile business applications are delivered securely and scaleably to employees and business partners. As a result, for the wireless, as well as for the wired LAN, IT administrators need to establish and implement security and application availability policies that facilitate these productivity-enhancing networks.

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Mobility is a key attribute of networking that allows enterprises to unlock their business process from fixed points. Wireless networking is one of the key structural components of an overall mobile strategy. For example, over the past two years wireless LANs (WLANs) have entered prime time for corporate networking thanks to centralized architectures which increase ease of deployment and management plus significant advances in security, specifically the WPA and 802.11i standards. Architectural arguments and choices have shifted from thick versus thin access points, to integrated versus overlay and now from a unified approach to WLANs to a unified approach to enterprise mobility. But mobility is much more than just WLANs. A unified approach to enterprise mobility delivers integrated wired and wireless networking, mobile extensions to unified communications, geographic and end-point independent network access and location services as its four major architectural components.

A discussion of mobility usually stirs up a range of topics including cell phones, PDAs, G3, WLANs, VoWLAN, RFIDs, cell phone-unified Communications links, etc. Mobility is primarily about the experience of gaining access to corporate applications and services anywhere, which transcends all of these technologies. But we need a way to think about how all these technologies come together. The industry needs a mobility architecture for enterprise networks. In Lippis Report 81 we deliver the scope of a mobile architecture for enterprise networks so that business and IT leaders can start to wrap their minds around the opportunity and task.

Enterprise mobility is a broad topic and it is not necessarily wireless. Mobility and wireless are not synonymous. Wireless does mean that a user can be mobile. Mobility however can be gained by both wired and wireless technologies. The value proposition of IP telephony, or what we now call unified communication, was based solely on its mobility features. That is, the reduction or elimination of moves, adds and changes thanks to IP separating physical and logical networking. In a unified communications environment physical location has no bearing on the ability to receive and send voice calls. In short, voice communications is just as mobile as e-mail, independent of its underling networking technology, whether it is wired or wireless.

Enterprise mobility is about the experience of gaining access to IT resources independent of location and end-point and in the process empowering an organization to be more productive. For many companies there is a wide variety of people (sales force, field force, executives) and functions (marketing, engineering, customer service, etc.) which have mobility requirements. Mobility is about improving the capabilities of business, and empowering the workforce to get their job done no matter where they are. To satisfy these requirements, mobility can´t be boiled down to a single technology or a single device. Enterprise mobility needs to be architected.

Mobility is Well Beyond Sales Force Support

Mobility is not just about salespeople who are spending the bulk amount of their time outside the enterprise. Knowledge workers spend up to 70% of their time away from their desk, meaning that there is an in-building component to mobility as well as an outside-the-enterprise component to enterprise mobility. While mobility provides freedom to work independent of the confines of an office, it´s also critical for business continuity and disaster planning. In this era of man-made and natural disasters as well as the potential for pandemics, mobility enables business continuity by delivering the ability for a workforce to work remotely or from home. Broadly speaking, mobility is about connecting people to their information, data center, applications and other people, who could be partners, customers, or colleagues, as well as increasing access to key assets that are needed by the business to complete business processes.

The above mobility points can be summarized into three concepts. Mobility enables: 1) empowering a business with insight, which is access to its key information with context; 2) collaboration, which is about effective communication; and 3) awareness, which is visibility into the status of key assets.

Mobile Enterprise Architecture Scope

One company cannot provide all the products and services needed for a mobility architecture and total solution. Yes, a System Integrator or Professional Services organization can combine best of class point solutions into an architecture, but there is no single networking or communications vendor that can deliver a total mobile architecture with their own product sets. For example, Avaya´s professional services organization develops architectures for customers, delivers and manages them. Cisco has core mobile products and augments them with partners to deliver a whole solution. For Cisco it´s this combination with partners in which they provide a total mobility solution, but Cisco´s emphasis is on infrastructure solutions that business needs to deliver mobility. The scope of a unified approach to enterprise mobility is outlined below.

Integrated and Unified Wired and Wireless Networking: IT and business leaders see WLANS as essential parts of their IT assets and a critical part of the business infrastructure. Unifying the two networks together provide huge advantages to the business organization both from an IT perspective in terms of how they scale, manage, and deploy the network, and also from an end-user perspective in terms of services that are available.

When the wired and wireless networks are integrated IT leaders can reduce overall infrastructure Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Unified wired and wireless networking enables unified security, unified intrusion prevention, quality of service, and location services that eliminate wired and wireless network boundaries. For example, many providers such as Cisco, Extreme Networks and Foundry are offering a single platform for services that IT leaders should expect, such as a single security policy for individuals, whether they access the wireless or wired network. This provides direct benefits to an organization as they roll this out and manage WLANs. On the services side it enables quality of service and location services. This enables new capabilities for the business units and end-users. As an example, with location capabilities that are unified across the wired and wireless networks IT leaders have the ability to track assets and people. As people connect into the network independent of wired or wireless access location, knowledge is fed into the business processes increasing organizational efficiency.

A unified wired and wireless approach to mobility offers two main benefits. One is based upon services, such as QoS being able to transcend both wired and wireless; the other is common network management and security, which reduces IT operational spend to manage wired and wireless networks as one network. As WLANs increasingly become a critical part of the business infrastructure and is scaled up to a pervasive level, the TCO saving becomes dramatic when it´s integrated with the same management and security approach as the wired network.

Mobile Extensions to Unified Communications: The main theme here is to leverage the investment in Unified Communications by allowing employees to access and use this resource outside of the office. Cisco recently added the ability to deliver the Unified Communication experience to mobile devices, specifically cell phones, through its Orative acquisition. Many use cell phones as a primary communications method. You can now have that same Unified Communications experience with a corporate directory, presence, and IM capability to tell you who on your team is available and how they want to be communicated with. You can take that with you on your cell phone. But Cisco is not alone in this important area. Avaya added Traverse Networks to its Unified Communications portfolio to extend its service and feature set to mobile end-points, while Siemens launched its HiPath Mobile Connect to close the gap between enterprise and cellular networks.

Geographic and End-Point Independent Network Access: VPN solutions are part of a mobility architecture as they provide data access and usage solutions for employees working outside the enterprise. Part of this solution is tele-working solutions for people that work full or part time at home. The other part of the solution is secure remote access through VPN capability while working at a partner site, customer site, airport, or hotel.

RFID and Location Services: The RFID market is huge and growing at multiples not percentages per year. An enterprise mobile architecture needs to incorporate RFID or radio tags into their plan because over time there will be more devices connected into the internet than people. I predict that by 2010 the number of network end-points will hit one trillion, up from over a billion today thanks primarily to RFIDs. Cisco in particular has a strategy of integrating RFIDs into their location servers through the creation of an ecosystem of partners building location services via a set of APIs Cisco has developed.

Cisco is taking the capabilities they have today through partners with WLANS, active tag, as well as other types of radio tags which bring this information into the network and through APIs create a location service which other application vendors use to enhance their applications. Location information can be used to track, monitor and optimize corporate assets more efficiently. This tracking is done so companies can optimize efficiency and customer satisfaction. In many cases firms improve their inventory management and bottom line as they find that they´re not over ordering or repurchasing assets. In the future businesses can track how their products are used and create real time feedback loops to improve their products and services. Tracking can also be used for security purposes to track where a person is; this information can be used as part of the identity and authentication process in the network, for example, respecting appropriate privacy policies. Location services will generate new business models that are in part based on information about the location and status of these different devices and products.

A mobility architecture for enterprise networks extends beyond WLANs to the integration between WLANs and wired networking and the value that enterprises gain from this integration. Also, Unified Communications is extended to mobile devices leveraging presence and increasing collaboration, adding value to a mobile architecture. Getting ready for the next major wave of internet growth around — bringing the analog world into the digital world through RFID technology — will offer business efficiency and revenue generating opportunities as supply and value chain dynamics are tracked. An open approach to location services is key as the network holds much information about location, device type, status, etc., which can be used fruitfully by applications that are unique to each industry. The mobile enterprise architecture is an enabler of harvesting this information and putting it to good use to help businesses optimize business processes and use mobility in creative ways to better serve customers.

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By Cisco Systems

Today´s work environment is fast-paced and increasingly requires near time responses to partners and customers. With almost all employees mobile, connecting people with other people, information and key assets is core to achieving business objectives. By enabling mobility, the workforce is empowered with Insight, Collaboration and Awareness providing increased productivity and improving decision-making. To deliver these three core mobility components, Cisco® has developed a framework based on a secure all IP network, intelligent network services, devices and applications.

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By Cisco Systems

WLANs are rapidly becoming pervasive among enterprises. The availability of wireless voice clients, the introduction of dual-mode (wireless and cellular) smart phones, and the increased productivity realized by enabling a mobile workforce are moving WLANs from a convenience to a critical element of the enterprise network infrastructure. When deploying a wireless LAN infrastructure to support voice applications, it is useful to understand Voice Ready WLAN design principles and how they differ from conventional WLAN networks that only support data applications. This white paper discusses the principles of designing a Voice Ready WLAN.

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By Avaya

Avaya is a recognized leader in mobile enterprise communications. They have helped thousands of organizations develop strategies to successfully meet the challenges presented by a rapidly changing work environment. Avaya´s professional services organization has developed enterprise mobility strategy best practices, which are documented in this 35-page white paper and provide a wide range of options and strategies for developing a mobility strategy for your organization.

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Lynn Lucas, Cisco’s Director of Mobility Solutions joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss a strategy to unify enterprise mobility. Wireless LAN architecture choices have shifted from thick to thin, to integrated vs. overlay and now from a unified approach to wireless LANs to a unified approach to enterprise mobility. A discussion of mobility usually stirs up a range of topics including cell phones, PDAs, G3, VoWLAN, WLANs, RFIDs, cell phone-unified Communications links, etc. Mobility is primarily about the experience of gaining access to corporate applications and services anywhere, which transcends all of these technologies. But we need a way to think about how all these technologies come together. We need a Mobility architecture for Enterprise Networks. Listen to this podcast and gain a unified approach to enterprise mobility.

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There are strong economic and technical drivers transforming branch office operations. Business leaders are growing their branch office operations at a rate of nearly 10% per year. There are multiple factors behind this growth including expanding out of region and global operations, mergers and acquisitions plus tapping into a larger pool of employees and increasing existing employee retention. Not only has there been a large spike in the number of branch office employees but they are also fueling corporate growth strategies and represent a larger share of corporate intellectual property and decision-making. It´s no wonder then that IT budget consumption to support branch office operations is as high as 70%! It is for all these reasons that the corporate network business platform needs to be extended to include branch offices. In this Lippis Report we´ll show you how.

Networking has evolved from a connectivity service to a strategic business platform thanks to the integration of services embedded into the network fabric. Networking technology anticipates systemic changes in how business applications will be written and deployed across networks so as to support unforeseen and future requirements. In doing so branch office network solutions have increasingly integrated services such as network security, application intelligence, IP telephony and wireless LAN access points to increase branch office employees´ productivity while reducing cost. The result of this evolution is that branch office networks are mission critical resources that deliver a wide range of services to the point of being an integral component of the strategic network business platform.

The Old Branch Office Network Model

Overlay after Overlay = High Cost and Unreliability

As branch office network requirements grew many IT leaders simply added networking services through appliances to meet their needs. This was a simple solution with relatively low capital cost to provide IP telephony, WLANs, network security, etc. But as requirements have grown over the past five years so too have the number of appliances. Many IT executives now realized that they had too many appliances to support, all with different management interfaces and configuration rules. Not only does adding multiple appliances increase capital cost but operational cost skyrockets as well. Remember that the average number of branch office locations is nearly 100, which means every branch office investment is increased by two orders of magnitude. With operational cost representing some 90+ percent of branch office network total cost of ownership adding appliances, in retrospect, is penny wise but pound-foolish. In addition to high operational cost reliability is decreased as the number of appliances which can malfunction increases.

Too Many Slow Speed WAN Links

Branch office operations are typically supported through multiple networks such as voice, data, security, fax, etc. Many of these networks, in particular fax, voice and security are aging networks based upon TDM technology. These older analog networks have become more expensive as service providers increase tariffs to entice IT leaders to migrate to new broadband and IP-based networks. As branch offices are usually many miles away from central offices, this distance increases the price of phone and data lines, which tends to limit the amount of bandwidth per branch location a corporation can justify. In the old branch office network model, with as many as four lines entering a branch office to support four separate IT services, wide area network resources or bandwidth tends to be limited for any one service. Inconsistent WAN service among branch locations is another characteristic of older branch office networks thanks to offices being distributed over large geographic distances and between multiple service providers. So not only is bandwidth limited but WAN management is expensive and problematic as netops is forced to manage multiple service providers.

Lack of Network Design = Poor Security + Inconsistent Performance + Lack of Preparation

With the growth of branch offices taking many IT leaders by surprise, many have not architected a solution for their remote offices; rather they have built out their networks in a piece meal fashion. As a result many branch office networks are not fractal, meaning that there is no consistency in design. In short these branch office locations are equipped with different devices and vendors. This inconsistency of design often results in mixed performance between branch office locations. Perhaps most importantly is the fact that piece meal branch office design is less secure, since it is nearly impossible to update all branch office locations with the latest security enhancements and/or exploit signatures. Further, many have limited business continuity plans and are not prepared for man-made or natural disasters. Lack of a mobility solution is a key indictor of this design flaw.

Branch Office Network Best Practices

Thoughtful Design = Improved Performance + Security + Business Continuity

As mentioned above branch office operations are driving growth initiatives and are empowered with decision-making authority. Consequently traffic patterns are following this shift in corporate authority and responsibility. Traffic patterns used to flow hierarchically from headquarters to regional offices to branch offices. Now branch-to-branch flows are layered on top of hierarchical traffic to support executive decision making in the field between branch locations. Branch office network design needs to incorporate this requirement with flexible WAN services and routing.

Integration = Lower TCO + High Reliability

Much of the vendor community has embraced the concept of integrated services in branch office network devices. There are many suppliers of branch office network equipment such as Cisco, Avaya/Juniper, Nortel, Silver Peak, NetD, etc. SilverPeak and NetD are small players in the market. Cisco is by far the market leader having shipped more than 2.3 million Integrated Services Routers (ISR). Their growth rate is impressive too. It took Cisco 18 months to ship 1 million ISRs, but only 9 months to ship their second million — an impressive growth rate. With over 2 million ISRs in production, Cisco is turning the ISR into a business platform equipped with its own ecosystem. More on this below.

Branch office networks require thoughtful design, as its business function is mission critical and TCO high. In fact branch office network TCO is best managed through architecture development and integrated equipment. The best design attributes include the following:

• Consistent design in both network equipment and WAN service
• Converged IP telephony, fax, security and data networking into an Ethernet/IP fabric
• Support for mixed traffic flows both hierarchically and branch-to-branch
• Business continuity and disaster planning through mobility and redundancy in both equipment and WAN access
• Layered network security with multiple defenses included SSL and IPSec VPN, firewall, IPS and Network Access Control/Network Access Protection

The level of integration should be weighted heavily when IT leaders are evaluating branch office network equipment. The latest security, IP telephony, video/surveillance and data technologies should be integrated into a single network device on top of switching and routing functionality. Management and configuration should be simplified with a single interface to all functions as well as virtualized interfaces so that secops, netops, etc may configure and monitor their respective organizational responsibilities. Careful review should be applied to WAN capabilities not only in terms of link support such as DSL, Cable, T1/EI, ISDN, frame relay, MPLS, etc., but WAN optimization and acceleration functionality as well in order to improve the branch office user experience by minimizing network delays in application access. Network security functionality should be comprehensive with integrated VPN, firewall, IPS, NAC, NAP and tunneling. Wireless and wireline Ethernet access should be transparent and integrated with access points being built into equipment, supporting business continuity planning. Functionality such as Power over Ethernet (PoE), real time dial and/or broadband backup should be table stakes.

3G = Diverse Access or Main WAN Link

As mentioned above, Cisco is turning the ISR into a platform. The best example of this came recently in late March ´07 when it announced 3G wireless support in its 1841, 2800 and 3800 ISRs. What was significant in this announcement was that it was made with Verizon Wireless, Sprint, AT&T and Telefonica and Moviles. While 3G is being introduced as a consumer technology, Cisco was able to use the 2.3 million ISRs as a platform to bring this technology to the enterprise. 3G will offer bandwidth between 300kbs to 1Mbs, depending on the service. This joint announcement between Cisco and service providers gives the service providers instant access to the enterprise market to sell new 3G services while offering IT leaders a truly diverse link to branch offices at less than $100 per month or a new primary high speed link option.

By architecting the branch office and integrating its IP telephony, security and management into the corporate IP network, branch office networks become an extension of the corporate network business platform. As branch office operation trends are a result of market realities, business leaders will only increase their corporate investment. To maximize the benefit of more than 70% of IT spend on remote offices, architecting networks with integrated services equipment is clearly the direction of best industry practices.

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The campus network is a structural component of the network business platform. No other part of IT has the ability to deliver real corporate value like the campus network does. A disproportionate number of IT and business assets flow across and interact with a campus network. The evolution of computing and applications toward integrating personal and back-office computing environments is occurring over and in the campus network and in its wake is re-defining IT architecture and its relationship to the business platform. As the lines and boundaries of data center, storage, computing, applications and networking blend and blur IT architecture will evolve into a single corporate asset which spans the entire campus network, from the data center, through the campus, across desktops and laptops to mobile end-points. The campus network is changing into an agile and flexible fabric, able to change its configuration and properties based upon application flow to deliver optimized application performance with the goal of improved user experience and satisfaction. In short, campus networking requirements and thus design are fundamentally changing.

IT departments are required to support real-time multimedia services, seamless wired and wireless connectivity, virtualized resources, Web 2.0 applications and much more. On top of these new requirements is the fact that it´s been over six years since the Y2K build-out and many IT departments have not updated their campus networks since then. The result is that many campus networks are based on old technology while businesses require new applications and demands.

Shift in Traffic Profiles

Applications such as Microsoft´s Vista OS and Office Groove 2007 with their peer-to-peer developer links will wreak havoc on networks designed for client-server flows. Readers note, all campus networks were designed for client-server flows. Peer-to-peer networking allows Microsoft to short circuit Linux by minimizing data centers´ client-server flows with new computer-to-computer traffic. But it´s not just Microsoft who is leading the change away from client-server; Google is, too, as are services like BitTorrent, eDonkey/eMule, YouTube, Skype and many others.

Peer-to-peer networking is well on its way to dominating traffic types. CableLabs, the research organization of the North American cable industry, believes that BitTorrent could represent 55% of the upstream traffic on the cable company’s access network. CacheLogic puts that number at roughly 35% of all traffic on the Internet. As peer-to-peer networking grows traffic profiles and patterns will shift away from client-server toward a more multi-directional and unpredictable patterns. Unified Communications and communications-enablement are two additional and very large drivers delivering real-time collaboration among employees, suppliers, partners and customers which need to be factored into campus network design.

Campus Network Architecture

Campus network architecture needs to anticipate and support these trends by incorporating attributes that embrace these dynamics. Campus networks need to be application fluent, support virtualization, provide non-stop or fault tolerant operation with integrated security and be flexible enough to support all types of traffic flows. Yes, speed has always been a hallmark of campus networks, which have traditionally driven Ethernet´s five year, ten-time increase in speed cycle.

It´s not that bandwidth isn´t important; it is and industry data proves the point. Gigabit to the desktop is driving the need for 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. 10 Gigabit Ethernet as well as 10/100/1000 multi-speed card sales are up while fast Ethernet is flat to down. The IEEE Higher Speed Study Group recently started the standards process for 100 Gbs Ethernet. So speed is very much a part of campus networks and will continue to be, but it´s not the sole attribute. Scale is no longer simply associated with connectivity, control and availability, but now campus network services need to scale to support new requirements.

With that said, campus network architecture is and will continue to be based upon a three-tier physical structure of end-point connectivity aggregating into a distribution layer which is connected via a core. In multi-building campus networks, cores are connected via high speed 1 to 10Gbs links going to 40 and eventually 100Gbs. This physical architecture will remain the same; however the placement of services and intelligence will change to support the networked business platform. For example, electrical power is not normally thought of in terms of networking, but it´s a service that the network is now delivering. Power over Ethernet or PoE is a major requirement for a campus network to support as it provides power for unified communications end-points, wireless access points, surveillance cameras, etc.

Guiding Principals

The bottom line is that a new campus network architecture is emerging that is based upon logical services rather than physical components. Network architecture is the bridge between business strategy and evolution. The best way to think about the new design rules for campus networks is through the use of guiding principals. I offer the following six design principals which will transform your campus network into a network business platform:

Principal One: Design for Fault-Tolerant or Non-Stop Communications

As campus networks are critical infrastructure components their operation needs to be designed for 100% up time, ensuring application availability. This is accomplished through redundant links and equipment so that a resilient campus infrastructure is realized. Redundant power systems in switches and routers will ensure that loss of power will not bring down the business platform, especially as voice and surveillance systems, in addition to critical data, flow across and interact with campus network elements. The ability to perform full image in-service software upgrades is important to keep the campus operational during times of upgrade while in service maintenance ensures business continues even when elements are being maintained.

As networks support more applications (voice, video, building control, surveillance systems, etc.) their status as a critical business platform increases. For example, network outages usually always result in loss of business, lower customer satisfaction and loss of business productivity. Adhering to Principal One, fault-tolerant communications will reduce downtime, increase productivity and customer/employee satisfaction, thanks to high availability. Principal One will also reduce network outages that translate into business outage with their resulting consequences of lost reputation and even potential law-suits.

Principal Two: Think Virtual

Virtualization offers powerful benefits in the areas of dynamic resource allocation and service utilization by carving out logically separate networks and control domains within a shared infrastructure. Virtualization maximizes asset utilization in the campus network. Some examples are helpful. Virtualization of the network layer allows a company to support multiple diverse business policy environments. Many corporations require separation of data, workflow, work product and information flow. This could be due to regulatory issues, a merger, outsourcing and diverse lines of business or private/government-focused divisions within a corporation.

Virtualization of the network layer also allows a company to collapse multiple parallel networks such as video surveillance, HVAC, Voice over IP, Video over IP and data onto a single network infrastructure while providing isolation of these networks safeguarding data or organizational control. Virtualization can also apply to functions performed by the network by integrated network modules in campus switches, such as firewalls and application services. The ability to virtualize these devices allows a single device to serve multiple lines of business or multiple security zones with separate management and reporting that is often necessary.

Virtualization enables the construction of secure guest or contractor access to defined network resources. It also allows IT executives to segregate departments for compliance requirements such as separating human resources from finance. These virtualized segmentations are logical and thus can be guided by business requirements.

Principal Three: Operational Management Excellence

Perhaps the most overlooked and undervalued principal during equipment acquisition is operational management. This is due to the difficulty of assigning budget to operational tools and network gear with built-in software features. But its value is deep. Operational management can accelerate service implementation, ease and lower the cost of management, automate infrastructure management and facilitate plus document changes.

Traffic flow analysis plays a large role in operational management. For example, traffic flow analysis through tools like deep packet inspection provides an in-depth view of the campus network traffic breakdown and associated performance. This insight allows IT executives to plan for growth, tweak application performance, optimize existing infrastructure and locate problems. Some vendors provide solutions to provide the ability to track network assets as well as ?¢‚Ǩ?ìTagged" non-network assets such as hospital equipment, A/V devices, and potentially unwanted devices like rogue Access Points providing IT operational personnel with a full view of the network and all devices and applications which reside within it. The benefit to IT executives is lowered operational costs when automation is able to provide information necessary to control the network, locate assets, and accelerate deployment of new features, applications and business initiatives.

Principal Three is key to enabling businesses to change and grow, thus meeting its objectives. Strong and automated operational management delivers a benefit to users by minimizing user downtime in network maintenance/operations.

Principal Four: Design for Integrated Security

Principal Four states that the campus network will support integrated security services, which include pervasive security policies and built-in protections for access, identities, resources and content. Without integrated network security IT executives cannot deliver on availability or reliability. Guaranteed uptimes, non-stop performance and business process protections will be impossible to achieve; and there are the many regulatory and legislative conformance requirements to deal with as well.

Integrated security ensures regulatory requirements, safeguards client identity and application/data confidentiality and provides pro-active threat detection and containment. From a business reliability point of view, integrated security is an absolute must principal.

Principal Five: Ensure Application Fluency

Application fluency is one of the most important principals, as it will have a direct impact on user experience. Application fluency or awareness means that the campus network recognizes applications, and controls traffic accordingly to ensure delivery. Application fluency allows the campus network to react to network congestion and guarantee response times at the application layer for critical applications. Many applications are imbedded in web browser windows; therefore, campus networks need to see deep into traffic flows to provide service level performance required by most critical applications. The ability to look deep into network traffic provides security benefits as well. Deep packet inspection in the campus network allows it to protect itself from malicious or misbehaving applications. Principals Three and Five are linked in that they both build upon packet inspection.

Principal Six: Unified Network Services For Mobility

There are multiple networking options for mobile users and data center connectivity. The campus network plays an important role in unifying these networks so that people can connect to any resource and/or person through any device and obtain consistent services and performance independent of wired or wireless access. Consider mobility. To deliver mobility, the ability to support diverse media end-points such as cell phones, laptops, PDAs, desktops, phones, video terminals, etc., using diverse media connectivity including wireless, wired and cellular, becomes essential for the network to deliver. Campus networks which are able to offer mobile solutions where wireless services are built directly into switching and routing platforms allow the enterprise to extend services throughout the campus. This approach offers an electrical power advantage also, as scalable power services to closet switches in which to power phones, access points and other end-points are provisioned and can scale as future power service requirements grow.

Principal Six delivers the business value of offering any application to any screen´s end-point, which increases productivity thanks to increased application access.

If you follow the six guiding principals your company will be rewarded with a more responsive business that achieves its business goals and objectives through IT. Business process will run smoother as operations shift from reactive to a more proactive management posture. An improved productivity and user experience will result too. Peace of mind through network security and business continuity will also be achieved as will lower operational cost.

Clearly these benefits are subjective and highly dependent upon pre-existing network conditions. In my experience very few IT organizations architect their networks. Rather they choose vendors, equipment, software and services for each requirement or project with which they are confronted. The result is similar to house construction. Often consumers can choose a builder´s package and save a few dollars or do it right and hire an architect to customize a solution for their needs. The architected solutions can cost more and at times take slightly longer but the pay-back is big. You can always tell an architected home. The rooms are pleasing to the eye, the space is planned out and works well, rooms flow into each other and the home sits perfectly on its land. The builder´s package often comes with odd-sized rooms, a poor flow, disproportionate windows and doors and the feeling that something is just not right. Often times additional work is done and paid for to fix these anomalies or the buyer lives with dissatisfaction.

In IT an architected solution is business driven and provides an excellent experience for employees, customers, partners and suppliers. The interfaces work well, performance is within human delay tolerances, shifting between applications is painless and work just flows. The IT systems are not frustrating and fatiguing to work with, but support business process as effortlessly as possible.

The time to use the above guiding principals is every time a new project is being evaluated. Have the IT team review every major design decision by applying each of the guiding principals and discussing them, one by one, to ensure that the campus network design supports the principals. Don´t move forward until there is agreement that the architecture supports the principal. Over time the campus network will take on more and more of the attributes identified above.

While I discuss the pay-off above, there is one other item to consider. Campus networks will evolve to be more responsive to applications to the point of auto-configuring to improve application performance and user experience. For example, a group may start a telepresense session and the network will detect this event and respond by configuring VLANs and QoS to ensure excellent performance. Building a campus network with the above principals will set your campus network up to be able to deliver that type of dynamic application agility.

The campus network is a structural component of the network business platform which means it demands thoughtfulness in design.

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The network is the new business platform. Networking is evolving well beyond its initial role as a connectivity service as unified communications, network access control, network virtualization, mobility, application fluency, location services, etc., are embedded into the network fabric and are ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcallable" entities to application developers. This increased value in networking which can be molded and shaped by IT developers to achieve corporate goals is the genesis of the new business platform. Business platforms are launch points, which deliver value to customers, suppliers and partners while offering corporate differentiation.

The term business platform has multiple meanings depending on who´s using it. IT vendors have taken the term to usually mean a programming language, operating system, database or all of the above. Management consultants usually define business platform as an infrastructure by which business is enabled and conducted. In this Lippis Report I propose that the IP network is the new business platform. Networking is taking this new strategic position within corporate boards and IT executive management due to the growing number of services, which are embedded in the network infrastructure.

In eras gone by computing environments were business platforms. First it was IBM´s system 360 mainframe architecture, which automated back office business process and extended that process around an organization thanks to SNA. Then Digital Equipment Corporation, HP and Data General´s mini-computers extended back office automation further by lower computing price points so that business units and departments could automate their own business process. During this time, local area networks and peer-to-peer networking such as DecNet, TCP/IP, OSI, et al., was invented to connect these systems in an effort to share these expensive resources. Then came Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell et al., who ushered in the personal computing era to speed up personal business process with spreadsheets, presentation development, communications, etc. At the same time as the PC came to market networking became big business as its main service was to connect PCs and peripherals over local and wide areas.

The computing players continue to compete over operating system features and price points. But the real value to corporate operations and the next major wave of productivity is in the linking and integrating of the personal and back-office computing environments. This linking will evolve into a single corporate asset that resides deeply within its corporate network. Networking has evolved well past its connectivity service which was the basis of its value proposition to IT. Services such as unified communications, IT security, location services, storage access and mobility are the new building blocks of the new business platform. All of these network services are callable entities, which can be molded and shaped by developers as Web Services and SOA becomes the de-facto IT developer environment. No longer will IT developers and networking departments be at odds as developers routinely write applications assuming LAN performance. IT developers will write directly to the network rather than to a computer, which resides in a data center or department.

Right now there is a huge industry battle taking shape in the unified communications space with Microsoft/Nortel´s ICA challenging Cisco and Avaya. The winner will be corporations as competition over unified communications will spark innovation and downward price point reduction. Unified communications will lead to communications enablement or what Microsoft/Nortel call ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨business transformation" in which IT developers embed communications deeply into business process by writing corporate applications which invoke communications to speed up workflow by eliminating human and system delay from business process. Communications-enablement is the key example of how the network is the new business platform as unified communications is based upon IP telephony being embedded into a corporate IP network.

The network infrastructure players are busy adding value to their offerings by integrating network virtualization, service expansion and device consolidation, unified networking, non-stop networking, application fluency, and on-demand secure access. Please see Lippis Report Issue 71: Networking Futures The Direction Ahead for more detail on this topic.

With the above as background, the following podcast discussion between Nick Lippis, President Lippis Enterprises and Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group´s Enterprise Research defines the network as the new business platform.

Nick: Zeus and I are sharing thoughts on the network as the new business platform. If you look at all of the resources that an IT department has at its disposal to deliver business value, clearly they have desktop resources or assets, server assets, data center assets, back office software, so forth and so on. If you think about the network itself, it´s the only true horizontal IT asset. Meaning that, it touches all things that an IT department has by default, because it connects all these devices together. The concept is that there are a couple of things that are happening with the network. When the network has been evolving from a connectivity resource, which is the basic resource that it has always provided to connect things up and provide connectivity into a broader range of services that can deliver deeper business value. Now with the confluence of a couple of key trends, such as web services and SOA, and all the different kinds of services that are being bundled and embedded into networks today such as policy services, network management, presence services, IP telephony services, security services, location services, there are a lot of services buried and bundled within a network fabric. But now these services are being opened up to be called upon by developers, so now no longer does a developer need to know where a particular resource might be in their IT arsenal, but can essentially call services and allow the network to find them. That´s the concept we´re going to explore here with pros and cons. We´re calling it the network as a new business platform.

Zeus: I think to start, there are a number of things that happened technologically that enabled us now and the combination of virtualization and IT networks actually allow us to take things that used to be physical resources and make them virtual resources that we can scatter around a network. The impact that IT networks have can´t be understated. When you think about how things work at the IP layer, you no longer need to know where they are, but that they´re there because of the way IP protocol works. When you think of how your email works on your laptop, you plug into a network. You don´t care really where it is, it just magically goes and finds it. You can extend that all the way down to the data center of the computing platforms. If you think of VM running on a bank of blade servers, you can actually create a bunch of logical servers that become part of the network and get called as you need resources. You can do the same things with storage resources or a lot of things that you mentioned with regards where presence of authentication or identity can be replicated that way as well. The development of virtualization IP networks makes the network the computing platform for the virtual enterprise.

Nick: That´s a great way to put it as the network to the platform for the virtual enterprise. That´s a great tagline. That sounds great.

Zeus: I think that we should trademark that.

Nick: I love this concept because the way that the marketplace or the industry has been evolving is that we offer new services into the network in the form of appliances. We have switches, routers, access points, and all the major foundational technology, but now whenever we´re looking for a new service to be added it´s added by an appliance. That appliance over time then gets absorbed into other parts of that core network, whether it be switches or routers, and so forth. There´s a natural revolution on how technology is introduced and tested in the marketplace, how the market can consume it and modify it and then the vendors can optimize its placement and deployment within an enterprise. Moore´s Law and Metcalf´s Law are combining to predict that IP networking is becoming a big black hole, sucking in all previous generations of legacy technology, and we´ve seen this over and over again in our industry, from the huge $600 billion telecommunications networks being absorbed and replaced in essence enhanced by IP networks; the national entertainment systems that we use that produce our TV entertainment is also in the midst of a major shift and a black hole moving into IP. We see this in essence through TiVo, Apple iTUNES, downloading movies, and having those devices within an IP fabric. You have all of that mobility, freedom and flexibility to move them around in your home or office. You can display them on different kinds of things. This whole concept of the network as this business platform is basically the movement towards which the industry is moving us. Moore and Metcalf guide us as every generation of legacy technology is engulfed by the IP network. There is an unleashing of innovation around that particular technology that opens up possibilities that we´ve never had before. Look at communications and what we´ve had on phones, features stayed static for a good hundred years as it migrated from analog to digital. We moved digital to IP over the last ten years. The progression and the rate of change have just been huge – off the charts. The same thing will be just as true as we start to move more and more legacy services into IP. As we get more of these services into the IP fabric, it opens up opportunity for developers that were never there before; or, they were there, but the interfaces of the sockets to connect something that´s kind of off network to on network is huge and they break with limited functionality and so forth. There is a new framework emerging in the marketplace that networking beyond all the other assets we have in an IT arsenal is becoming the central area for business development wrapping applications and services around profit drivers.

Zeus: I think that you touched on a lot of points there. If you look at the example of VoIP, I think that will be the first of many VoIP´s to follow integrated into the network. If the network vendors and operators aren´t careful it can also be run right on top of it. Some of these have become verbs in everyday life. You look at something like skype; ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨we´re going to skype each other now." Slingbox is another example of that. Where we´ve taken cable TV, which was once a service that had to be bought as part of the network, and moved in and virtualized it to be something that runs on the network. Now I can take my cable TV and use something like Slingbox and be able to pipe that wherever I want. So now it´s allowed me to virtualize something that was once tied to a network. What´s often missed in the industry is the impact that VoIP has had. It´s never been about convergence Nick. If we wanted convergence we would have done ATM. Voice over IP, the first part of IP was doing it over IP. When you do things over IP you make them portable and accessible anywhere. Many of these services that we have today, I have no idea where they´re hosted, where they´re run, I have no idea if they´re in the US; I just use them and they work great. Extend that down away from an application, down to components of applications, maybe someone offers a global authentication service. Maybe one of the mobile operators offers to become fact of standard resource for location-based services. There is infinite possibility here. I think that no one thought enough about this and the network. We´ve rapidly shifted into an environment where the huge hoops in SKYPE figured out this method and a way to do this. You´ll see much more advancement to this in the next few years. The advent of multi-core processors makes it possible to run many more things virtually and allows us to do more with this black hole that you´ve aligned.

Nick: It´s interesting as I look at the confluence of a lot of these trends; Steve Jobs did a great job with the introduction of the iPHONE. We have communications highly integrated into a network fabric. The man-machine metaphor is simple and intuitive; you have business, entertainment, and communications access. It´s a great example of things to come as the industry wraps its mind around the possibility available as all IT assets are sucked into the IP black hole.

Zeus: One of the difficult things for IT departments to deal with though, and I focus a lot of our research at Yankee around this concept, is consumerization of the enterprise. A lot of the technology that we use today for business purposes; things like instant messaging, skype for business, even email to some extent, was a consumer technology that eventually found its way into the enterprise. The consumerization of the enterprise continues to happen at a faster and faster pace and what IT doesn´t want to become is a bottleneck. I think that cattling all these different technologies is a challenge, because they´re all delivered over IP. It does make it easier, but I think that´s where the innovation is being done right now.

Nick: That´s a great point. I think you hit it right on the head. The rate of change is clearly a lot faster in a consumer space because obviously you don´t have to think about a lot of installed base. Wireless LANS were a great example of that. We were building them in project 802.11 for enterprise use, but vendors figured out that we have a security problem in the enterprise marketplace, but we don´t necessarily have that problem in the home market, so they decided to go there first and drive the price points down so we can enter into that marketplace. Price points were low enough thanks to our Asian manufacturing and production; we were able to get it into the marketplace. People experienced it and then they wanted it into their offices. VoIP has been to a degree the same way with skype, Vonnage, and other types of VoIP based services. So we´ve seen these waves of technology that have been focused on the consumer space that have made their way into the enterprise. I think that what that does to IT organizations is that it makes it hard for them if they´re not proactive or getting ahead of this curve. It makes it hard for them to take advantage of.

Zeus: I think the reason that it scaled to consumer businesses is because the way they have gone to market. One of the things that companies have to prepare for is the concept of an IT department of one. So, you Nick Lippis are able to facilitate what you want to do with your systems. The example I use for that is, take a look at consumer space right now. The companies that are of high value YouTube, MySpace, SecondLife, CraigsList, eBay, this list goes on and on, these companies don´t do anything except facilitate. What they´ve done is created an environment where there is a web portal built and they´ve created tools to allow people to self administer and self create content; self collaborate. CraigsList is a really bad interface, but it´s very simple and plain and relatively easy to use. The concept is the structure that´s been put in place is a facilitation structure. Companies need to look at and take some lessons from these social networking sites, auction sites and put some structure in to allow the users to become the IT department of one. So all the policy and security features remain in place, but you allow the user to be able to create any conflict, collaborate with whoever they want and not let IT be that bottle neck. The network then allows for the facilitation to happen.

Nick: That´s a great point and an interesting model. The popular sites are facilitators and aggregators; well more facilitators than anything else.

Zeus: Yeah, they don´t do anything.

Nick: IT departments have been the direct opposite. They´ll basically do everything for you, or they try to do everything for you. Mainly because you have professionals in non-IT jobs who believe it´s not their job to do anything around IT. Where you have more IT savvy professionals, is the next generation coming out of engineering and business schools, that understand the technology and want to have more control over it rather than having it spoon fed and dictated over to them. So I think that´s an interesting model on how IT departments might take advantage of the support dimension and the creative environment where their services can be highly customized towards individuals and business and allow that interest, innovation, and the drive they have to take IT and use it for their business. This allows them to do that without their IT being dictated to them, but IT provides general guidelines, an interface, an architecture and allows them to have it with some constraints and control around security.

Zeus: I certainly think it´s generational. I don´t think that my Dad would want to become an IT department of one, but I do think that my ten year old will. In some sense we are the watershed group of workers.

Nick: To take advantage of the network as the business platform, IT departments do not have to abandon any of their IT resources but wrap their mind around the network as a basic building foundation for a business platform and move away from these stove pipe vertical kinds of development that they normally go through.

Zeus: It comes back to IT as the creator and IT as the facilitator. The way you do that is to create an underlying foundation of technology that can be served up from the network to different types of devices, end-points, or networks. Keep all that stuff transparent to the user. For instance, with yourself you don´t really care what kind of network this is running on or what kind of devices this is running on. In the infrastructure there is a place to facilitate all of that yourself. For the IT department it´s important to be forward thinking enough to be willing to relinquish a lot of control of creation of what the user sees and does and become a facilitator of information and resources then the actual creator of the actual end product. I think that the end user actually knows what they want, or at least they soon will and what they would like is the ability to do that.

Nick: We should spend another Podcast on the new role of IT in this network platform environment. I think that there are a lot of great concepts that you´ve put out on the table. What does this mean for an organization design point of view, a social contract, with users and IT departments as well? There´s a whole set of thinking that can be developed here.

Zeus: It´s an interesting concept that I think is going to be coming upon people a lot faster than they thought, and they´ll need to prepare for it sooner. I think that we can take a lot of lessons from the consumer space. If my thesis is right, and I think it is, that the rate of change that the enterprise has compacted from consumer technology will slowly increase not diminish.

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Zeus Kerravala, SVP of The Yankee Group´s Enterprise Research joins Nick Lippis to discuss and define the network as the new business platform. Networking is evolving well beyond its initial role as a connectivity service as location, unified communications, network access control, network virtualization, mobility, application fluency etc are embedded into the network fabric and are ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨callable" entities to application developers. This increased value in networking that can be molded and shaped by IT developers to achieve corporate goals is the genesis of the new business platform. Zeus and I define and discuss the importance of this new role for networking within IT and the boardroom.

Listen to the Podcast

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Two events which have had the largest impact on business this century are the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and corporate scandals/bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia, et al. These two events ushered in sweeping changes in disaster preparedness and corporate governance. Often preparedness plus regulatory/legislative/presidential orders are linked and managed under an umbrella term of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcompliance" and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìbusiness continuity". Most if not all public concerns have a compliance officer who is tasked with planning, budgeting and implementing business continuity. Depending on the size of the firm, a compliance budget can be huge, measured in the tens of millions of dollars or more. In the networking industry business continuity is being addressed as network architecture attributes.

One of the first projects I did as a young engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid 1980s was to design and implement a 400-mile private fiber optic network. This was unheard of at the time; a company building its own fiber optic network. But the ROI was strong with savings of 10s of millions of dollars and unlimited bandwidth available between 90 buildings. After the project was completed my manager´s boss was concerned about an outage or disaster hitting, which would wipe out communications for an unknown about of time. I was tasked with a vulnerability identification and disaster plan. I analyzed all the fiber routes and identified single points of failure. The topology was a distributed star with approximately 30 buildings being homed to three major sites. To avoid loosing communications to one of these major sites I proposed a back up microwave system, redundant fiber and equipment, special contract clauses and cost with contractors to increase fiber restoration priority for Digital, and changing the physical topology from star to ring to assure two paths to every building. In the end, the topology was changed to a ring, a new contractor contract was signed and spare equipment and fiber was housed on Digital property. The business continuity plan cost the project a few million dollars but was justified on the cost of lost business and productivity to Digital.

Today network architects can leverage key attributes associated with their corporate networks to deliver business continuity without incurring huge cost as I had to back in the 1980s. I identify a few of these network attributes here.

Mobility

Mobility is being added to corporate networks. Smartphones and PDAs offer access to e-mail and voice communications independent of a physical building. As explored in Lippis Report Issue 72, the mobile industry is quickly moving to connect mobile end-points to enterprise IT services such as IP telephony features and functions, calendar synchronization, presence, data bases, etc. The barriers for mobile devices to access enterprise data will be eliminated. In addition to smartphones and PDAs, WLANs offer mobility to laptop and desktop users. Most important is the fact that network administrators can deploy a WLAN solution quickly, offering network access to knowledge workers in short order, assuming that internet access is available. In short, the combination of mobile service providers and WLANs offer network architects redundant network access to corporate infrastructure. In addition WLANs can be constructed quickly for operations located in an alternative facility.

IP Telephony

One of the key network attributes of IP telephony is that it´s based on IP. That is, end-point addresses are assigned by a DHCP server eliminating the time and cost associated with moves, adds and changes. So, IP telephony users can plug their soft or hard IP phone into a network jack and be presented with connectivity, which includes their preferences and settings. No operator needs to be available. This was a key network attribute for many in the financial services industry in NY during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. These firms were able to bring their network and communications operations back on-line one day after the attacks thanks to IP telephony´s mobility features.

Network Access Control

Stratifying, segmenting and controlling user access to conform to regulatory compliance requirements is a business continuity requirement. Controlling guest, contractor and user access to network segments, applications, data, work product and services with visibility into a user´s behavior and use of IT resources provides a level of flexibility network and IT departments have not had in LAN systems. Network Access Control or NAC solutions are helping compliance managers meet regulatory requirements. To comply with various regulations, organizations need a means to segment users so that only authorized users can access sensitive data and demonstrate compliance to auditors. For example, some organizations need to restrict access to credit card data to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard. Hospitals and medical facilities must protect patient records to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Enterprises need the ability to restrict access to critical information based on a user´s role. In addition, to prove they have effective controls in place, organizations need a means to audit data and application usage and to document that access is indeed restricted. A NAC solution will protect sensitive data, limit the scope of an audit to a subset of user and server systems subject to the regulation and provide reports and views, which are friendly to auditors.

NACs are being funded with compliance budgets if they provide the following key services: policy-based access controls which track all user activity and traffic flows on the network; application access control at layer 7 limits whose applications a user can run on the network; documented polices that allow IT to document what control policies are in place and to whom they apply. This is a key auditing tool for demonstrating that users excluded by a policy cannot reach sensitive data. Further controls include activity reports for both users and application/services; user reports including every application, server, and resource a user touched in a given timeframe; application/service reports providing details about all users who ran a particular application or accessed a particular resource during a given period.

Network Management

Network management systems have taken on a new role beyond element management to compliance management. Compliance auditors have influence and when they tell a Board of Directors (BoD) to audit the network for compliance, the network needs to be audited. Network management systems are enforcing regulatory requirements and demonstrating compliance. For example, when configuring network change orders on a router, the approval process needs to be documented. If a router configuration change is made a corporation needs to show who did it and when.

CIOs are getting pressure from their BoD to audit their networks. If a node in the network goes down, is the network still in compliance? Does a configuration change bring the network out of compliance? Whom do you trust to do the configuration changes knowing that they have to be documented and journaled? If you have an encrypted link and a node goes down are you still encrypted?

A centralized change entitlement system can control configuration changes and provide tools to produce reports and compliance validation. New rules such as HIPAA, encryption, safety of information, encrypted medical data at point of access, etc., are required by most today. These regulatory requirements can be configured and its changes tracked at the physical layer of the network and network management can now support regulation auditors with reports in a form they understand. Some network management systems such as Cisco Works include templates for customers to configure compliance tracking for requirement such as HIPAA, PCI, etc.

WAN Bandwidth

Some of my high-end clients are able to cost justify gigabit links across the country and into Europe. Gigabit Ethernet over the wide area fundamentally changes corporate asset placement decisions as LAN-like performance is now available over the WAN. This means that shadow data centers can be placed on different continents. Business continuity can be assured for data centers and major IT resources as single geographic points of failure/disaster can be eliminated. Also placement of employees can be reviewed and analyzed too; as application performance becomes independent of geography, so too can employees.

Other important network architecture attributes are broadband access to home and remote offices, IP addressing and the role of highly available DHCP servers and Communications-Enabled Business Process. We´ll get to these topics in future Lippis Reports.

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2006 was a transitional year for our industry as key technologies matured to the point of being ready for prime time. It was a year of big acquisitions and mergers as the industry restructures to a smaller number of equipment suppliers and service providers. As the world moves to wireless and triple-play services the service providers consolidated down to a smaller number of large providers. The consolidation of AT&T/SBC & BellSouth, Verizon and MCI, Sprint and Nextel, etc., drove equipment supplier consolidation of Lucent and Alcatel, Siemens and Nokia, Ericsson and Marconi, et al. In the enterprise market lots of smaller acquisitions marked the year without any large mega deals. The big deals will happen in 2007 as Siemens Communications is looking for a new partner, Nortel pins its hopes on its Microsoft ICA initiative, Juniper is rumored to be looking to buy into the enterprise market and consolidation occurs in the switching and network appliance markets.

Private Equity Financiers Enter Market

2007 could be the year that financial sponsors such as KKR, BlackRock, et al., private equity players enter the enterprise networking market. These firms have invested in a small number of high technology deals primarily in the semi-conductor market. The private equity players do have an appetite to structure a multi-billion dollar deal that would stitch together a 10 to 20 billion networking concern that would be the clear number two to Cisco. The dynamics would be something like this. A private equity player or group of them would purchase switching, IP telephony, routing, network security, data center networking, professional services and other players into a large private company. The new company would rationalize product lines, develop a comprehensive architecture, up and cross sell customers and when the time was right, bring the company public providing exit for the initial investors.

3Com/Huawei The Flash Point?

There are many opportunities to aggregate a large networking concern by acquiring all or parts of firms such as Juniper, Alcatel´s enterprise business, Siemens Communications, Extreme, Foundry, ProCurve Networking by HP, Telcordia, NetApp, Enterasys, UTStarcom, 3Com/Huawei, et al. Last month 3Com announced that it was buying out the 49% stake of its partner Huawei for some $882M. It invested $160M in the JV back in 2003. This will leave 3Com with only $32M in cash but a large product line, potentially the Huawei brand and entry into China. 3Com could be the starting point from which private equity players build their networking giant.

Strategic Investors

If private equity firms find that networking is too rich for their taste, then the market will continue on its path of acquisition through strategic investors. Companies such as Cisco, Juniper, Avaya, Nortel et al will selectively acquire smaller players and integrate them into a growth through acquisition strategy.

There is no doubt that 2007 will bring further consolidation and paradoxically a more favorable IPO market as successful companies such as Riverbed have demonstrated. I say paradoxically since a slow down in spending is what usually ignites consolidation which one would think is a poor climate for IPOs. But our industry has lots of moving parts with newer growth market segments being rewarded with favorable valuations while either slow growth or dominated markets are hammered. It´s just the financial markets way of bringing in the new and getting rid of the old. Mitel and Crossbeam are two firms to keep an eye on as both are readying IPOs and could be industry bell weathers. So yes, small companies will exit by acquisition or IPO while the biggest of players seek mergers and strategic acquisitions for competitive gain.

One of the biggest 2006 announcements that promised to deliver an industry sea change was Microsoft´s entry into IP telephony with its unified communications architecture and ecosystem. Competition between Cisco and Microsoft will intensify in 2007 as both look to capture large shares of new markets such as unified communications, IT security and home networking. As these two giants prepare for battle, look for them to beef up their war chests with a larger number of acquisitions than usual.

So factoring all of the above what are the mega trends for 2007? Here´s my list:

Unified Communications: With Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft/Nortel, Siemens, Alcatel, Sphere, ShoreTel, et al., all geared up to deliver unified communications, 2007 will deliver a single launch point on the end-point for multiple communication applications. Knowledge workers will not have to jump in and out of desktop applications to access voice mail, e-mail, IM, chat, voice, video conferencing, etc. Finally the industry is moving toward a unified and integrated approach to communication access which will deliver increased productivity and speed workflow. I use the term end-point here as a general user interface or man-machine metaphor which enables communication. That metaphor may be a smartphone, desktop, laptop, cell phone, softphone, etc.

Communications Enablement: Communications enablement is one of the most exciting technologies which the industry will be promoting in 2007. In short, communications-enabled business process injects communications into workflow that can be triggered by some event, i.e., the movement of corporate stock by some predetermined percent, a hospital ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcode blue", a train derailment, a man made or natural catastrophe, a sales opportunity, etc. In short, key events require response and orchestrated communications between the right professionals to cease opportunities or conduct damage control. Software developers will be offered common web services tools and IT government models such as SOA to call upon communication services while automating business process through business planning modeling tools. Communications enablement will have a larger favorable impact than business process reengineering did in the late ?¢‚ǨÀú80s and early ?¢‚ǨÀú90s as corporations discover the efficiency and agility gains afforded by weaving communications into business process. In short, communications enablement is the orchestrator of communications in response to some event.

Mobile Networking: The initial conditions are set for the integration of enterprise IT services to be delivered over mobile end-points. 2007 will deliver a wide range of smartphones that link IP telephony features, directory, presence, scheduling and access to a wide range of corporate IT data and applications. The key difference between 2006 and 2007 will be that smartphones will be extensions of corporate IT resources rather than separate voice and e-mail tools. Mobile e-mail eliminated the stress of getting back to your office only to find a few hundred e-mails waiting for you. The next generation of smartphones capable of accessing corporate data will move a workforce to new levels of productivity while mobile by enabling workflow and communications to be conducted while in motion. Look for thought leadership from Cisco and Avaya as both have recently acquired Orative and Traverse Networks respectively.

The Year of SIP: I have said that 2005 and 2006 would be the year of SIP or Session Initiation Protocol and I have been wrong two years straight. You would think that I would call it quits and cut my losses, but no, I do think that 2007 will be the year of SIP. It has to be, with all the major IP telephony provides, mobile equipment suppliers, service providers and software companies building architecture, products and services around SIP for multi-model communications; it has to take hold this year just by sheer numbers.

The Network as a Business Platform: Network infrastructure has transcended its initial purpose of delivering a connectivity service into a business platform. By business platform, I mean the basis upon which to deliver competitive differentiation. The corporate network is the only horizontal IT asset. Other IT assets are vertical meaning that they are desktops, servers, data centers, storage and siloed applications. All of these IT resources are important but they primarily work in isolation. The corporate network is the only IT resource that touches all IT assets. This placement advantage makes the network an ideal resource in which to embed services that are required by all employees and IT systems. Services such as location, communication, security, mobility, storage, application acceleration, IT applications, et al., are being embedded into this fabric. During 2007 IT developers will be able to call upon these services while writing corporate applications. The tools will be the same as mentioned above, Web Services/SOA, but the location will be in the network making the network a strategic corporate asset.

The Year of NAC Appliances: Data points are building into trend lines that suggest 2007 will be the year of Network Access Control or NAC deployments. The data points are many. First and perhaps most important is that network and IT executives have turned the corner in their thinking from general interest to budgeted NAC projects as there are approximately 1500 companies who have deployed a commercial NAC solution today. There are non-commercial NAC implementations too, such as NESSUS scans which, if counted would drive the 1500 deployments up significantly. The number of NAC customers should well surpass 5000 in 2007 and there´s nothing to slow it down. With Microsoft´s Network Access Protection or NAP being dependent upon its Network Policy Server (NPS) in Longhorn, NAP will not be relevant until well into 2008. The real discussion in IT conference rooms will focus around spending budget on NAC appliance approaches. Enterprise buyers have become very pragmatic in solving their network access control problems. These problems are quickly turning into funded projects.

Branch Networking: Around the Americas and Western Europe businesses have been de-centralizing their workforce over the past 10 years. Over the past 5 years corporate employee pools have become more distributed and spread out, thanks to broadband deployment, a huge increase in working at home and branch office operations. Point in fact, Cisco has sold over 2 million ISRs to date in 2006 and the growth rate is not slowing down. With a huge surge in branch office networking, service providers and equipment suppliers have been innovating to deliver the same IT experience to branch office workers as their counter-parts in regional and headquarter facilities. 2007 will bring with it a wide range of innovation to branch office networking including encryption and tunneling to secure links, integration of communications, routing, switching, security, WLANs, storage and WAN optimization features.

Hosted IP Services: Hosted IP services including VoIP, messaging, contact centers, et al., will boom in 2007 for the small to medium sized business. In 2006 there were nearly 120 service providers worldwide who announced some version of a hosted IP service. There is a pent up demand for hosted IP services which will start to be satisfied in 2007 as these services ramp up.

Peer-to-peer networking: The client-server model of computing is on its last legs and will be replaced by a peer-to-peer model. You can thank Microsoft for that as it desires to diminish the value of Linux servers by embedding peer-to-peer hooks into its much awaited Longhorn operating system. This shift will have large consequences as traffic patterns will shift significantly requiring many network/IT business decision makers to re-architect their networks.

So 2007 may bring about a huge structural change to the industry as private equity concerns do their investment diligence and decide if it´s worth tens of billions to stitch up a networking powerhouse. For sure the industry will continue down the road of the big acquiring the small with a few spectacular IPOs in 2007. 2006´s transitional year set up the third and strategic phase of IP telephony which is driving networking into a more strategic corporate asset role.

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Mobile wireless technologies are enhancing personal and professional lives. Let me give you a hard example. Someone in my family was recently hospitalized. For anyone this is a traumatic event filled with fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, hope, compassion and love. In between these emotions I started to notice how the hospital staff, patients and parents were connected. Yes, there were lots of direct face-to-face communications with hospital staff. But the loudspeaker paging systems that used to broadcast the usual ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Calling Dr. —— ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨ have been replaced with a hospital staff equipped with mobile end-points reducing overhead noise and increasing communications as one-on-one connections replace broadcasts. For patients and parents, WLANs permeated this facility, allowing them internet access for communication with remote family members, checking e-mail, keeping colleagues and clients informed, researching medical journals or even allowing the patient to play a game of internet checkers with a remote family member. Mobile phones served the purpose to keep family members connected while traveling to and from the hospital and provide status and updates. It´s this kind of professional and personal value that mobile networking is adding to every industry sector. Mobile networking and communications value is huge.

A Mobile World

While the mobile industry started with cellular technology providing person-to-person voice communications, the current evolution is based upon access to data applications and back-end enterprise systems for mobile end-points. Some industry personalities talk about Fixed-to-Mobile convergence, but I think its far greater then a convergence. The shift toward mobility is a replacement from the fixed end-point world of today.

The industry is quickly moving beyond simple services that link mobile and fixed end-points such as ringing your mobile end-point while you are away from your desktop. During November, Avaya purchased Traverse and Cisco purchased Orative to connect their enterprise- based IP telephony features and functions with mobile end-points such as calendar synchronization, presence and other enterprise services. The barriers for mobile devices to access enterprise data will be eliminated over time as wireless and wired access technologies become unified. The trend line that is developing for mobile networking is nothing short of huge. By 2010 50% of internet services will be accessed by mobile end-points. Here are a few important data points that I follow and would like to share with you here:

Desktop PC shipment growth will be flat at about 150 million per year out into 2010. At the same time laptop shipments will continue to grow, reaching some 180 million in 2010. Note that laptop shipments have already out paced desktops. The super-high growth is in smartphones, with nearly 300 million shipping in 2010 up from approximately 80 million today. If you layer the hyper-growth of RFID tags into these dynamics, then the number of internet end-points may very well hit one trillion in 2010 up from over a billion today. Note that over 56.5 million high-frequency RFID tag ICs were shipped in 2005 and the market is growing at some 400% CAGR. The bottom line, mobile end-points will be the preferred access method for most people and devices on the planet over the next 5 years.

Clearly the communications end-point is changing towards a mobile device. So what does that mean for the mix of IP phones, softphones and smartphones? Here is some insight into one of my client´s end-point transitions. Over the next 4 years this client will transition its current 150K end-points to the following make up: smartphones will grow from 1K to 60K; office fixed IP phones will transition from 1K to 35K; all employees will have softphones on laptops; the typical employee will have a smartphone and softphone with less than 40% equipped with office IP phones; the total number of end-points will decline from 150K to 110K while the number of employees remains constant at 100K. In short say good by to fixed analog, digital and even IP phones.

One key driver for this change towards mobile end-points is economics. This same client has seen a decline in wire line use of 15% volume and unit cost per year. They see their wireless minute consumption growing at approximately 28% CAGR across multiple mobile providers. The unit cost of mobile vs. wire line is much more favorable to mobile driving wireless minute usage growth way up.

Wither the Mobile Provider?

Mobile service provider pricing, IP end-point devices and high speed wireless technologies are all fueling the mobile world. The mobile industry will be re-structured over the next several years. High powered smartphones with skype, Google talk, et al., softphones with high speed internet access, pose a threat to mobile providers as customers are equipped with an alternative method of voice communications which bypass their mobile wireless plans. Already some smartphones come with skype client software installed allowing consumers to make calls to other skype users for free on mobile devices. As this method improves mobile providers will be hard at work thinking of ways to either block or add value to this feature set. The risk is nothing short of changing the business model for how mobile providers generate revenues and stay in business.

The Corridor Warrior

The boom in mobile networking is primarily due to changes in business. During the last recession businesses pushed decision making down into organizations closer to customers. This transition fostered the real need for mobile businesses. Not only are sales employees the mobile staff, but everyone is now mobile or requires mobile connectivity with access to enterprise e-mail and data.

The hospital example mentioned above is but one example of the new ?¢‚Ǩ?ìCorridor Warrior". Many professionals are mobile within their campus, building, etc., and benefit from a streamlined smartphone with WLAN plus GSM dual mode networking providing access to enterprise resources independent of network connection. For those on the go all day, carrying a laptop as their primary communications tool is too cumbersome. The Corridor Warrior fits many work profiles such as knowledge workers who manage their days by transitioning between conference rooms with little time spent in their offices. The doctors, nurses and hospital staff benefit tremendously by being equipped with a light weight mobile device that allows them to stay in touch via voice or e-mail, plus being able to access patient data. Corridor warrior hospital staff increases the care they provide, reduces mistakes and communication errors which account for nearly 100K preventable hospital deaths per year.

Enterprise Network Architecture Plan

As an IT business decision maker you need a comprehensive mobile networking and communications plan that includes the following:

• Annual service contract with one or two mobile providers
• WLAN plan that incorporates new technologies such as 802.1n and is tightly integrated into wired Ethernet control and service points
• An IP telephony architecture that supports mobility as a key attribute allowing features and functions to be seamlessly supported across fixed and mobile platforms
• An end-point transition plan that outlines fixed, smartphones and softphone end-points over a period of time
• A smartphone requirements statement and implementation plan
• An application development environment plan that serves up enterprise data to mobile end-points
• A network access control plan that protects IT resources from a wide range of access methods

And of course all of the above needs to be defined through the filter of business requirements. But that shouldn´t be too hard as I´m sure most of your business unit´s requirements are way ahead of your mobile networking and communication plans.

Enterprise mobility is all about productivity and work product quality. Just think how much more productive health care providers will be when all of their instrumentation is connected to a network where doctors can access patient vital signs, medical history, medications, etc., right on their smartphones while talking with patients and parents. The quality of the care will increase and so too will patient and parent comfort that the doctors have all the right information to make the right decision.

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by Colubris Networks

Enterprises need their wireless infrastructure to be future-proof, similar to their wired Ethernet network. Unfortunately, as they try to add voice and other multimedia applications to the wireless local area network (WLAN), many enterprises today are discovering that their wireless infrastructure is anything but future-proof. To support the next-generation of wireless enterprise applications, WLANs need to be able to accommodate voice, video and data.

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1. “Number of network endpoints hits one trillion, up from over a billion today.”
2. “Cross continental and country gigabit WAN links are the norm for global 2000.”
3. “50% of Internet services will be accessed by mobile devices.”
4. “Nearly 300 million Smartphones ship this year alone, up from ˜ 80M today.
   50% in last 18 months.“
5. “Softphones available on 100% of desktops/laptops shipped.”
6. “Fixed phone usage drops by 80%.”
7. “Location, communication, security, mobility et al network services replace connectivity as network’s primary value.”
8. “Number of communications software developers grow to millions from thousands writing to Network “Programmable Interfaces (NPI). A boom in networked applications erupts.”
9. “Communications enabled business process is a contributor to corporate annual productivity increases, on the order of 1.5 to 3%.”
10. “The networked business value by extracting human and system delay in workflow; is widely recognized.”

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by DATACOMM RESEARCH COMPANY for Aruba Networks

Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) is touted as the way to provide end-users the same portfolio of services regardless of which devices and networks they happen to be using. There´s just one problem with this definition: It´s long on vision and short on cost-benefit analysis. Fortunately, the FMC value proposition is more compelling. FMC combines different technologies to provide the optimal solution for each requirement. Specifically, FMC harnesses mobile phone networks and wireless local area networks (WLANs) to give end-users the services they want in the places they want, with the best performance and at the lowest cost.

Download this white paper to find out how.

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by Research in Motion (RIM)

A new breed of mobile worker is transforming the workplace: roaming the corridors of factories, offices and other business locations, armed with handhelds linked to a WLAN. Referred to as Corridor Warriors, they benefit from mobile voice and data communications within campuses, satellite sites, warehouses, retail outlets, distribution centers, medical facilities and many other environments. Workers within this increasingly important segment of the mobile workforce, who often belong to a team, share a common need: to stay in touch and stay connected to information throughout the day.

The Corridor Warrior vision elevates communication to a new level, where the strategic benefits and business values may not be readily apparent. Understanding the case for the Corridor Warrior requires relaxing some pre-conceived notions and considering different usage scenarios designed to enhance business productivity and improve efficiency. The business case, as presented in the pages of this paper, is strong and compelling.

To understand the Corridor Warrior business case download this white paper.

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What direction is networking taking? Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s networking was dominated by IBM´s SNA and to a lesser degree the defunct Digital Equipment Corporation´s DECnet. These wide-area protocols were offered primarily to enterprises while the DoD was experimenting with TCP/IP as a means to provide communications during a cold war nuclear nightmare scenario. Within buildings, terminal servers gave way to LANs, which we started connecting via LAN bridges. These bridges were not structurally stable in scale so the industry offered up routers to segment and control data traffic. This departure from SNA toward TCP/IP was a structural change in the industry, which spawned present day networking. There is no alternative to TCP/IP, no discontinuity technology that promises to alter the status quo. Is the industry on a predictable trajectory of faster, better and cheaper? Or is there a new framework amassing that is rooted in the interaction between Moore´s Law and Metcalf´s Law?

It used to be that the IT industry was segmented around the OSI model. Service providers offered layer 1 connectivity while networking players offered layers 1-3. Software and computing companies were at layer 7. I never really could figure out layers 4 though 6 and neither did the industry as there are no companies that focus in these layers. One result of the computing and networking laws interacting is that the OSI model no longer segments the industry.

Computing, software, telecommunications and networking are coming together in ways that no one would have predicted. Moore´s Law predicts the doubling of computer power while its cost is halved every eighteen months, which has been amazingly accurate for decades. Metcalf´s Law talks about the increasing value of a network as the number of end-points connected increases. More powerful end-points and servers are being connected into bigger and bigger networks, which enable new possibilities and innovation.

If the web browser was the launch point of the commercial internet, then we are eleven years into its evolution. The first phase of this evolution was and still is primarily an efficiency change agent. Business planners and entrepreneurs looked at businesses and their process and extracted cost and delay both human and system thanks to the internet. This efficiency agent led to the boom and bust of 2001 and the more rational times of the past five years. The second phase of internet evolution has more to do with changing and re-structuring industries than individual business as Moore´s and Metcalf´s laws expand.

There is a bi-directional flow of ideas and technology between computing/software, telecommunications and networking which promises to be disruptive. This is being played out now on multiple levels and is evident everywhere. In the consumer space, there are huge acquisitions of companies in different OSI segments. Two of the most impressive are e-Bay´s purchase of skype for $2.6 billion adding communications value to its e-commerce exchange. Another big acquisition was Google who seized the opportunity to sell ads in the new on-demand video model of YouTube for $1.65 billion. e-Bay and Google are layer 7 companies purchasing what were traditionally layer 1 services, that is communications and video delivery for huge dollars. While high visibility and valued acquisitions will continue in the consumer market space, in the enterprise market there will be multiple manifestations of this structural change in the IT and telecommunications industries.

The competitive and partnering combinations will only become more creative. For example, Microsoft and Cisco´s increasing competitive postures around unified communications and network security is a prime example of how layers 7 and 3 are going head to head. Microsoft´s new relationship with Nortel around unified communications marks a turning point in communications toward software and services. Avaya has stated that its strategic goal is to transform its company into a software and services concern. Cisco´s relationship with companies such as SAP point to a trend that networking is becoming a development platform offering up callable services. Cisco´s introduction of TelePresence is yet another example of a traditional layer 3 company offering a layer 7 service.

Sure there are plenty of industry initiatives such as replacing the $600 billion TDM telecommunications infrastructure with VoIP and TCP/IP. Data centers are being redesigned thanks to lower cost, high speed wide and local area bandwidth plus appliance consolidation. Callable services such as security, telephony, location, management, etc., are being embedded within network infrastructure. Communications are being embedded into applications. Network access is getting smarter thanks to access control, wireless technologies and their linking into policy managers and directory so IT services are offered to the right people at the right time in the right place. Branch office network devices are being offered via integrated platforms that deliver security, routing, wired and wireless connectivity, VPNs and IP telephony. Networks are playing a larger role in application delivery by increasing performance, security and monitoring. And on and on and on. All of these initiatives make for a healthy industry and they are building upon a TCP/IP foundation.

Because of all of the above, networking has moved well beyond a simple connectivity service. Networking is sounding and looking a lot like computing as service points and attributes blur. The following 7 trends prove the point.

Network Virtualization: Virtualization was first applied to data center design but it´s now a network architecture attribute. Virtualizing a network separates its physical and logical attributes providing flexibility to segment management in ways that fit an IT organization. One example of this is in the area of network appliances. As appliances become more horizontal in their functionality by integrating firewall, routing, IP telephony, VPN, etc., the groups responsible for their management will access configuration and management tools which the appliance will virtualize to their particular functions. Network resources will become increasingly virtual, that is the network will deliver its various services everywhere an end-point is plugged in, independent of physical location while management can be centralized, distributed or some combination of both.

Service Expansion and Device Consolidation: Networking was connectivity and the tweaking and segmenting of traffic through prioritization techniques such as Quality of Service (QoS) and virtual local area networks (VLANs). While managing connectivity through VLANs and QoS are important they represent an old model of networking. Services such as network admission control (NAC), IP telephony (VoIP), TelePresence etc., are the new services that are being embedded and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcallable" within the network. At the same time that services are being expanded networking devices are being consolidated. Network equipment such as switches and routers has added features such as firewalls, WLAN, call managers, IPS/IDS, etc. With the pending boom in TelePresence services look for advanced QoS capabilities to be added to switches and routers. In short, more services will be added in the network but with fewer devices.

Unified Networking: Networking access is becoming unified for both end-points and server access. On the user side, wireless access, both WLAN and mobile/cellular, are the hot new areas of network access growth. Laptops have outpaced desktop computers in terms of shipments while smartphones and/or PDAs are being shipped annually in the millions. But network access is becoming unified and transparent to users even as the shift from fixed to mobile access continues. As the number of access points and media alternatives such as LAN, WLAN, GSM, WAN, etc., increase, end-points will simply connect in to a network and deliver appropriate services for that person and associated end-point. With networking becoming unified and access universal any end-point will be offered networking and its allowed applications.

In addition to end-point networking being unified so too is datacenter networking. Datacenter access is a hot area with huge advancements whether it’s through blade switches, top of rack or a centralized architecture. And there will be a lot of activity and innovations happening on this front as various datacenter-networking technologies become unified.

Non-stop Networking: Just like large computing systems and data centers, non-stop operation was a key design point. With all business process flowing over networks, the same non-stop availability attributes are being applied to networking. Maintenance windows, which include down time, will be a luxury of the past. Organizations can´t afford downtime and their networks can´t stop. Techniques and technologies such as auto-recovery, hard swap of hardware and software, redundant design, etc., will increasingly be a part of a networking environment.

Application Fluency: Networks used to be a conduit through which applications would flow. But many application developers still assume LAN type performance for their applications, ignoring WAN limitations and performance degradation. To increase application performance delivery, networks are becoming fluent in a wide variety of applications. Networks increasingly understand application flow, format and content to speed up throughput.

On-Demand Secure Access: Network access will surely become secure as the industry embraces access control. Network access is becoming ubiquitous and on-demand thanks to advances in wireless technologies and services.

Value Added Service Providers: The service providers are increasingly offering more managed services on a global scale. Service providers would provide layer 1 services such as private lines, frame relay and now MPLS. But they too have been moving up the stack by offering managed routers and firewalls. Over the next business cycle service providers will be offering hosted IP services and more sophisticated managed services especially focused on the branch office network area. Many will catch the new TelePresence wave as well and offer business-to-business TelePresence services.

Network virtualization, service expansion and device consolidation, unified networking, non-stop networking, application fluency, on-demand secure access and value added service providers are but a few of the advancements that are being made in networking. With all of this intelligence and functionality moving into the network fabric, one overarching shift will be that application developers will ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨call" network services while automating business process. Their tools will be the same, web services/SOA, but the physical location of the services in which they call will not be in a data center or department cluster, etc., but will also be in the network, increasing performance, flexibility and reliability. The network is the only horizontal IT resource available to IT executives and it´s taking on more and more computing attributes and IT projects. You can pick your term to describe the road ahead: intelligent network, smart network, next generation network, etc. I prefer to call it just computer networking.

So is the industry on a predictable trajectory or is there a new framework amassing that is rooted in the interaction between Moore´s Law and Metcalf´s Law? It´s a new framework that´s amassing with implications far greater than I have time to write about here. But stay tuned, we´ll write and podcast on the next computer networking industry here at the Lippis Report.

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by Accuvoice

Cook County was in a jam. It needed to increase three operations: 1) the level of customer service to its citizens; 2) its system capacity for employees of County departments and hospitals; and 3) its ability to handle after-hours inquiries. It needed to all this without hiring additional personnel. So how did it do it? For starters it deployed an Avaya IPT Contact Center over a private network, layered with Avaya and Accuvoice Self Service applications to give callers 24/7 access to County information and databases. To facilitate higher levels of productivity and flexibility among County employees, Cook County deployed an Avaya Mobility Solutions. To find out how Cook County stayed on budget and increased services download this paper.

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Data points are building into trend lines that suggest 2007 will be the year of Network Access Control or NAC deployments. The data points are many. First and perhaps most important is that network and IT executives have turned the corner in their thinking from general interest to budgeted NAC projects as there are approximately 1500 companies who have deployed a commercial NAC solution today. There are non-commercial NAC implementations too, such as NESSUS scans which, if counted would drive the 1500 deployments up significantly. The number of NAC customers should well surpass 5000 in 2007 and there´s nothing to slow it down. With Microsoft´s Network Access Protection or NAP being dependent upon its Network Policy Server (NPS) in Longhorn, NAP will not be relevant until well into 2008. The real discussion in IT conference rooms will focus around spending budget on NAC appliance and/or infrastructure approaches. Enterprise buyers have become very pragmatic in solving their network access control problems. These problems are quickly turning into funded projects. Here are the reasons why 2007 will be the year of NAC.

A quick note on the term NAC. I use NAC as a generic, non-vendor term to describe access control to networked resources. In general NAC provides access control by assessing the posture of a computer´s health and its compliance to policy. The result of this posture check may be to grant access, grant limited access or quarantine a computer for remediation. NAC is media independent, meaning access can be LAN, WLAN, or WAN. During the posture check process NAC vendors are differentiating and innovating on ways to add value to the access control service, such as segmenting users, apply quality of service, monitoring behavior, etc.

Reason One: NAC Solves Real Problems

There are a set of real budgeted security problems that corporations need to solve. These include:

1. Controlling guest and contractor access
2. Protecting high-value corporate data and applications
3. Stratifying, segmenting and controlling user access to conform with regulatory compliance
4. Mitigating exploits from propagating throughout a corporate network

Of the 1500 companies mentioned above, NAC solutions have primarily solved controlling guest and contractor access security problems. But NAC solutions are diving deeper into applications and user behavior thanks to identity management allowing NAC to be part of the corporate regulatory compliance solution. This is big as NAC project expansions are being funded by compliance budget and championed by the CFO, CSO, CIO and Chief Legal Officer (CLO) in board meetings. But I´m ahead of myself. Let´s review the four key security problems NAC solves.

Problem One: Controlling Guest and Contractor Access

The adaptive corporation must offer Internet access to employees, customers, partners and other people who visit their premises. Hotel guests demand Internet access while corporate visitors expect they´ll be able to sit in a lobby or conference room, open their laptop, and connect to the Internet. Network executives must ensure that guests can´t reach corporate assets, such as data, applications, or services such as voice over IP (VoIP). In short, while visiting your corporation, guests need network access to do their job, such as making a presentation, demo-ing a product, accessing a support web-site, etc. Everyone needs access to the internet to be productive, even when visiting another company. In addition, enterprises demand that guests can´t spread exploits.

Contractors by definition require deeper access to IT resources. Contractor responsibility varies from service personnel who maintain everything from data center servers to MRI machines, as well as on-site contractors who perform functions ranging from project management to accounting. Contractors often need LAN access to perform their jobs. However, that access must be limited. An outsourced IT staff responsible for managing server blades in the data center should be restricted to accessing only those devices. Similarly, a contract accountant should have LAN access limited to a few key applications, such as email and accounting packages, and select data sets. Since data isn’t always protected as well as it should be within the enterprise, and getting to a safe data protection model is a hurdle, the network is being used to enforce controls on what assets the contractors can have access to. Ultimately NAC will provide these controls with data protection policy.

Contractor access is potentially more vulnerable and poses a higher security threat than guest. NAC solutions have leveraged identity management to offer deeper ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨controlled" access to IT resources as a means of mitigating this higher risk. Some IT departments learn the contractor´s identity by adding it to the corporate identity store such as Active Directory or RADIUS database or by creating a set of common user names that apply to all contractors working on a similar project. Other IT groups leverage role-based controls which define policies that control access to applications and resources based on a contractor´s or user´s group association or role within the enterprise. Some NAC solutions offer host posture check for end-points which are not owned or managed by the enterprise, thus mitigating exploit propagation. Other NAC solutions require non-managed end-point traffic to flow through in-line threat management or traffic management devices close to the end-point, where more trust might be applied to managed desktops and a more efficient path to resources can be dynamically plumbed.

Problem Two: Protecting High-value Corporate Data and Applications

This is an area where NAC will have a significant impact on corporations during 2007. In short the problem here is to secure access to KEY data, applications, work product and services. Most enterprises have sensitive financial and human resources data that only appropriate staff access. For example, a university needs to limit access to its grading system to faculty. IP telephony is a good example of a service needing protection. In a contact center, the IP telephony service is essential, so IT must protect the call processor to ensure uninterrupted voice service.

It´s not feasible for IT to explicitly define what data and which applications each user can access. As mentioned above data protection is difficult and evolving, but it´s a direction the industry requires. NAC contributes to data protection by cooperating with data access policies and enforcing access to critical resources. IT should have the ability to identify particular applications and resources and specify which users are allowed to use them. NAC solutions tie users to traffic and the path of traffic flows (or restrictions) offering IT the ability to control and see what resources and applications a given user has tried to use as well as what they have used. NAC ties users to paths of access to data and applications. Just as above, by applying role-based control but in real time IT can specify which users can access which resources. Another benefit is that NAC solutions enable individual user traffic engineering, application access control and visibility into these flows.

Problem Three: Stratifying, Segmenting and Controlling User Access to Conform with Regulatory Compliance Requirements

Controlling guest, contractor and user access to network segments, applications, data, work product and services with visibility into a user´s behavior and use of IT resources provides a level of flexibility network and IT departments have not had in LAN systems. One key area that will drive NAC solutions deeper into organizations in 2007 is regulatory compliance. To comply with various regulations, organizations need a means to segment users so that only authorized users can access sensitive data and demonstrate compliance to auditors. For example, some organizations need to restrict access to credit card data to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard. Hospitals and medical facilities must protect patient records to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Enterprises need the ability to restrict access to critical information based on a user´s role. In addition, to prove they have effective controls in place, organizations need a means to audit data and application usage and to document that access is indeed restricted. A good NAC solution will protect sensitive data, limit the scope of an audit to a subset of user and server systems subject to the regulation and provide reports and views which are friendly to auditors.

NAC can be funded with compliance budgets if they provide the following key services: policy-based access controls which track all user activity and traffic flows on the network; application access control at layer 7 limits which applications a user can run on the network; documented polices that allow IT to document what control policies are in place and to whom they apply. This is a key auditing tool for demonstrating that users excluded by a policy cannot reach sensitive data. Further controls include activity reports for both users and application/services; user reports including every application, server, and resource a user touched in a given timeframe; application/service reports providing details about all users who ran a particular application or accessed a particular resource during a given period.

Problem Four: Mitigating Exploits from Propagating Throughout A Corporate Network

This has been the main value proposition promoted by NAC vendors, which is to assess an end-point´s posture and determine if it´s in compliance with corporate security standards for computing. If the end-point fails the posture check then the end-point is placed into a quarantine VLAN, remediated, and then its posture can be reassessed. The vendor community is building up this core NAC feature set by standardizing on the process and expanding deeper into user and application control. This is not to say that NAC access control is matured and further investment will be limited.

Behavior anomaly detection is the next huge investment area being added to NAC as well as various post access control features. NAC vendors must address post-NAC monitoring or post access control since the initial NAC event determines the computer´s behavior which should be expected. The initial NAC event provides the profile definition necessary to monitor behavior. Post access control is the most significant NAC feature set going forward. Network and IT departments will look to understand a computer´s relationship to ongoing real-time monitoring and how a user’s behavior impacts network activity. This insight is gained through behavior monitoring.

Reason Two: More Potent NAC Technology

The second reason why 2007 will be the year of NAC is because the technology is maturing in smaller deployable increments. NAC solutions are becoming increasingly potent as defenses to mitigate against LAN attacks and tools to hasten audits and assure regulatory compliance. Much of NAC´s value comes from the fact that NAC solutions are being tightly linked with identity management software. Most, if not all, NAC providers deliver their own identity management software which enables identity-based access control. That is, NAC solutions are capable of identifying users, guests, contractors, etc., and applying access rules uniquely to each person based upon their role in the enterprise. Identity management is increasingly being linked with applications too, offering IT management greater granularity of access control.

While creating policy which runs role-based access control can be daunting, the good news is that NAC is being packaged in multiple ways to address different sized problems. Many network and IT executives postponed their NAC deployments as its scope was overwhelming. In 2005 and early 2006 the industry thought of infrastructure NAC as the main approach to access control. But two things happened: infrastructure companies such as ProCurve offered appropriate scaled NAC infrastructure solutions while a host of companies including Cisco, ConSentry, Lockdown Networks, Nortel, Juniper, et al., added more value to their NAC appliances. This reduced the overwhelming scope and rationalized the infrastructure impact, product confusion and deployment choices. NAC appliances allow enterprises to be selective in where they place NAC and to experiment with policy. NAC appliances will also help bridge the gap in heterogeneous NAC environments as well as allow co-existence with non-NAP clients.

The key question is how will NAC appliances work with NAC infrastructure? For Cisco they are integrating their NAC appliance and infrastructure back-end and client components so that customers can pick and choose how they want to implement NAC across their companies. This allows customers to have the flexibility to accommodate different realities such as departmental budgets where one group (network infrastructure) may have more budget than another (e.g., the
security/infosec team), network typologies that can’t be upgraded but can be enhanced via an appliance and the need for NAP interoperability.

But there will not be a transition from NAC appliance to NAC infrastructure. In 2007 there will be an increase in overall NAC products and solutions whether appliance- or infrastructure-based. Chances are there could be a round of consolidation of the appliance vendors too, as customers gravitate towards
the major players.

So how will NAP and NAC evolve and will NAP slow down NAC? The fact is, NAC is the general framework for IT security while Microsoft´s NAP/NPS is a part of that framework. NAC and NAP will not compete but NAP will be part of a NAC framework. As mentioned in the opening NAP is really a 2008 event. Also what Microsoft´s NAP/NPS will do effectively is perform posture assessment by validating a computer´s health and provide remediation instructions if needed. NAC solutions will build upon NAP by performing enforcement based upon NAP posture data while NAP will pass posture/health data to NAC-based identity management. The bottom line is that NAC is here today solving real security access problems. With NAP/NPS a 2008 event, there is plenty of time for NAC vendors to collaborate and test interoperability with Microsoft as Cisco has been demonstrating. This fact has not gone unnoticed to most CIOs who look to maximize their large IT infrastructure investments. NAP/NPS will not slow down 2007 from being the year of NAC, but accelerate NAC deployments in 2008.

Reason Three: Growing Adoption Curve

The third reason 2007 is the year of NAC is that there is comfort in large numbers. While there are approximately 1500 NAC installations world wide today, our estimate of 5000 is just that, an estimate. The bottom line is that the number of commercial NAC deployments will more than double in 2007 including most of the F500 and all of the major financial services firms. As more firms deploy NAC, industry knowledge is created, fostering greater comfort that the technology has matured and is ready for prime time.

So is 2007 the year of NAC? It´s as easy as one, two, three: 1) NAC solves real problems; 2) NAC technology works; and 3) enterprises are deploying NAC. The data points are building and the trend line is becoming clear. 2007 is the year of NAC.

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We´ve covered Cisco´s network access control (NAC), Microsoft´s Network Access Protection (NAP) and the Trusted Computing Group´s Trusted Network Connect (TNC) security architectures. All of the above are infrastructure based network access control architectures with differing enforcement models and client requirements. The complexity, high cost and lack of availability of these access control approaches has given way to the rise of NAC appliances, which we explored in Lippis Report 64 ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨The Road to Network Admission Control," and Lippis Report podcast, ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Network Admission Control Simplified." Many Lippis Report readers and podcast listeners told us that what is important to them is how their chosen infrastructure company is deploying access control. Most Network/IT executives see network access control from an infrastructure investment protection point of view. That is, there is little interest in switching major infrastructure vendors solely on network security. So in this edition of the Lippis Report, we asked Cisco Systems, ProCurve Networking by HP, Foundry Networks, Extreme Networks, Nortel, Juniper and 3Com to tell us about their network access control solutions.

The network access control market is by no means commoditized. There are significant differences between vendor offerings. There are client and/or clientless based approaches to network access control. Some integrate a policy manager into their offering, while others either provide a separate policy manager or rely upon a third party policy manager. Vendors differ on their support of endpoint operating systems and devices. Some vendors offer support for PCs, non-interactive devices such as printers and gaming consoles, IP phones, etc., while others only support specific Windows environments. Some provide the same solution for wired and wireless access, while others support only wired. There is also differentiation based upon existing network infrastructure. Some vendors offer an overlay security approach, which is independent of installed network switches, while others are highly dependent upon their switches being deployed to deliver security enforcement services. The breath and depth of partnering to deliver on remediation is also a differentiator.

We´ve asked all suppliers to address client requirements, access control enforcement, post access control, their unique differentiation and provide budget guidelines. We ask them to address all of this in just two paragraphs. Some went a little over, and we afforded them that leeway. I provide a cross-vendor assessment at the end. So without further ado, here are network access control solutions from Cisco Systems, ProCurve Networking by HP, Foundry Networks, Extreme Networks, Nortel, and Juniper.

Cisco Systems

In Cisco´s view, an effective NAC solution must be able to do at least four things:

• Authenticate and authorize any incoming user,
• Assess the posture of any incoming endpoint device,
• Quarantine that device if it fails to meet policy requirements,
• Remediate the device to bring it into compliance.

In terms of authentication, Cisco´s NAC Appliance natively integrates with Kerberos, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), RADIUS, Active Directory, S/Ident, and others. It supports single sign-on for VPN clients, wireless clients, and Windows Active Directory domains. Administrators can maintain multiple user profiles with different permission levels through the use of roles-based access control.

Posture assessment is performed either through network-based scans or through the use of an Agent, which works on Windows and Macintosh machines. Policies are either created through pre-configured rulesets for hundreds of third-party applications, such as antivirus and anti-spyware, or are customized for specific applications, such as in-house programs.

Cisco´s NAC Appliance performs quarantine (or access control enforcement) through a variety of network-based means, based on customer preferences. These methods include static or dynamic VLAN assignment, via 802.1x, DHCP, switch ports, ACLs, drop/filter packets, Layer 3 subnet isolation, and Layer 2 broadcast domain isolation.

Finally, Cisco´s NAC Appliance offers a variety of methods for remediation. Users can be guided through an Agent-based wizard, a set of web-based instructions, or automated launching of a Windows Update or SUS (Software Update Server) server. Post access control enforcement is accomplished through the Cisco Security Agent software, which mitigates new and evolving threats without requiring reconfigurations or emergency patch updates.

Cisco´s NAC Appliance differentiates based on three elements: 1) the ability of one product to perform all the functions of NAC regardless of the type of endpoint device (laptops, IP phones, game consoles, printers, etc.) or the method of network access (wireless, VPN, LAN, WAN); 2) over 30 deployment methodologies that can fit into any type of network environment; 3) the existence of over 1,000 customers who have purchased and deployed the Cisco NAC Appliance. In terms of budget guidelines, each deployment requires one Manager, and at least one Server. A 100-user license that includes the software and hardware for both Manager and Server is priced at $8,995.

ProCurve Networking by HP

ProCurve Networking by HP has a comprehensive security strategy called ProCurve ProActive Defense, delivering a trusted network infrastructure that is immune to threats, controllable for appropriate use and is able to protect data and integrity for all users. Part of this strategy includes a comprehensive infrastructure-based access control solution through ProCurve´s Identity-Driven Manager (IDM) 2.0 software.

ProCurve was a pioneer in the definition and development of many of the open security initiatives related to network access control, including an initiator of the 802.1x specification and is a consistent contributor to the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) specification from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG). In this effort, ProCurve was one of the first implementers of 802.1x controlled network ports.

ProCurve has continued to build upon its secure connection technologies by building in alternative methods of authentication, including a web-based authentication process and a MAC address based authentication process embedded in ProCurve network devices. Together these port-based access control features provide network administrators strong network access control capabilities at the network edge. In addition, ProCurve has added its Identity Driven Management (IDM) software, which allows administrators to create rules that dynamically adapt the network edge ports (and wireless connections) to the needs of the user.

With this solution, network administrators have the ability to allow and restrict access to the overall network, or resources on the network, based on the business need of users. These access rules can be applied based on user device connecting to the network, place, and time. In addition to the standards based ability to apply a user to an authentication, ProCurve has the ability to apply performance settings (QoS and rate limits) and detailed filtering capabilities (Access Control Lists). These unique ProCurve features are a combination of the ProCurve devices, and the IDM network access policy management.

The ProCurve access control solution is a unified solution, which covers both wired and wireless LAN environments. It integrates with the industry leading RADIUS authentication servers and provides the usual ProCurve value proposition of the best price-performance in the industry.

ProCurve ProActive Defense is the only approach offered today that has the built-in flexibility to meet not only today´s security challenges, but tomorrow´s, as well. Access control is done at the edge of the network: where your security posture should be deployed, versus tunneling everything into the core of the network. In summary, by uniquely melding offense and defense into a cohesive, easily managed and comprehensive architecture, ProCurve ProActive Defense is the best way to harness the full potential of networks, now and in the future.

Foundry Networks

Foundry Networks provides standards based NAC, which has been validated with various agent and agentless NAC solutions. Foundry’s edge chassis and stackable switches support all of the key Radius 802.1x, MAC, and Web authentication capabilities, and have been proven to work with a variety of Radius Servers and supplicants. This includes Microsoft’s IAS, FreeRadius, Cisco’s ACS, Infoblox, and Funk Software. Foundry’s access control infrastructure provides the flexibility to support any standard Radius server and client implementation, and does not lock customers into a proprietary high-cost solution.

Foundry’s edge based Layer 2/3 switches and routers have been validated with a number of agent and agentless NAC solutions including those from Symantec, Check Point, and StillSecure. These agents use Radius and 802.1x, to validate both the user and client health. The NAC policy server can automatically and dynamically switch the client to a guest, quarantine or production VLAN, depending upon the outcome of conformance test. Depending upon security policy, a user may be blocked out of the network completely, given limited or guest access. In addition, Foundry´s IronShield 360 security program adds anomaly detection services to its Layer 2/3 devices, which enable its IronView Network Manager (INM) to participate in remediation of anomalistic network behavior uncovered post admission control.

Foundry is a member of Microsoft’s Network Admission Protection (NAP) partner program where it´s working with Microsoft to insure that its´ switches and routers are fully interoperable with NAP software components for Windows Vista and Longhorn releases. Foundry is also collaborating with a number of NAC appliance vendors such as Lockdown Networks and Impulse Point to insure they can dynamically remediate Foundry equipment, include changing VLANs and other network address assignment, to insure that clients are properly placed on the production, quarantine, or remediation VLANs or disable their network access.

Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks offers the full-featured SentriantTM Access Guard (AG) solution for enterprises that require increased security at the edge where the network is dynamically protected from endpoint devices like PCs that do not comply with organizational security policies. This solution minimizes the threat of viruses and attacks originating from infected or unprotected endpoints.

Sentriant AG supports a variety of testing methods enabling a variety of network endpoints to be tested within any customer environment before they are allowed to access the network. The Sentriant AG also controls network access for various user types including employees, visitors, partners and remote users connecting over the wired or wireless Local Area Network (LAN) or Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Sentriant AG supports multiple enforcement mechanisms including Inline, DHCP, and 802.1x. By leveraging Extreme Networks’ standards-based 802.1x implementation on its award-winning Ethernet switches and ExtremeXOS® operating system, the Sentriant AG can place end-points in the appropriate VLANs (quarantine VLAN, guest VLAN or production VLAN) based on test results and further restrict access using more granular policy enforcement techniques such dynamic Access Control Lists (ACLs) and bandwidth rate limiting.
Key features include true agent-less testing, which requires no additional client-side software and features support within Windows 2000 and XP environments. Browser-based testing (ActiveX) or a lightweight, persistent agent is available for all Microsoft-supported versions of Windows. Mac OS X and Linux clients will be supported in a future software release

Nortel

The Nortel Secure Network Access (NSNA) appliance provides a unified access policy for admission control for wired, wireless and mobile workers. NSNA is an out-of-path appliance that delivers superior scalability and reduced latency for multimedia applications such as IP telephony and video, when compared with other solutions. NSNA provides a unique clientless solution that offers customers a flexible choice of deployment and enforcement models, including both VLAN and/or traffic filters. NSNA provides superior out-of-path performance by tightly integrating with network access elements such as Ethernet switches, WLAN controllers and VPN Gateways. The NSNA solution supports IP Phones, Windows, Linux, Mac OS and non-interactive devices such as printers and gaming consoles. In addition, NSNA supports customer environments with mixed deployments of Nortel and non-Nortel network elements such as non-Nortel Ethernet switches.

Nortel Secure Network Access (NSNA) delivers a unified access policy focusing on 4 key areas:

1. Authentication & Posture Assessment ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ using Nortel´s web-based and customizable captive portal technology to provide network access control based on user identity and system health with Nortel Tunnel Guard technology.
2. Authorization ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ using Nortel´s automated per-port firewall capability at the access layer to provide network resource control based on user profile and device identity.
3. Continuous Threat Analysis – continuous validation of user and device security compliance using real-time environmental threat information from network elements such as IDS and IPS.
4. Quarantine & Remediation – automated host quarantine and remediation triggered through continuous threat analysis events.

Nortel is committed to a standards-based deployment with broad interoperability as demonstrated through our work with Microsoft NAP and the Trusted Computing Group TNC frameworks. The list price for the NSNA 4050 appliance is $17,995 and includes a license for 200 concurrent users but incremental user licenses are also available.

Juniper

Juniper’s Unified Access Control (UAC) Solution includes the Infranet Controller, which serves as a centralized policy manager; the UAC Agent, which is a dynamically downloadable endpoint software and several forms of enforcement points.
The Controller is a hardened policy management server that consolidates user authentication, endpoint integrity verification and device location, and combines this information with policy to restrict network, resource, and application access. This policy is then passed to enforcement points within the network for dynamic access control.

Enforcement Points: UAC enforcement points encompass virtually all Juniper firewall/VPN platforms, including Juniper secure router FW/VPNs and Juniper’s Integrated Security Gateways with integrated IDP modules. This variety of enforcement platforms enables security from smaller firewalls to protect printer farms to 30Gbps models to enforce policy in the most traffic-intensive settings.

UAC Agent: The UAC Agent is a dynamically downloaded agent that can be provisioned from a Web browser by the Controller, and provides authentication and endpoint assessment capabilities before log in and throughout the user session. The Agent includes Host Checker, familiar from thousands of Juniper Secure Access SSL VPN deployments, which enables the administrator to scan endpoints for a variety of security applications/states, including antivirus, malware and personal firewalls. UAC also enables custom checks such as registry and port status and can do an MD5 checksum to verify validity.

Deployment is simplified with pre-defined Host Checker policies and automatic monitoring of AV signatures for the latest definition files. The agent also includes an integrated personal firewall for dynamic client-side enforcement of policies, as well as specific functionality for Windows devices that includes IPSec VPN (enables encryption from the endpoint to the firewall) and Single SignOn to Active Directory. UAC supports Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris platforms. UAC also supports agentless mode, for situations where it would be impossible to download the agent, such as with guest access.

UAC is unique in its Layer 3-7 overlay approach that does not require a forklift upgrade of existing infrastructure, which enables phased access control deployments to protect mission critical assets in campus wired/wireless, data center and remote office/branch office locations. Access control can be easily enabled with enforcement points that can be deployed in transparent mode, eliminating re-routing of network infrastructure. The solution also supports high availability across LAN and WAN for distributed network architectures. Access control rights can be provisioned in an extremely granular way, differentiating not only employees from guests, but within each classification as well. Also unique is the dynamically downloadable agent, as well as the ability to use the solution to realize IPSec to the desktop. The solution can be easily deployed as an overlay today with imminent plans to use standards to incorporate additional, cross vendor infrastructure elements, such as integration with 802.1X supplicants and RADIUS servers from the recent Funk acquisition.

Cross-Vendor Analysis

Here are my thoughts on the above submissions. They are not in any prioritized order. First, most vendors are offering a comprehensive offering with Cisco, ProCurve, Juniper and Nortel being ahead of Foundry and Extreme.

Cisco´s NAC security offering is two pronged: 1) the NAC appliance, which they discuss above and 2) infrastructure based NAC. The NAC appliance with integrated policy manager is an overlay security strategy with limited, if any, integration with its network infrastructure products. Cisco´s NAC approach is comprehensive, offering multiple configuration and design options across its four NAC stages: 1) Authenticate and authorize, 2) Posture assessment, 3) Quarantine and 4) Remediate.

ProCurve integrates enforcement at the port level of its switches, with a separate identity manager for policy management. Port level enforcement eliminates the need to tunnel traffic over the LAN/WAN, mitigating this vulnerability. ProCurve and others also inject QoS and rate limit at the authorization stage of access control.

Foundry and Extreme´s network security offerings are centered around their Layer 2/3 switch and routers. Foundry´s NAC strategy is based upon standard client and authorization technologies, partnering with Microsoft, NAC appliance suppliers and agent software concerns, with enforcement performed at the network edge. Extreme offers a clientless solution, which is independent of wired or WLAN access, where enforcement is conducted at the port level of its switches.

Nortel, like Cisco, describes an appliance/overlay approach to network access control. For Nortel this strategy allows it to address security requirements for both on and off base customers and prospects. The Nortel NSNA is a comprehensive offering with an aggressive price point. Its NSNA supports multiple access methods and endpoint devices, while Nortel promises to integrate NSNA features into its network infrastructure products. Nortel is the only infrastructure vendor here to provide a statement of direction to be integrated with Microsoft´s NAP and support of TNC simultaneously.

Juniper does not participate in the Ethernet switch market so its network security architecture is centered around its firewall/VPN/Router platforms. Juniper´s Unified Access Control (UAC) solution offers a controller for policy definition and management, an agent/client for endpoint posture assessment and enforcement within its infrastructure platforms. UAC offers high granularity of access control thanks to it controller and infrastructure enforcement. However, UAC must tunnel traffic across the LAN to implement its security services rather than at the port level. Juniper seems to have a distinctive WAN view of network security.

There are a few common threads across all suppliers. First is the support of 802.1x supplicant as the basis for a standard client now and into the future. Second is a growing trend to offer both client and clientless network access control approaches. Third, all network access control vendors limit network access by placing endpoints into either a specific VLAN (production, quarantine, and remediation) or denying access. There is a growing trend to go beyond simple static or dynamic VLAN assignment of clients after posture conformance testing toward increased granularity to Layer 3 subnet isolation, Layer 2 broadcast domains, switch ports, drop/filter packets and ACLs.

Clearly from the above, some vendors are further along then others. However, it doesn´t seem that a customer would be compelled to change infrastructure vendors solely on the basis of security features alone, as all suppliers are investing to deepen security services in their offerings. If NAC was a major competitive differentiator, then Enterasys would be stealing share from all of the above suppliers. The fact is that Enterasys is not taking share and owns approximately 2% of the Ethernet switch market. Network security is a must have and all suppliers are addressing the requirement.

While both Nortel and Cisco discuss NAC appliances above, neither is far along in integrating these appliances into their network infrastructure offerings. ProCurve and Extreme seem to have decided to skip the appliance step and go right to infrastructure based NAC, while Foundry is partnering with NAC appliance suppliers and simultaneously delivering NAC within its switches and routers. Vendors are responding to their unique customer requirements.

Budgeting for NAC is challenging. The best guideline is to budget between 30 to 50% of network acquisition cost for NAC. However, I have seen responses to NAC RFPs to be 100% of Ethernet switch purchase price. NAC appliances can bring that price point down in smaller installations, while mitigating most threats and vulnerabilities. However, a well-designed NAC based infrastructure can be cost effective too. Scale of the deployment is the key-determining factor.

Remember the industry is in the early adoption curve stage for NAC and there will be many new options available in the coming quarters. Threats and vulnerabilities are not going away, and NAC will be one of the most potent defenses in IT´s arsenal to mitigate exploits. It is important to start now and experiment with NAC implementations to develop policy, train staff and understand NAC´s strength and weaknesses, while fitting NAC into your munitions store.

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On June 25th, in San Francisco, Jeff Raikes, President of Microsoft´s Business Division, changed the IP telephony and communications landscape forever. He did this on so many levels with the company´s Unified Communications (UC) announcement. He boldly told IT executives to stop spending on IP telephony since Microsoft´s Unified Communications products will radically increase corporate productivity and change the cost of ownership of enterprise communications, thanks to software economics. He pushed aside Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, ShoreTel et al., by saying that these companies do not have the vision and ability to execute on the next wave of IP telephony. The next wave is the strategic phase that ushers in communications-enabled business process and brings with it a new communications experience for hundreds of millions of people. And you know, Raikes is right, most IP tel suppliers don´t have the next wave vision.

The existing IP telephony vendors, with the exception of Avaya and Siemens, have been focused on hardware. In the Lippis Report, we´ve been writing and podcasting about how applications are where the value is in IP tel. In short, you have to ask, what can you do with IP telephony that you couldn´t do with TDM-based PBXs? Today´s answer is, not much. The industry narrowed the gap between TDM and IP tel features, but Microsoft blew that gap away and answered the question by linking communications directly into office productivity tools such as Exchange, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Live meeting, etc., making it easy for professionals to connect and communicate independent of end-points. Tools such as click-to-call and click-to-conference will be embedded into familiar Microsoft software, eliminating learning curves, allowing professionals to quickly embrace the new functionality and communicate, and speeding up business process by extracting human delay from workflow.

Then on July 18th, Microsoft puts more muscle behind UC by announcing the Innovative Communications Alliance with Nortel. Steve Ballmer says that the relationship with Nortel will be as strategic and prosperous as Microsoft´s relationship has been with Intel, Dell and HP in the computing market. Simply put, over the next five years hundreds of millions of people will receive a new communications experience, thanks to the move to IP and Microsoft teaming with Nortel, who want to be a big part of this spending cycle. Nortel brings Microsoft credibility in voice communications and large enterprise systems, while Microsoft delivers a much needed boost of confidence to Nortel´s enterprise business. Microsoft will open up its access to IT executives to Nortel so they can tell a common UC story. This is access that Nortel could never get on its own.

This is a sea change. Microsoft is now a phone company and will use its massive distribution channel and developer community to change the communications industry forever. Its June 25th Unified Communications announcement was comprehensive and visionary. Microsoft is not only enabling VoIP in its office suite of software products, but offering a call manager, IP phones, and a developer environment which will unleash creativity into the IP tel market that has not had an organizing principal around application development until now. It has created an ecosystem around its Unified Communications for IP phones, application development and system integration. Like I said, it´s a broad vision embraced by many leading industry players.

Microsoft tapped its long-time ally in the system integration and professional services business, HP, to help large enterprise customers rollout and integrate its Unified Communications. It also tapped another long-time ally, Siemens Communications, and its systems integration and support services to integrate Siemens HiPath 8000 softswitch real-time telephony with Microsoft´s Exchange and Office Live Communications Server, utilizing the Siemens OpenScape communications broker capability.

Motorola, yet another long-time ally and powerhouse, was tapped by Microsoft to integrate Motorola´s HC700 series rugged mobile computing devices and the Motorola Q® smart phone with Unified Communications. Motorola and Microsoft will combine the presence awareness and instant messaging capabilities of Communications Server 2007 (see below) with Motorola´s Windows Mobile© 5.0-based devices through the integration of Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile with Motorola´s MOTOPRO® Mobility Suite and Wireless Services Manager (WSM) products. The end result will be to enable users to seamlessly communicate and collaborate across wired and wireless access networks.

HP, Siemens, Nortel and Motorola will allow Microsoft to address the large enterprise market. Another key part of Microsoft´s ecosystem is a group of companies to develop end points or devices such as IP phones, Universal Serial Bus (USB) handsets, wireless USB headsets, USB webcams, and PC monitors with built-in audio and video components which will have the Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 (see below) client embedded allowing communications with its Communications Server 2007, discussed below. Microsoft amassed an impressive list of companies including Polycom Inc., LG-Nortel Co. Ltd., Thomson Telecom, Logitech, Plantronics Inc., Samsung, and Tatung Co.

So what is Microsoft´s Unified Communications program? Microsoft´s approach to unified communications is a multi-modal approach of reaching people independent of end-point or communication application such as e-mail, IM, mobile, VoIP, audio, video and web-conferencing. While these communication applications are silos today, Microsoft´s Unified Communications seek to integrate and unify their access via a common software man-machine metaphor.

To deliver on the above, Microsoft announced communication enhancements as part of its Office System 2007 products. In late 2006 or early 2007 Microsoft is scheduled to release Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Speech Server 2007. Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging will deliver a unified inbox experience that includes e-mail, voice mail, and faxing functionality, as well as new capabilities such as speech-based auto attendant, allowing users to access communications from any phone.

In essence Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will be the traditional view of unified communications. Alone, this would be interesting but not compelling. The bulk or main thrust of Microsoft´s unified communications strategy will not be available until the second quarter of 2007, or approximately a year from now. Scheduled to ship next year are:

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007: This is the heart of unified communications and will be the focus of many developers. Think of Cisco´s Call Manager or Avaya´s Communications Manager. It´s a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based real-time communication platform that enables presence-based VoIP call management, audio-, video-, and web-conferencing, and instant messaging communication within and across existing software applications, services and devices. Don´t look for Microsoft to open up its presence manager to any of the IP telephony vendors, except for Nortel and Siemens. This is key as presence will be the feature which will drive productivity and Microsoft will keep it off-limits to competitors.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007: This is the client software that works with and communicates to Communications Server. Communicator is key as it unifies all the different modalities of communications into a single interface. It delivers a presence-based, enterprise VoIP ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨softphone"; secure, enterprise-grade instant messaging that allows for intercompany federation and connectivity to public instant messaging networks such as MSN©, AOL and Yahoo!; one-to-one and multiparty video- and audio-conferencing; and web-conferencing. Office Communicator 2007 will be available in desktop, browser-based and Windows Mobile©-based versions.

Microsoft Office Live Meeting: Improvements to Office Live Meeting include support for e-learning, enhanced audio and video capabilities including VoIP, a streamlined user interface, seamless integration with the Microsoft Office system, and simpler deployment.

Microsoft Office RoundTable®: This is a very cool conference IP phone with 360-degree video/camera support. When combined with Office Communications Server 2007, RoundTable delivers an immersive conferencing experience that extends the meeting environment across multiple locations. Meeting participants on site and in remote locations gaining a panoramic view of everyone in the conference room as well as close-up views of individual participants as they take turns speaking.

Microsoft Office Communicator phone experience: This is the partner/developer´s point of entry into the Microsoft Unified Communications ecosystem. Communicator-based software designed to run a set of new voice and video devices : including business-enabled IP desktop phones : from Polycom Inc., LG-Nortel Co. Ltd., and Thomson Telecom. This is a new ecosystem designed to run on dedicated communications devices in tandem with Office Communications Server 2007 to extend and enhance the Microsoft Unified Communications experience.

PC peripheral devices: Another important UC area as it seeks to break the proprietary hold the traditional telephony players have held over the industry by opening up the interface between end points and call control servers. These devices include USB handsets, wireless USB headsets, USB webcams and PC monitors with built-in audio and video components. Devices from industry partners GN Netcom Inc., Logitech, Motorola, Plantronics Inc., Samsung and Tatung Co. will work with Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 to deliver a communication experience on the PC.

Analysis

The Race For Developer Mindshare: Microsoft´s MSDN is the industry´s, if not the entire economy´s, best developer community. This is a key strategic advantage as Microsoft offers economic value to its MSDN partners by participating in its Unified Communication (UC) program. From a competitive point of view, the two largest IP telephony players, Avaya and Cisco, have developer programs. Avaya is much further along with its DevConnect program of nearly 3000 companies and its embrace of Web Services/SOA to either compete or complement Microsoft´s UC initiative. Cisco´s CTDP developer program has fewer members and is not as well-focused on communication application development. Look for Cisco and IBM to team on creating a developers ecosystem.

Developer Environment: It´s not clear what or which developer environment Microsoft has chosen for its developers. SIP is clearly the core technology of Communication Server 2007. Siemens, as one of Microsoft´s partners, brings OpenScape to the table with a Web Services-based application development interface. Cisco has its SONA, or Software Oriented Network Architecture, which is focused on protocols and application development interfaces. Avaya and Nortel are focused on Web Services/SOA with Avaya being much further along but with Nortel now teaming with Microsoft on development.

Feature Set Deficit/Scale: Microsoft has not communicated the feature set associated with Communications Server 2007. It is SIP-based so it will more than likely have SIP´s seven key features. But Communications Server 2007 will not be able to compete with the IP telephony industry´s 700 + phone features alone. The real question is how much do the 700 features matter? Many of these features were developed as custom features for customers over decades of work. How applicable they are is unclear. Nortel will integrate or link its Succession CSE 1000 with Microsoft´s Communications Server, expanding the feature set of UC to be competitive with IP telephony players. In addition to feature set, there is the question of reliability, security, performance, availability, and scale of Communication Server 2007. Let´s be honest; Microsoft has been challenged with all of these key architecture attributes over the years. The question is will Nortel be able to offer these attributes to UC?

Timing: Microsoft´s UC doesn´t get interesting until next year with the release of Communication Server 2007. While UC is bold and includes an ecosystem, the question of architecture stability rises in my mind. What I mean is that it usually takes Microsoft a few product releases to get a product stable, especially one with so many companies participating. To expect a rock-solid, stable, and secure UC on first release would be optimistic at best. Delaying IP telephony spending today to meet business requirements in the hopes of deploying UC tomorrow does not seem prudent.

Application Focus: Microsoft´s UC is focused on the desktop and personal communications. While this is important, what UC does not address is the linking of IT with communications to deliver communication-enabled business process. UC in essence focused on person-to-person communications leaving out system-to-person or system-to-system communications, which have the advantage of extracting ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨system" delay from business process. Nortel promises to bring system-to-person and system-to-system communications to UC through its System Integration business. The question here is can Nortel deliver as its Integration business is young.

Executive IT Will Now Make Communications Buying Decisions: The IP telephony players have seen their customer/audience shift over the years. Cisco helped move the purchasing and design decisions from telecommunication managers to network managers. Avaya and Siemens have started to shift the decision to executive IT departments thanks to their focus on Web Services/SOA. Microsoft has executive IT mindshare and credibility which will accelerate the purchase and design decision to this group, which may be a gift to the IP telephony market. Now executive IT will take charge of communications and be forced to do due diligence by reviewing all architectural options, opening the door and creating a seat at the table for the IP telephony vendors. The real challenge here is that there are many buyers within a single company who purchase e-mail, voice, IM, desktop software, network infrastructure and data center systems. The hope is that the user´s new communications experience will be so great that they will demand their IT executives to deploy UC. This scenario is a leap of faith, albeit a calculated one, that has been proven in the industry before with PCs, LANs, e-mail, etc all of which forced organizational change within IT.

Big Winners: Nortel is the largest winner in Microsoft´s UC announcement, thus far. Nortel has nothing to lose and everything to gain here as Microsoft gives it the tools and credibility to compete against Cisco and Avaya. Siemens may also be a winner as Microsoft will give Siemens´s OpenScape access to MSDN partners. If Siemens plays this opportunity right, it could be a significant communication platform that developers start writing to, broadening Siemens´ potential addressable market. Microsoft is the other potential big winner as it has put in play the $25 billion enterprise voice market, of which it plans to win a sizable share. Cisco is another big winner as nearly every company in the global economy will beef up i´s network infrastructure of switches and routers to accommodate UC.

The Challenged: Cisco´s IP Communications group, Avaya, Mitel, ShoreTel et al., will all be challenged to review their business plans and react to Microsoft´s UC initiative. Those companies who cling to the old model of proprietary phones connecting to an IP-PBX will be the first to lose in the next world of communications. Those who focus on application development, software, and services will be rewarded. Those who stick with hardware and old-fashioned approaches to unified messaging or siloed communication products will lose. The game has changed and for the good; communications is becoming a software and services world based upon general purpose hardware platforms and open end-points.

Advice for IT/Network Business Decision Makers: Microsoft´s UC is a vision and commitment. It could take Microsoft a few years to get it right, but it will get it right. In the near term, there isn´t much to do other than educate yourself on the architecture and how it could be put to work for your company. The key activity to do now is get your network infrastructure ready to support a converged network as Microsoft´s UC will be a converged network accelerator. I strongly encourage you to do an IP readiness assessment and implement service level management tools and techniques. Now is the time to do this planning.

If you are in the middle of an IP telephony roll-out then continue as the depreciation cycles are not seven years any longer, but closer to three. This gives you plenty of time to enjoy the benefits of your IP telephony system and plan how best to utilize UC when it´s available. If you are in the consideration phase with a deployment schedule in mid to late 2007, then you would be delinquent if you didn´t review UC. There will be a flurry of announcements and product enhancements from all the IP telephony vendors as they react to UC over the next year. Plan on giving yourself some time to allow the industry to react to UC, so that you can make an informed decision as to when and how best to deploy. It´s highly likely that all IP telephony vendors will interface into UC. In fact, this will be a competitive differentiation. Also remember, the fact is that your users will get UC on their computers as you deploy Microsoft Office System 2007. UC is inevitable; it will be part of your IT infrastructure.

Welcome to the third phase of IP telephony: the strategic phase, the communications-enabled business process phase. The economy will see another huge productivity boost as this phase takes hold. Business process will never be the same.

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Corporate telecommunication budgets are changing. Voice transmission and toll charges use to dominate service provider bills to corporate customers. Now with the huge growth of mobile services and attractive pricing plans, minutes have shifted toward mobile operators, resulting in mobile bills representing a larger share of corporate telecommunication spending. Case in point, one of our clients is experiencing a 15% decline in wireline and toll use, while wireless minutes are growing at approximately 28% CAGR (compound annual growth rate). The good news for them is that voice minute unit cost is dropping overall by some 3% annum. Another client spends $1.2 million and $600K per year on toll and mobile charges, respectively. The catch is this client has not summed up all mobile spending by employees in remote offices, international sites, etc. We estimate that there is an additional $600K per year of mobile charges buried in expense reports around the company; bringing mobile usage expenditures equal to toll charges. These are but two examples of a systemic change in enterprise communication spending.

This shift in spending is a solid indication of the importance mobility plays in the new enterprise that has emerged over the past eight years. This is represented in mobile phones, smart phones, PDA’s, blackberries, etc., which have become important business communication tools. No longer are mobile devices just for sales executives and road warriors but for everyone. In fact, many of our clients are implementing plans to supply nearly all employees with a smart mobile phone and desktop/laptop softphone. However, the ability to connect mobile phones with IP telephony solutions is one area that is lagging, until now.

The Wireless Advantage

Sprint is one service provider who is uniquely positioned to link the wireless and wired world by connecting CDMA end points i.e., mobile devices, with corporate communication systems. This will allow an increase in productivity by offering seamless access to messaging, common directory services, convenience buttons, follow-me, etc., from any device. Sprint has the vision and ability to execute its investment in IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), and with its acquisition of Nextel, the means to deliver on its Fixed-Mobile Convergence strategy. This strategy is to both link wireless and wired worlds with VoIP services, which deliver increased flexibility, price advantage and seamless mobility.

Sprint’s wireless integration to premise and hosted IP PBX is the next step in extending functionality to the wireless handset. Extending a call to a cellular phone by simultaneously ringing the desk handset and the cellular phone is a well-established technology. One of the leading features on the Avaya Communications Manager software is Extension to Cellular. Extension to Cellular allows the user to seamlessly transfer between desk phone and cell phone.

Sprint, along with Avaya, is taking that technology to the next level. Sprint’s wireless integration could extend the full functionality of Communication Manager to the cellular handset. Sprint has enabled and extended nearly fifteen most commonly used Communication Manager features to mobile phones. For example, 4-digit dialing, 6-way conference calling and all the key features that can be accessed on the desk set can also be accessed on the cellular phone. Wireless integration from Sprint allows legacy PBX access from mobile end points, linking the mobile office with legacy investment in premise based PBX too.

The combination of wireless integration and VoIP initiatives are allowing Sprint to offer new and innovative “Hosted IP Services”. Sprint is leveraging its IMS architecture, enabling the features of a premise based Avaya Communications Manager to be ‘extended’ to a wireless device, (such that the device is seen as a de facto extension of the enterprise). Sprint will add support for other premise solutions in the future. While there are several CPE solutions that enable single voice mail, find me, follow me, and abbreviated dialing from a wireless device, as in the Avaya Extension to Cellular, Sprint’s solution is distinctive in three ways.

1. Sprint can extend any and all features of the premise IP-PBX or legacy PBX to the wireless device
2. Sprint’s service is bilateral, where most CPE services are unilateral. The distinction is important since CPE solutions break down when the wireless device is called directly, as opposed to calling a ‘desk’ number that rings on the mobile device. Since Sprint provides signaling back to the IP-PBX for any call, it can offer IP-PBX or legacy PBX feature overlay independent of how the call came into the mobile device
3. Sprint offers seamless handoffs between desk and wireless device, so customers can take calls on the go that start from the desk phone

Given one and two above, mobile workers can communicate solely wirelessly, and still have the same level of connectivity and feature set they had as if they were using a desk device.

Leveraging IP WANs

Using IMS, Sprint can extend on-net calling to a wireless device, so that calls back into the enterprise do not count against plan minutes, thus reducing mobile bills. For example, on-net or intra-company calls originated from a mobile device will travel over a corporation’s private IP WAN, thus avoiding the consumption and billing of mobile minutes. In short, since a mobile device is an extension of a PBX or IP-PBX, all on-net calls travel over a corporation’s IP WAN independent of end point, i.e., a wired or wireless device. Sprint’s IMS architecture is extended to its hosted IP services by providing enterprise customers IP telephony services to both fixed and mobile end points.

Hosted IP Services

A Hosted IP Service is the hot new market of service providers offering converged voice and data networks. These services enable geographic independence, traffic volume and seasonal scalability while mitigating technology obsolescence risk. Until now, large enterprises were the only companies with the means to invest in premise based IP telephony based solutions. Early adopters saw the enhanced user productivity of these systems and calculated the ROI was worth the benefits. Now Sprint, in partnership with Avaya, is bringing these services to small and mid-sized companies previously excluded from these services mostly due to cost. Sprint’s third party hosting reduces administrative effort, maintains up-to-date capability, and removes any large capital investment in equipment. By removing equipment acquisition cost, Sprint and others are making IP Services available to a wider market segment.

IP contact centers and messaging systems are two popular Hosted IP Services. Hosted contact centers support agents independent of location, cost effectively scale call center growth or reduction, provide screen pops, coordinate call queues and automate voice menus to minimize hold time, and enable managers to supervise and monitor calls in batches or individually. The strategic value of the hosted IP contact center is increased employee efficiency in performing service tasks at a lower cost, which results in satisfied and loyal customers, at a better bottom line.

Hosted messaging systems allow users to easily manage multiple phones (mobile or corporate phones) and voicemail boxes, integrate voicemail, fax, and email, plus access voice and fax messages via a web browser. The strategic value of IP messaging systems are a single access point to collected voice, email, and fax messages regardless of end-device or geographic location of the user. This leads to a simplified user experience by combining previously independent messaging systems.

The Hosted IP Contact Center Sweet Spot: Small to Mid-Sized Firms

The larger a corporation, the greater the likelihood that an IP contact center is being planned and deployed. Forrester Research says that 33+% of companies with more then 20,000 employees, 21% with 20,000 to 5,000 employees, and 16% with 5,000 to 1,000 employees are using or are evaluating IP contact centers. For these firms there are four primary purchase decision factors: reliability, cost, manageability, and scalability.

As companies contemplate the move from legacy to IP, reliability is the biggest decision influence. Companies do not want to run the risk of downtime, interoperability failure with legacy systems, or lost business as a result of upgrade errors. Cost is the second most influential factor followed by the management complexity and ability to scale up or down. Small to mid-size firms have been essentially priced out of the IP contact center market. Many of these firms simply do not have budget or labor resources to create and manage in-house systems until now. Sprint is mitigating adoption concerns and is creating a solution for companies sharing these cost prohibited and migration fears with its Hosted IP Services.

Sprint’s Hosted Contact Center

Sprint’s Hosted Contact Center contains key features necessary in a call center such as simultaneous access to customer records while communicating with customers. Customer records or screen pops are distributed to agents independent of geographic location. Branch offices can be added and removed, as needed, to match business or seasonal growth. Sprint’s Hosted Contact Center solution connects with IP, TDM or analog networks. It also provides centralized queues or distributed flow to route the customer as necessary and avoid on-hold times. Call-center supervisors can manage employees by reviewing phone calls or real-time reports of call operations. Sprint reduces the risk of implementation and management costs through a fully configured and managed out-sourced system.

The centralized hosted service resides on Sprint premises with redundant Avaya network technology, thereby eliminating the potential for single-point of failure and providing business continuity. Barrier of entry pricing is reduced through a pay-per-seat subscription model, which guarantees predictable monthly expenses and avoids capital equipment acquisition. Sprint assumes all the management responsibility and provides up-to-date software and hardware upgrades. Call-centers can keep their existing agent devices and practices, minimizing training and increased ease-of-use. All of these benefits together provide a reliable service that lowers the barrier of contact center entry for small to medium sized firms.

Sprint’s Hosted Messaging

Sprint’s Hosted Messaging is a three-tiered solution to simplify management of multiple phones and voicemail boxes. Sprint’s “Basic Voice Messaging” allows standard voicemail capability without the need to bring this technology into a company’s premises. Its “Enhanced Messaging” allows the combination of voice, email and fax into one access point, which can be retrieved from any telephone or internet-ready browser. The “Mobile Messaging” service unifies wired and wireless messaging into one mailbox for easy access.

The benefits of Sprint’s Hosted Messaging include integration with existing networks, allowing users to keep familiar end-devices and increasing ease-of-use. This requires little or no capital investment, training, or management. Additional cost reduction is achieved through out-sourced pay-per-seat subscription models, which guarantee monthly expenses. The messaging system leads to improved productivity for employees as it simplifies existing solutions into one combined system accessible from any telephone or computer. Hosted messaging also resides on a redundant Avaya network within Sprint premises. This hosted IP service maintains reliability, reduces capital and operational cost, and scales to the number of users needing its features and capability.

Sprint is offering contact center and messaging via Hosted IP Services, which have, until now, been out of reach to the small and mid-sized enterprise markets. By reducing costs and guaranteeing reliability and interoperability with legacy systems, Sprint is reducing barriers to adoption. It’s linking of wireless and wireline messaging is but a first step in the full integration of mobile and private IP telephony communication systems. With mobility, such a strong and growing component to an enterprise’s communication needs, linking wireless with Hosted IP Services has the right ingredients for Sprint’s sale force to receive a warm enterprise reception.

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Cisco´s network security program has been a huge success. Its self-defending network ad campaign has won advertising awards and deservedly so as they communicate the power a network has to secure an IT environment in the simplest of terms. Cisco´s trusted network investments are as huge as its wins. It´s number one in terms of market share and revenues in Worldwide Firewall/VPN security appliances, and Network intrusion detection and prevention, according to IDC. They clearly have thought leadership and the prowess to organize a market segment around their security technology as its Network Admission Control or NAC program has demonstrated. But with all of Cisco´s success NAC remains elusive to most organizations. Why? Because it´s too complex and extremely costly.

Network Admission Control: A Primer

While anti-virus (AV) software is a first defense from exploits propagating throughout a network it´s not foolproof since most AV software is signature-based and so cannot block zero-day attacks. Also, in most if not all corporations, enterprises have both trusted and non-trusted end-points requesting access to IT resources over local, wide and wireless access networks. Network Admission Control or NAC provides a defensive solution to validate end-points, deliver a second level of defense mechanism, and protect IT assets from end-points it cannot control or that do not have AV installed.

Controlling admission to the network and containing exploits if and when they break through defenses is the job of embedded network security services. In a NAC environment, end-points requesting access to IT resources are assessed based upon their posture. If their posture does not conform to a set of policies defined by the IT department, they are quarantined into a safe VLAN until they are in compliance. The network may offer a pop-up menu instructing the user on how to bring his/her system into compliance. Once the end-point is in compliance, the user may access IT resources based upon programmed corporate rules and policies embedded in the back-end policy server(s).

Pre- and post-admission controls offer IT departments important tools to control that can access the LAN and what resources on the LAN those users can reach. Gone are the days when every employee plugged into the network and was offered universal access to all IT assets. Full access control not only controls admission to the LAN but also controls access to all networked resources. As part of this post-admission control, users can be assigned quality of service and placed into a stratified set of network services. For guest users, where IT departments do not have control over client software, controlling network access offers a check point to assess the guest posture, monitor for exploits, and apply policy such as permitting access only to the Internet.

NAC authenticates users and assesses the security posture of the end-point before it is allowed to come onto the LAN. This check is very important from a security and control point of view. NAC is distance independent meaning end-points from any location must first have their posture assessed before they are allowed access.

Building upon NAC is NIC or Network Incident Control. In addition to controlling network access, controlling the propagation of exploits or incident containment is the second most important embedded network security service. The network collects security posture of the network and is alarmed based upon anomalistic behavior. Once alarmed, the network has the ability to contain the exploit by shutting down ports, flows, VLANs, etc. NIC sounds great but most CSOs and CIOs say it will take a long time before they are comfortable with schemes like NIC and are willing to turn on the auto-pilot and let the network self defend.

NAC´s Woes

The concept of NAC and NIC are simple to explain but very difficult to implement, especially NIC. Enterprises want the ability to provide admittance control but they are taking a wait and see on buying Cisco. There are few large installations of NAC due to its high complexity, acquisition and operational cost. One firm recently purchased a new network infrastructure of catalyst switched and Cisco routers and spent some $600K doing so. To implement Cisco´s NAC across this environment would require an additional $500K of acquisition cost and the implementation of some 80 appliances across their network. The thought of managing 80 appliances was enough to scare the heck out of the IT organization. There are NAC technology glitches also being reported, such as NAC appliances dropping network ports when switching from a data to a voice VLAN.

NAC Implementation is Daunting

Consider what it takes to add NAC to a LAN environment. First switches need to be upgraded for 802.1x access authentication, if not currently supported. Then client software such as Cisco Trust Agent or Cisco Security Agent is installed on all trusted end-points. Then authentication failure and guest VLANs need to be configured and implemented plus the addition of security appliances and modules such as a captive portal, firewall blade, clean access quarantine server, NAC policy server and NAC PE agent on routers and switches are added. Adding IP telephony to this environment requires adding voice VLANs and QoS upgrades to switches and routers. Adding WLANs to this environment requires the addition of appliances or modules such as location servers, wireless IDS, WLAN Blade and a SUP 720.

Alternative Admission Control Strategies

The barriers to entry for Cisco´s NAC are high as outlined above. But Cisco has done an excellent job educating the market and creating demand. In short, enterprises want admission control now. So many are looking at network admission control approaches from start-up firms such as ConSentry Networks and Lockdown Networks as well as from Nortel, ProCurve Networking by HP, 3Com, Foundry Networks and Extreme Networks.

ConSentry Networks

ConSentry, which won best of show at Interop in Las Vegas in May, 2006 offers its LANShield Controller appliances called CS1000 and CS2400 for low and high density deployments respectively. The ConSentry Controllers provide NAC end-point authentication and posture check, visibility including incident- and exception-based information at Layer 7+ tied to user identity, role-based provisioning for user access control, and threat control to block propagation of exploits including zero-day attacks. In addition to the Controller, ConSentry recently announced its LANShield Switch, which combines the same per-user, per-application controls with integrated switching, eliminating the need for a second platform for customers who are upgrading their switches.

To manage post-admission access, ConSentry offers its InSight command center, which provides IT with incident-based per-user, per-flow information plus templates to easily create and distribute policies for role-based access and exploit control. The ConSentry platforms work with existing identity stores, such as Active Directory and RADIUS, to tie all traffic back to the user and learn user roles to apply access policies. ConSentry will also work with the Microsoft NAP initiative and the Trusted Computing Group´s TNC specification as they´re available. The key to ConSentry´s pre- and post-admission control capabilities is its LANShield silicon ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ a 128-core processor and two programmable ASICs that provide secure traffic processing at 10 Gbps speeds. This custom silicon ensures that securing the LAN won´t slow it down.

Lockdown Networks

Lockdown Networks offers its Enforcer NAC appliance which authenticates end-points and users, then audits sessions either on-schedule or on-demand to ensure conformance with IT and security policies. The Lockdown Enforcer employs policy-based access control to deny access to or quarantine end-points that do not conform to IT administrator-defined rules. In addition to the Enforcer appliance is the Lockdown Auditor, which is a policy manager to configure IT access rules.

Lockdown Networks primary products are its Enforcer appliance, which integrates authentication, assessment, enforcement and remediation for network end-points and provides policy-based access control interfacing with a wide range of switch and access point vendors automatically granting access or quarantining end-points based on conformance to policy rules; its Auditor, which checks end-point conformance both on-schedule and on-demand; its Commander software which is a centralized policy manager and reporting engine and is used to configure and manage the Enforcer and Auditor; and its Sentry and AuditPoint products to deliver NAC services at reduced price points to remote offices.

The above two start-ups are simplifying NAC configuration and deployment and have packaged NAC services into an appliance, which significantly reduces the barrier of entry of network admission control. Larger network infrastructure players such as ProCurve Networking by HP, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Nortel et al., are leveraging the Trusted Network Connect work, which provides a standardized way to deliver NAC.

Cisco will get NAC right eventually. It usually takes Cisco one or two business cycles to incorporate customer feedback into engineering to correct its mistakes. In the meantime, Cisco has educated the market for its competitors, an odd place for Cisco to be.

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In Lippis Report Issues 52, 54 and 56 I discussed the growing market for hosted IP services. I explored hosted IP contact centers, the hybrid public/private IP telephony model and the favorable economics behind hosted IP telephony for the small to medium and multi-national firm. On May 2nd in a small conference room full of industry analysts in Las Vegas and streamed to hundreds of other analysts around the globe, Avaya announced its ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Avaya On Demand" solutions at Interop. This was one of the most significant announcements in the hosted marketplace, and is important for three reasons: first, Avaya is the only equipment supplier to offer two physical hosted arrangements with equipment being in an Avaya or a partner´s data center; second, Avaya´s go to market strategy, or channel strategy, is unique and compelling since it enables margin starved VARs who previously only supplied equipment to customers to now offer residual based hosted services; third, pricing is set at attractive rates. In this Lippis Report we review the ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Avaya On Demand" (AOD) service, its potential implications and discuss which market segments are best served by it.

The Avaya on Demand solution enables their intelligent communications to be offered as a service versus a capital acquisition. Applications are hosted in an Avaya-operated data center which offers 24×7 monitoring and management by certified experts plus security and redundancy at both application and infrastructure levels. Three IP services are offered: 1) modular IP telephony; 2) messaging; and 3) contact center. All three services are priced on a pay-as-you-go per user/per month basis. AOD is based upon Avaya´s Communications Manager call processing and applications which make them enterprise-class with modular functionality. AOD is thus scalable from 100 employees to hundreds of thousands.

Customers will gain a new dimension of flexibility and risk mitigation which we have reviewed in detail in Lippis Report Issue 52. Some of the key customer benefits are economic as capital cost is traded-off against operational spend. In short, AOD allows customers to avoid large capital spend on an IP telephony solution and its associated operational management. AOD cost is based upon per user/per month with Avaya or its channel partners supplying all equipment and end-points. As AOD is a hosted service, new users or applications can be added expeditiously based upon business demands with the main constraint being wide area bandwidth availability to support increased load. AOD allows enterprises to scale their communication needs up and down, whether they be new applications, sites, seasonality, etc. For highly distributed organizations AOD can deliver a consistent user experience and brand image independent upon site location.

AOD presents new design options that best fit an organization´s requirements and constraints. For example, some enterprises may elect to implement a fully hosted model serving all sites. Others may choose the hybrid model (Lippis Report Issue 54) where headquarters has implemented a private IP telephony solution while remote locations are served by hosted services. In another twist to the hybrid model, for some corporations who have a PBX installed at headquarters, remote locations could be served by a hosted solution combining TDM with IP telephony across public and private facilities, thanks to Q-sig integration providing feature transparency between hosted and on premises solutions. Yet some corporations may choose to use a hosted solution for seasonality overflow or disaster recovery, particularly popular in contact center installations.

IP telephony On Demand

AOD offers three IP hosted services: IP telephony, contact centers and messaging. The IP telephony on demand service is based upon Avaya´s Communication Manager supporting it, full 700+ feature package and integrated messaging. Each end-user has its own configurable instance of communication manager allowing customization and personalization of their functionality and hard or soft IP phone end-points. Mobility, one number accessibility, IP softphone, easy phone, follow-me, etc., can be added as an option. Avaya provided an average list pricing of $25/user/month which includes platform, hardware, software, services, phones and gateways. See Lippis Report Issue 56 to compare Avaya´s pricing to a private IP telephony implementation.

Contact Center On Demand

The Contact Center On Demand service is a modular solution with a range of options starting with a value-priced ?¢‚ǨÀúmidsize business edition with basic inbound call center capabilities, reporting and CTI programming. But, from there, the solution is highly scalable in terms of number of agents and advanced applications supported. Customers can access the full enterprise class functionality of an Avaya contact center in a hosted model. Additional options are Interaction Center, Operational Analyst, Self Service Interactive Response or Voice Portal, Proactive Contact, Witness Call Recording and Advanced Routing. The average list price range is between $50-$150/agent/month which includes IP telephony, platform hardware, applications, services, IP agent, phones and gateways. Pricing varies based upon the number of applications included in the package and number of agents deployed.

Messaging On Demand

The Messaging On Demand service offers basic messaging and simple voicemail features. This service can be enhanced with advanced features such as find-me and follow-me. The messaging service can be added to IP telephony On Demand as they are well integrated. This solution can scale from a handful to millions of mailboxes. Average list pricing for the enhanced messaging solution is $5/mailbox/month which includes platform hardware, software and services. While this solution can be integrated with IP telephony or contact center, enterprises can also implement messaging on demand to replace an old end-of-life messaging solution.

A New Channel Strategy for Hosted IP Services

Apart from the IP services offering of AOD, one of its major differentiators is Avaya´s go to market strategy. Avaya has developed three channels for AOD. The first channel, which Avaya has used for a few years, is a traditional model where service providers host and resell the solution bundled with their network. Avaya´s equipment will be hosted in a partner´s data center and that service provider will offer hosted IP services under their own brand with a ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨powered by Avaya" tag line. Sprint is an excellent example of this partner relationship. The next two channels are unique, different and exciting. In addition to the traditional model, Avaya will host their equipment in their data center where Avaya will sell direct to their strategic and named accounts, which are large global accounts where the above hosted IP services will be Avaya branded. This channel model is only available to customers that are already direct Avaya customers. The third channel allows Avaya´s authorized business partners to white label the on demand IP services which are hosted by Avaya. This third channel is a wholesale model focused on delivering hosted IP services to the mid market and provides these VARs with a new business model and value added solution for their customers.

The last two channels represent an evolution in or change to the existing service provider delivery model. Avaya says it has based AOD from its largest customers and key business partners. I´m bullish on the indirect channel as it offers new revenue and customer relationship opportunities for Avaya´s business partners, system integrators and service providers. This should be good news for existing integrators and VARs that service the mid market as their relationship with customers were transactional, selling equipment then in many cases never to be seen again. Equipping them with a service that significantly lowers the barrier of entry for an IP telephony solution which is backed by training and support should provide them a warm reception. Perhaps most importantly, this provides these channel partners with a continuous revenue stream and an on-going relationship with their customers.

Avaya will inject quality in the channel by requiring an ?¢‚Ǩ?ìOn Demand" reseller agreement, defining an enterprise certified partner, and providing knowledge transfer for selling services to assure consistency across the three channels, and most importantly, training and support.

First Round of Fifteen Partners

Avaya presented fifteen partners which represented all three hosted IP services in the three channels providing a global foot print. The traditional channel service provider hosted partners which sell AOD under their own brand are: Telus in Canada offering IP telephony On Demand, Sprint in North America offering the entire on demand portfolio, Teletech offering the contact center on demand service on a global basis, Equant offering IP telephony and contact center on demand on a global basis, Colt offering IP telephony on demand in the EMEA, NA and CALA geographies, Telecom Italia offering the contact center on demand service in Italy, and PLDT offering the contact center on demand service in APAC.

For the indirect channel built upon Avaya hosting its own equipment in its own data center there were six business partners announced. Relational, Carousel, SPS, Cross Telecom, DTSI and Netversant all are offering the IP telephony and messaging on demand services in North America. It´s an impressive list and foot print, especially knowing that this is just the beginning of the roll-out with many more service providers and business partners to come.

XM Radio goes AOD

XM Radio is an AOD customer. It´s the leader in satellite radio services and is in a high growth mode which is always accompanied by changing requirements. As many of you would expect, the holiday season is big for satellite radio providers. One month out of the year XM´s contact center resources more than double to handle holiday call volume. Their agent requirements balloon from 1600 agents to more than 3000. Rather than design for peak traffic and pay the high operational and capital cost to accommodate the demand, XM decided to invest in AOD to support their seasonality overflow. They required rich contact center applications and an IP/hybrid solution as we discussed in Lippis Report Issue 54. They also utilize AOD as a backup disaster recovery solution. The bottom line, XM avoided over building their contact center, they were able to integrate their existing contact center with AOD to support remote agents and the additional 1400 agents required during the holiday season.

Analysis: Open Questions For Avaya

Avaya is off to a great start in their hosted IP services offering. They say that AOD will initially be available only in North America, with plans to globalize over the next 12 months. AOD is available now in NA, but only through the specially authorized partners listed above and Avaya direct sales. There will be additional fees for network assessment, custom design, or application integration.

The two main AOD questions for Avaya are how to make custom applications work across hybrid models of private Avaya implementations and AOD, and how much wide area bandwidth is required. It´s anticipated that many Avaya customers will choose AOD for remote sites while building their own contact centers and IP telephony implementations in larger facilities. As Avaya and others open up interfaces to call control through SIP and web services, IT developers will write custom applications that inject communications into business process. The question is how does Avaya support those customers and assure that their custom applications transcend public and private implementations?

The second question is wide area bandwidth requirements. AOD provides all equipment needed, but what remains on customers sites are IP phones and gateways requiring call signaling to travel over the wide area to the service provider or Avaya´s data center, depending on provider. What is needed is a model to determine wide area bandwidth requirements in the new design.

There will be differences between service providers and the offerings from the AOD business partners. Some may bundle long distance and other services such as transport while others will offer only AOD. This is good news and represents choice. I like the design of buying bandwidth from one supplier and AOD from another as bandwidth is a commodity and should be purchased as such. Channel conflict is another question as well since Avaya may find it self competing with its larger service provider partners in deals with Avaya´s large customers which it services directly.

AOD represents a new paradigm in channel strategy and design options for a wide range of medium to large customers. It also represents the re-entry of Avaya into the service provider market at the same time that Lucent, its onetime parent, is gobbled up by Alcatel. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the executives at Lucent must be kicking themselves for letting Avaya go.

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All of the major contact center providers such as Avaya, Nortel, Siemens, Genesys, Cisco, Alcatel plus NEC and Huawei in Asia Pacific are addressing short and long term challenges and opportunities in their contact center offerings. In the short term, most are providing incremental functions and features such as SIP, presence, mobility, reporting, etc. What differentiates these players are their market share and long term vision. The ones who embrace web services and SOA, enabling IT developers to mold, shape and inject communications deeply into business process, will be the winners. For IT departments are starting to view contact centers as one of the leverage points for IP telephony to deliver on its productivity promise.

Beyond Screen Pops

Contact centers have always been tightly linked to business process in the most critical of functions, the interface to customers. Ten to twenty years ago screen popping was the huge break-through allowing integration between telephony and computing, delivering customer information to agents, and allowing those agents to either respond quickly to issues or cross/up sell a customer. Contact centers have come a long way from the early days of screen pops and are being equipped to literally transform business process.

Most if not all contact center managers are focused on three primary short-term challenges. First is achieving operational goals of productivity and efficiency, customer satisfaction and service level targets. These are day to day operational management challenges. Second is ensuring that customer interfaces are powerful and highly usable while empowering agents with tools and information they need to resolve customer issues or transactions quickly. Third is a focus on return on investment usually meaning minimizing project risk and total cost of ownership while ensuring investment protection.

Next Generation Contact Centers

Next generation contact centers are increasing an agent´s access to knowledge workers, linking deeper into the back-end of enterprise applications while offering customers a wide range of options to contact to the enterprise. On this last point, many contact center providers are adding multi-modal that is multiple ways for customers to connect into a contact center, be it by a phone, web, IM, chat, desktop video cam, etc., to address the styles in which a customers chooses to communicate.

Some developers may have the view that today´s telephony technology allows for a great deal of flexibility. For example, developers can write programs that turn calls into e-mail and/or audio files. Developers can offer contact center agents the ability to communicate with customers via interactive desktops too. But to enable these communication services requires developers to cross communication silos of e-mail, v-mail, chat, instant messaging, etc., all with their own set of complexities. IP converges application silos onto one network, but the application integration is still too complex and brittle. To cross these silos developers often find themselves with an ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨n-squared" problem to write to and most importantly to maintain. The ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨n-squared" problem is unsuitable for use as a foundation for business-critical processes.

Contact center provider´s short term product improvements should enable a longer term goal of communications enabled business process. One foot note, long term here is twelve to eighteen months. Many of the above mentioned vendors are either offering or are planning to offer development platforms which abstract the complexities of their proprietary protocols as well as telephony specific APIs such as JTAPI, TAPI, CTI I and CTI II, SIP for web services/SOA. As web services are embraced, IT departments will then have the tools to add communications to business process reliably.

Business Process Modeling and Communications

Firms as such as M1 Global and SpanLink offer business process modeling as a front-end to contact center technology through web services allowing IT departments or developers to quickly describe a business process and generate xml code to automate that process. In this environment, there is no difference between a data base query or a click-to-call or click-to-conference subtask.

Communications software as a web service that can be massively consumed at a business level without the heavy burden of CTI-style integration, provided that web service is underpinned by an SOA, offers enormous opportunities for developers and enterprises. IT departments will be empowered to link communications to corporate databases, workflow and knowledge management software and other resources to support business decision-making. IT departments will increasingly contribute to a discussion on how to improve and transform what a business does and how it does it. IT, system integrators and even independent software vendors will be able to look at a business´s current applications and determine, based on business process demands, what elements need to be re-factored into discrete intelligent communication services. Gone are the days of writing communication applications without the knowledge, rules and assumptions of the business process.

IT developers will have no other choice but to embrace web services and SIP. IT developers will have to embrace this software-only platform to move forward. An increasing number of new services will emerge on the web services platform, driven mainly by enterprise demand. The platform will be increasingly more reliable, scalable, and secure as platform suppliers compete and increase their investments. Programmer improvements such as drop and drag services on a developer palette in commercially accepted service creation environments will speed development time by the rapid use of re-usable code.

The world of IT and telecommunications service creation is pushing everything in the direction of a SOA-based platform. For developers if you´re reluctant or slow to change, unfortunately your business will become increasingly diminished. The enterprise developer has already started to move in this direction and is the early adopter. IT management is increasingly the decision maker in telecom.

Customer-Facing Enterprise

Perhaps one of the best examples of how communications-enabled web services can transform a business is by creating a customer-facing organization. As mentioned above, the evolution of the contact center is both expanding the agent pool to include knowledge workers and linking agent interactions with business applications and process. Agents are increasingly requiring more access to enterprise resources thanks to web services providing the programming interface into business process. Agents have been building ad hoc ways of reaching back into the enterprise. Many leverage public IM services to find experts within their own enterprise to address customer issues. This has opened up security issues, is not measurable and does not provide journaling. The effectiveness of the agent reaching into the enterprise for assistance is situational upon the agent´s experience and the size of their professional network. Enterprises can systematize this and measure it so knowledge workers can be part of an agent´s network.

Web services will tighten the linkage between agents and their enterprise back office systems. After an agent´s interaction with a customer and transaction is completed, the enterprise needs to know what occurred and take action upon it. This linking of agents to back office systems and enabling a more structured way in which they can reach into the enterprise are opportunities that IT departments are seizing.

IT developers can write communications-enabled web services business applications, which allow agents to communicate via web chat session with customers and knowledge workers.Currently, no one is managing knowledge workers as they are increasingly being included in the agent pool. What is the impact to the enterprise when knowledge workers are part of a customer-facing organization? If the agents can reach a knowledge worker, what does that do to their productivity? Manage and control are key areas where vendors can add value. Also, adding value to administrator reporting tools in a web services-enhanced contact center is another market need and opportunity for vendors.

Web services interfaces into management functions are another key value add for IT developers. There are opportunities to develop management tools that build and integrate across the enterprise. Enterprises continue to have a lot of legacy, which will not change any time soon. Integrating legacy IT systems into an SOA context with management tools offers tremendous areas of vendor opportunity.

So which vendors are best positioned? The ones who embrace web services and SOA enabling IT developers to mold, shape and inject communications deeply into business process. Also the ones with a plan that can show you how their short term product improvements lead to a web services/SOA world.

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Nick Lippis interviews Andre Kindness, ProCurve Networking by HP on their largest product announcement to date. In this podcast I ask Andre to give us the bottom line on their new 5400, 3500, 6200 and 10 Gb modules for their 8100 core switch. One of the key points here is the integration of Power of Ethernet, network security and enhanced mobility features built into their 3rd generation of ProVision ASCI. As usual I give my take on the announcement at the end of the podcast.

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The Alcatel and Lucent merger was announced while we were preparing this edition of the Lippis Report. It only makes sense that as the service provider market consolidates so too does the industry supply chain. The service providers have gone through bankruptcy and consolidation phases over the last five years. With service providers focusing around broadband, enterprise customers and mobility further consolidation is very likely. With a smaller number of more powerful buyers of telecommunications equipment it´s only natural that there will be a smaller number of equipment vendors. Which brings us to Alcatel and Lucent.

On April 2nd Alcatel and Lucent Technologies announced that they will merge and form the world´s leading communication solutions provider. Some highlights: the combined company will have a financial base and revenues of approximately USD $25 billion based on calendar 2005 results; the new Alcatel is larger than Cisco by some 20%, albeit Cisco´s main revenues come from the enterprise market; the new Alcatel will be a global convergence leader with one of the largest and most comprehensive wireless, wireline and services portfolio in the industry; they will also have one of the largest global communications R&D capabilities in the world. From a management point of view, Serge Tchuruk is to be non-executive chairman, while Lucent´s Patricia Russo will be the CEO, based in Paris. There will be equal board representation from both companies in this merger of equals.

My take: I´m skeptical that this will work

I have not seen a merger of equals work in our industry. Someone has to take charge, especially in a mixed cultural environment such as the new Alcatel. Also, I have no idea what a non-executive chairman is and what role Serge Tchuruk has? Also the fact that Patricia Russo will be the CEO in Paris while her office is in NJ does not bode well for stability and leadership for the new Alcatel. It´s not that I don´t have confidence in Ms. Russo, it´s just the distance and cultural divide between the concerns is too great. This will take a long time to sort out, if the merger is approved. It´s not clear if the new Alcatel will turn into a Bay Networks which was the merger of equals of Wellfleet Communications and SynOptics. Bay was never able to gain a footing to compete effectively with Cisco, the sole reason for merging. Their problem was a distance and cultural issue too, but their differences were between east and west coast in the same country. In the end Bay was acquired by Nortel.

True the new Alcatel will have its revenues nearly split between North America and Europe with each contributing approximately 35%, with the remaining 30% coming from Asia, the Caribbean & Latin America and the Middle East & Africa. This and the Bell Labs resource do differentiate the new Alcatel from Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, Ericsson, et al. But Lucent will now be part of the French Socialist state with larger pension and retirement plans than its American and European competitors. There will be a reduction by 10% in the combined force of 26,000 over the next 3 years and the new Alcatel does see about $1.7B worth of efficiencies too. Chances are that most of this reduction in force may come on the US side as it´s more difficult to fire French employees in France.

This may be Cisco´s golden opportunity to aggressively take share in the service provider market. It knows how to take advantage of a competitor when it´s in the fog of re-organization and re-structuring. The communications world continues to move toward a converged voice, video and data model on IP for which Cisco is so well positioned.

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By some projections the hosted IP telephony (HIPT) market is either going to be big or simply huge. InfoTech, for example, says that 25% of total telephone line shipments in the next 3 to 5 years will connect into HIPT services. For reference, there are approximately 400 million telephone lines worldwide. They also anticipate that HIPT revenue will grow from $31 million in 2005 to nearly $6B in 2010! That is staggering growth. Meeting that demand are service providers, over 60 of them offering HIPT services in the US with another 60+ outside, according to InfoTech.

HIPT can thank Centrex for its rosy outlook. One of the reasons HIPT is projected to grow so fast is that Centrex customers proved that the market responds favorably to the outsourced, centralized management model. HIPT services are distance independent, meaning that they can satisfy demands of global or multi-national concerns as well as local or regional organizations with the same feature set. Large organizations with many offices in one geography, such as the US, can gain the same benefits. Centrex services were notorious for their slow response and high fees for moves, adds and change (MAC) request. While HIPT service provider MAC fees differ, response to them is the same; most offer changes within 24 hours thanks to the mobility features of IP. The HIPT experience or feature set is deeper and up to date as well, making HIPT the Centrex replacement.

Three HIPT Service Types

There are three primary HIPT service options being offered: 1) a service provider offers a dedicated connection manager (IP PBX) exclusively for your company´s use; 2) a service provider manages your connection manager on your site as well as associated end-points (some refer to this arrangement as a managed service); and 3) a service provider offers a connection manager which serves many companies much like the PSTN works today. Traditional service providers such as Sprint, Equant, Telecom Italia, COLT, AT&T, Verizon, British Telecom, et al., are offering HIPT services. Service providers offer installation, ongoing maintenance and management, plus end-points (handsets and softphones) while managing the connection manager and associated connectivity. The larger service providers have been aggressively incenting corporations to move off of frame relay to their MPLS platform, which is the transport for their HIPT service offerings. All of these service providers are offering Avaya, Cisco and Nortel connection manager equipment and associated end-points as part of their HIPT solution.

The Hybrid Public/Private IP telephony Deployment Model

With the IP telephony or convergence implementation decision focused on ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨when will I" vs. ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨should I", many planners are now examining their deployment approach. The public vs. private question is starting to gain weight in these deliberations, thanks to the growing number of HIPT offerings. This public/private decision is common in IT as it is considered for a wide range of infrastructure services such as mainframes, data centers, storage, applications and communications. In communications many IT planners are focusing on a hybrid public and private model vs. one or the other. The model that is emerging is one that utilizes HIPT service for outpost, small, remote and regional offices, with private IP telephony installations at large campuses or headquarters facilities. In short, the model is go public where you don´t have staff and stay private where you do. Clearly two of the biggest issues to consider when analyzing the public vs. private question are: 1) how much control do I want; and 2) is the three-year economic picture favorable?

At small or remote offices, most IT organizations have little to no control already, so a public IP telephony solution is easy to accept on the first criteria. But the thinking for public services at remote sites transcends this one, yet very important, issue. Private IP telephony cost is too high for the remote and branch locations of most organizations. Some have suggested that acquisition cost for the remote office is moot. This thinking follows from the fact that connection management is usually centralized across two large sites leaving end-points as the largest capital cost component in the remote office. The difficulty with this thinking is that gateways are required at the remote site too which require local survivability and thus add acquisition cost. HIPT services provide both gateways and end-points.

As to end-points, there is still much uncertainty around standards and their impact on pricing. As SIP or Session Initiation Protocol end-points gain momentum, expect $600 to $800 end-points to drop to $100. HIPT insulates organizations from this dynamic and potential dead end. The biggest cost component in the economic evaluation of the public/private remote office IP telephony decision is the fact that connectivity, support and operations, over large distance, dominates total cost of ownership which will drive most toward HIPT solutions. For example, with HIPT IT staff do not have to control or manage software versions, configuration, maintenance, etc.

Helping to reduce HIPT connectivity cost is SIP trunking. SIP trunks from service providers, as detailed in Sprint´s March 9th announcement , will provide a direct IP connection to a service provider´s HIPT service reducing local toll charges and simplifying network configuration. Equipment suppliers such as Avaya support SIP trunking which is certified with service providers. Cisco´s unified Call Manager 5.0 is rumored to support SIP trunks and end-points when it ships later this year.

Since most small, remote and branch sites are equipped with less IT staff, their readiness for IP telephony is uncertain and questionable. HIPT service providers routinely perform a readiness assessment as part of their deployment service. If you´re big enough the cost is free. Outside of control and economic considerations in the public/private decision, integration with existing systems is another important criterion especially for sites with little to no IT support. This again is another benefit of HIPT as the service providers will either integrate or replace legacy systems while implementing the HIPT service.

Risk Mitigation Strategy

Security and reliability concerns tend to be part of the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìhow much control am I willing to give up" decision. Reliability can be managed with service provider SLAs (Service Level Agreements) while many service providers are differentiating their HIPT solutions with security offerings; for example, AT&T is offering Aurora to its customers. Aurora is a threat management system used in its Global Network Operations Center for 24/7 real time comprehensive information security management.Aurora provides real time data correlation and security monitoring of the internet and its transport services. It also provides AT&T customers with situational awareness reporting, active incident investigation and case management plus trending analysis and predictive security alerting across all systems, networks and intelligence inputs. Look for most service providers to offer network security monitoring services. In addition, HIPT offerings are housed in secure, redundant and hardened data centers, which are much more secure than a telecom closet in a branch. Also service provider HIPT data centers utilize shared power, physical security, backup, and HVAC all of which are state-of-the-art. As mentioned above local survivability is an option with remote office gateways, but I strongly recommend it as it increases the reliability and availability of the HIPT service.

Technology obsolescence is always a concern and risk to be mitigated. HIPT does provide mitigation of technology obsolescence as the service provider owns and manages the equipment plus upgrades, eliminating this risk and task from IT staff, which is non trivial for a large number of offices spread over large distances. The hybrid model may not eliminate the complex evaluation and negotiation process of IP telephony equipment as many will undertake this task for their largest facilities, but an HIPT decision will relegate the small, remote outpost and regional sites to a service provider selection process, which is far less complex than equipment purchase decisions. Also the astute planner can sign an HIPT service contract with a service provider that is usually a shorter time frame than a business would consider the depreciation period of hardware; i.e., seven to ten years. The time horizon flexibility allows planners to hedge their bets by using HIPT for a time duration until standards, service delivery and technology have matured to a level that comforts the IT planner. This economic flexibility option is generally not available in the private IP telephony purchase option.

CIOs and their staffs are interested in HIPT solutions for a number of reasons. HIPT services allow CIOs to insulate their business from standards fluctuations and pre-standard equipment, which is the current state of the industry. To this end, HIPT offerings provide flexibility to change out IP end-points, while private implementations are usually locked in by the choice of the IP telephony equipment supplier. However, both Avaya and Nortel will connect Cisco IP phones into their connection manager. HIPT, for sites with no IT resources, enables faster implementation of IP communication applications and mitigates risk and uncertainty of deployment and integration over a large number of geographically dispersed sites. E-911 is a major concern in the IP telephony industry as costly third party services are required to register end-points with emergency service organizations, and the installation of one analog PSTN line per site just for 911 service is usually required. HIPT services offer solid E-911 services eliminating the need for both the analog line plus the end-point registration service.

Another key consideration for small, remote, outpost offices is that they change more frequently than regional or headquarter sites. The HIPT solution offers greater flexibility to accommodate this scaling up and down of sites and personnel since HIPT services scale in direct proportion to bandwidth connecting the facility to the service. When a new office opens, all that would be required is local bandwidth, a gateway plus end-points and the HIPT service is operational. The same is true during facility closure.

While the hybrid model is most favorable for large organizations, HIPT services may find a warm reception from multi-nationals, mid-range firms and small enterprises.The balance between economics and control will guide most CIOs in their decisions. The good news is there are choices available to companies as they plan to build out their converged networks.

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Q: Nick Lippis: I made the assertion in Lippis Report Volume 45 ProCurve Networking by HP Enters Trusted Networks and WAN Routing Markets that Carly Fiorina had restricted the ProCurve Networking by HP business because of HP´s relationship with Cisco. The last time we met you disagreed with me on that assertion. How does ProCurve Networking by HP balance a tricky relationship with its corporate parent, HP, who has a deep and successful business relationship with one of your largest competitors?

A: John McHugh: Truly, there´s no ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨balancing" to be done. HP is committed to ProCurve, investing in the business to ensure that we continue meeting customer needs. As a result of this commitment, ProCurve continues to execute on our robust and comprehensive business model. We have secured the number-two market position worldwide and are now viewed by leading industry analysts as the premier challenger to Cisco. To meet the needs of a wide range of customers in the commercial networking area, HP invests directly in the ProCurve Networking business and also partners with Cisco. HP´s Cisco alliance allows HP to provide services and consulting to address complex, proprietary, end-to-end solutions in the most challenging of business environments. For our part, ProCurve partners with both the HP Services organization and the channel to deliver a wide
range of service and support offerings. While one can speculate on the potential of other business models being adopted by HP,
the fact is that since Ms. Fiorina structured ProCurve to focus on open market competitiveness, the business unit has taken more market share, grown larger and become more profitable than it did during the previous 15 years of HP investment in enterprise
networking.

Q: Nick Lippis: How will convergence change the networking industry and the ProCurve Networking by HP group over the next several years?

A: John McHugh: ProCurve has long understood that the industry is headed toward convergence, and as part of our focus we have been working to help drive it and shape it. It´s a fundamental part of the Adaptive EDGE Architecture and we already have products and solutions that address convergence and are convergence-ready. As for how convergence will change the networking industry, there´s a way to go before the industry at large is ready for convergence. A big part of that readiness revolves around
industry standards. Through key roles in industry standards communities, ProCurve is helping to lead and drive the key standards that will be important for convergence over the next several years. Our strategy is to have an infrastructure that supports customer demands. For instance, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a big part of the convergence boom, and our Adaptive EDGE Architecture infrastructure can be used with any phone product and VoIP service. In addition to standards leadership, ProCurve also invests in software and management tools that support convergence. The intelligent edge strategy takes the approach that a
network needs to understand what kind of device is connecting to it and behave accordingly. For example, if it´s a phone for VoIP, the network needs to automatically provide QoS. Through our ProCurve Manager and Identity Driven Management software, we provide easy-to-use management tools to make it simple to manage and ultimately get the most from converged networks.

Q: Nick Lippis: What are the two largest change agents you see altering the network infrastructure market place?

A: John McHugh: We actually see three major change agents that are equally important and that are inseparable from one another. The first one is openness driven by the Internet, and the need to make resources available to more people. This point immediately gives rise to serious security issues that must be addressed. The second is mobility, making the network available whenever and wherever people want to connect. Mobility also leads to the need for new security solutions. Finally, as we have discussed, is convergence. Organizations and network administrators don´t want the hassle and expense of running multiple networks for voice, data, video, etc. They want the efficiency that comes with converged, multi-service networks. These three factors ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ security, mobility and convergence ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ necessitate a new set of capabilities for enterprise networking customers. Ubiquitous access implies that the network infrastructure must be inherently secure and able to be cost-effectively managed in this secure mode. Security must be assured at traditional points such as WAN access and WLAN access, and it also must be consistently deployed at wired points throughout the network. Similarly, mobility must be an easily accommodated overlay to the network so that everything from convenience mobility to mission-critical comprehensive mobility is equally easy to deploy. Finally, all of these constructs must support the diversity of traffic that IP networks will be dealing with, including voice, video, storage, bulk data and industrial automation. The only way yet introduced to achieve these lofty objectives in a cost-effective manner is ProCurve´s Adaptive EDGE Architecture. ProCurve offers an unparalleled value proposition, providing advanced technology at
affordable prices and delivering industry standards-based solutions, reduced complexity and industry-leading warranties. The ProCurve Networking Adaptive EDGE Architecture delivers comprehensive solutions to deliver secure, mobile, converged networks.
We believe that our approach enables customers to create a single secure, mobile and converged network rather than a ?¢‚Ǩ?ìnetwork of networks."

Q: Nick Lippis: Where do you see market growth for ProCurve Networking by HP?

A: John McHugh: I think it´s important to start with a perspective of where we´ve come from. First, let´s look at ProCurve´s recent market growth. According to estimates from Dell´Oro Group, ProCurve´s business has grown 25% year over year for the past three years. ProCurve is number two in port market share, based on Q2 2005 numbers from Dell´Oro. Dell´Oro also reports that we
are number three in revenue share and that we were 40% ahead of 3Com and more than 50% ahead of Extreme in the second quarter of 2005. So we are capturing solid market share from our competitors. This growth points to tremendous opportunities for ProCurve. Our value proposition resonates well with customers. Clearly, customers want open standards-based, more manageable solutions that offer proven reliability, trusted security and price/performance leadership. Our market growth will come from our continued focus and execution. Our growth will also come from our continued innovations, reinvestments and our passion to compete and grow our customer base. Specifically, we plan to expand up in the market, into larger enterprise accounts and a more complete solutions-oriented space. Geographically, we will continue our domestic growth while increasing our presence internationally, especially in fast-growing Asian markets, notably China and Japan.

Q: Nick Lippis: Is there enough growth in Ethernet switching for the 10 major players or will this consolidate to 3 in short order?

A: John McHugh: Of course, there has already been some consolidation in the marketplace, and that will continue. Customers´ focus on stability, vision and high-quality support from their networking suppliers has made it difficult for some of our competitors to maintain their market share over the past several years. Customers buying networking infrastructure are thinking about the long term and don´t want to make a decision they will regret in three to five years. The companies that are succeeding today and that will continue to succeed in the future are those creating meaningful contributions, painting compelling visions of the future and giving customers predictable and cost-effective solutions. ProCurve is established as a strong number two in this market.
One thing I´d like to address here is the implication some people are making about the limited potential of the Ethernet switching market. We´ve heard talk recently that the Ethernet switch market is commoditizing. In fact, we strongly dispute that contention. This market is still changing and evolving, and a prime example is our own success at pushing intelligence to the edge of the network. This move of intelligence to the edge proves that Ethernet switching is not a commodity. ProCurve understands this evolution and we´re ahead of it. The vendors who currently attack the market with commodity offerings will continue to remain niche players because they are not in a position to give customers the kind of network solutions that will be needed in the
future.

Q: Nick Lippis: The ProCurve Networking by HP group has been systematically increasing its product portfolio to address the mid to large enterprise market. The 9408sl routing switch for the core enterprise LAN market just became available this Aug 1st, while the 7000sl branch router marked ProCurve Networking by HP´s re-entry into the router market. What is your large enterprise entry strategy?

A: John McHugh: We have been in the enterprise market for some time, with large-enterprise customers including General Mills, Allied Tube & Conduit and Frontier Airlines to name a few. And we introduced our first ProCurve Networking Routing Switch 9300m series more than five years ago. So instead of speaking about our ?¢‚Ǩ?ìentry" strategy, let me talk for a minute about our
overall strategy for large enterprises. ProCurve´s charter is to deliver solutions that address CIOs´ hot buttons, with a strong
sensitivity to investment protection. As you know, our core strategy is a mainstream strategy: to deliver the products and services that meet the mainstream requirements (as opposed to niche requirements) of our customers. What this means is that we will not try to sell our customers on end-to-end proprietary solutions that lock them into a networking operating system, limit their ability to choose best-in-class solutions and force them to pay premium prices because of single-vendor limitations. As part of that strategy, we continue to invest heavily in R&D and round out our product portfolio, including new and improved routing switches, interconnect fabrics, management software (notably the ProCurve Identity Driven Manager [IDM]) and routers, which help
deliver the edge-to-edge solution that many of our customers, particularly large enterprises, want and need.

Q: Nick Lippis: The ProCurve Network by HP group and Foundry Networks have increased their relationship over the past six months. How might we see ProCurve and Foundry working together over the next business cycle?

A: John McHugh: Foundry Networks continues to be an important development partner for ProCurve. Foundry is one of a number of companies with whom ProCurve has a relationship, and we continue to leverage their expertise in the routing switch area to enable us to deliver products that our customers demand. It´s important to note that if a Foundry box goes out the door from ProCurve it goes out as a ProCurve product, with proven reliability backed by the industry-leading warranties and exceptional service and support that all our products receive. From our customers´ perspective, these are ProCurve products through and through. We see it as a wise use of our resources to take advantage of specific expertise from partners, which enables us to
focus our own R&D on our core technology strengths.

Q: Nick Lippis: When will the Riverstone Networks’ enterprise assets materialize in the form of ProCurve networking products?

A: John McHugh: I´m delighted to report that the technologies we acquired from Riverstone Networks were sed to develop our ProCurve Interconnect Fabric Switch 8100fl family, which is the first step in delivering an InterConnect Fabric (ICF) solution. The ICF will be announced on September 26 (and will start shipping October 1) as part of the continued expansion of our
Adaptive EDGE Architecture. The ICF focuses on high availability and resiliency, featuring a simpler auto-configurable design that takes advantage of the decision-making power of the intelligent edge. As a result, ProCurve is able to help reduce the overall cost of ownership of a secure, mobile, converged network. To develop the Interconnect Fabric Switch 8100fl family, ProCurve partnered with a customer, the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences (COAS) at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. COAS, a leading graduate institution of oceanography, is using our new family of Interconnect Fabric switches in its network to enhance its ability to intelligently understand, collect, synthesize and route real-time data flows from a wide variety of computational models, networked sensors, satellites and scientific instrumentation. In fact, this is a great example of how ProCurve can acquire new technology ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú in this case, technologies from Riverstone Networks ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú incorporate it into our own R&D process, work directly with customers and ultimately deliver a unique ProCurve family of products that has widespread advantages for customers of all kinds worldwide.

Q: Nick Lippis: Is Foundry Networks a short-term relationship that will give way to ProCurve products based upon the Riverstone technology?

A: John McHugh: Again, these are two completely different kinds of relationships: Foundry is a development partner, while Riverstone was a straight technology acquisition. Both product areas are important to us, and they illustrate the wide range of resources that ProCurve is able to marshal as we deliver to customers the network products they want. A basic ProCurve philosophy is to build an intelligent, flexible network infrastructure, and from there to provide customers with choices. We continue to invest heavily in R&D and to hire new engineers. In fact, while HP is trimming jobs, ProCurve is hiring. ProCurve has its own labs and test facilities, and we continue to focus on innovation. Customers aren´t as interested in the pedigree of a product, how it came into being and who handled what piece of the development process. They care who they purchase from, how it fits into their overall solution and who´s backing it. So while we certainly value contributions made by our partners, by the time we introduce any product or service, history gives way to the fact that it´s now a 100% ProCurve product, with all the quality and support backing that the ProCurve name implies.

Q: Nick Lippis: With IP telephony driving infrastructure sales, can ProCurve Networking by HP compete without having IP telephony products?

A: John McHugh: We´ve noticed an interesting trend in VoIP recently: More customers are choosing to purchase IP telephony products from telephone companies than from networking vendors. As a result, one could argue that expending resources to develop our own IP telephony products might not be a wise business decision on our part. This trend plays really well to our strategy, which has always been to build a standards-based infrastructure that´s voice- and convergence-ready ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ and then let
customers choose the voice products they prefer. Earlier in the evolution of IP telephony, it was true that networking vendors such as Cisco and Nortel made the argument that customers would gain certain efficiencies from using a single vendor for their network infrastructure and voice solution. But the problem with that approach is that it locked customers into a single vendor´s proprietary scheme. So while some customers might have gained some short-term efficiency, many of them also realized they had sacrificed longer-term flexibility and options. ProCurve believes that by offering an open standards-based infrastructure that works with
essentially any IP telephony solution out there ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ and sometimes even does a better job of supporting other networking vendors´ voice solutions than their own proprietary infrastructures ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ we are offering customers the best of all worlds.

Q: Nick Lippis: With Mitel being a ProCurve Networking by HP partner and focused on the small to mid sized IP telephony market, how does ProCurve Networking by HP address large enterprise IP telephony opportunities?

A: John McHugh: Mitel is only one of ProCurve´s partners for delivering IP telephony solutions to our customers. As I previously explained, ProCurve´s approach is to focus on the underlying infrastructure and making sure it provides the best possible support for whatever specific voice product a customer chooses. Part of that process is the extensive testing that we do to ensure that our network infrastructure works great with everything. By being agnostic with regard to IP telephony products and vendors, ProCurve offers customers unparalleled choice and flexibility. And it´s important to remember that ProCurve is not in the device and peripherals business; we are network experts. IP telephony is all about mobility. Customers want a single device that they can use wherever they are. Because mobility is one of the fundamental tenets of our Adaptive EDGE Architecture, ProCurve is in an ideal position to support the IP telephony needs of customers, whether they purchase that voice solution from Mitel or anyone else. As an example, Webcor Builders, a leader in commercial construction that is consistently ranked among the Forbes 500 largest privately owned companies, has deployed a ProCurve-based VoIP solution for its largely mobile workforce of more than 800 employees. Both Webcor´s administrative staff and its field workers, who are dispersed over multiple sites that change with the changing construction job sites, are using the ProCurve-based VoIP solution to improve their communications capabilities, which are crucial to the commercial contractor´s project success and customer satisfaction.

Q: Nick Lippis: Network security continues to be of high concern to CIOs and their direct staff and consequentially is driving new network infrastructure sales too. What is the ProCurve Networking by HP group´s trusted networks product strategy and what areas of investment might we see over the next several quarters?

A: John McHugh: I agree wholeheartedly that security is a huge concern for customers, and it´s a major focus for ProCurve. Our overall approach to security is to work toward open, standards-based security solutions and to provide robust security solutions that are built into our software and hardware rather than bolted on as an afterthought. In the area of trusted networks specifically, ProCurve is involved heavily in the Trusted Network Connect (TNC) subgroup of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), which is creating an open, non-proprietary framework for establishing host integrity (i.e., validating end points before granting access to the network). Unlike proprietary methods for establishing host integrity, the TNC architecture works in heterogeneous, multivendor networks and therefore offers network managers much more flexibility and control over their network security. ProCurve is one of seven TCG ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨promoters," and ProCurve representatives are playing key roles in the development and release of TCG and TNC specifications. ProCurve is spearheading HP´s representation in the TNC subgroup as leader in the specification of IF-PEP ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ the interface standardizing the network layer component, such as LAN, WLAN or WAN devices ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ as well as assisting in the definition of other layers in the TNC architecture. One of the new products we´re launching on September 26 is ProCurve Identity Driven
Manager (IDM) 2.0, which reinforces our approach of moving more intelligence and security to the edge of the network, to provide a first line of defense where users connect. IDM 2.0 expands on the capabilities of IDM 1.0, allowing secure, automated access control of both wired and wireless networks and enabling network managers to dynamically set parameters in ProCurve edge devices to enforce access rights, priority and bandwidth. The IDM 2.0 upgrade includes an innovative client integrity solution based on the TCG´s TNC specifications that allows customers to select their antivirus and personal firewall client software from a range of providers who support the TNC architecture. IDM 2.0 also supports per-user dynamic Access Control List (ACL) configuration, providing adaptive control to critical IT applications and information assets.

Q: Nick Lippis: ProCurve Networking by HP has a few WLAN products in its portfolio while HP professional services has a relationship with Aruba Networks. What is ProCurve Networking by HP´s mobility and wireless strategy?

A: John McHugh: The recently announced relationship between Aruba Wireless Networks and HP´s Services business (HPS) to deliver solutions for enterprise WLAN has no impact on ProCurve´s strategy or go-to-market plans. HP´s Services business relies on a diverse set of hardware providers ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ including ProCurve, Cisco, Bluesocket and others ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ to help deliver solutions to the marketplace. ProCurve continues to invest in bringing to market robust end-to-end enterprise networking infrastructure products and solutions that meet the needs of customers worldwide, including comprehensive offerings in the application areas of security, mobility and convergence. ProCurve´s mobility infrastructure solution delivers many of the same features and functionality as an Aruba-based solution, including centralized security management with distributed enforcement and Layer 3 subnet-to-subnet roaming. The ProCurve mobility framework combines ProCurve products, services and support to enable reliable, secure wireless connectivity. Not only do we supply all the necessary hardware (wireless clients, access points, switches), software (network management tools), wireless services (seamless roaming, access to network services) and support (site assessment and deployment partners, lifetime warranty) to implement and maintain a robust WLAN, but we also support third-party authentication systems, clients, switches and access points for maximum flexibility and cost savings. Based on our Adaptive EDGE Architecture, the ProCurve mobility framework addresses customer requirements and provides peace of mind for customers, with enterprise-class security including user authentication, intrusion detection, data encryption for data privacy and data integrity through non-repudiation techniques. The new ProCurve Mobility Manager 1.0, a plug-in module for ProCurve Manager Plus that
will also be introduced officially on September 26, further enhances our ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcommand from the center" approach by delivering efficient, affordable, powerful management tools to centrally configure, update, monitor and troubleshoot ProCurve wireless LAN components.

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Over the past several columns I´ve talked about the broad and deep changes Trusted Networking is having on corporate networks. As a reminder, Trusted Networking is restructuring the IT security and networking industries as they embed access control, threat defense and containment, plus risk mitigation deeply into the network fabric. This restructuring has been taking place for some years but is now entering an accelerated pace as the rate of partnerships and acquisition activities increase. All the major enterprise players such as Cisco, HP, Nortel, Extreme, Foundry, 3Com, Enterasys, et al., have security programs as top corporate strategic initiatives and priorities. In addition to the large enterprise players, there are hundreds of security appliance companies focused on their niche in the Trusted Networks market such as Lockdown Networks, Crossbeam Systems etc. Traditional players such as Checkpoint, Symantec, Trend Micro, McAfee, CA and many others are aligned and partnered with one or many of the large enterprise players. All of the major service providers now offer managed firewall, VPN and IDS/IPS services. But for one company in particular ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ Juniper Networks ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ it is hard to tell if it will indeed be a factor in Trusted Enterprise networking.

Scott Kriens, chairman and CEO of Juniper Networks, has increased his focus on the enterprise market in both his speeches and acquisitions. Juniper just closed its acquisition of Peribit and Redline and inked a new partnership with Avaya in the fast growing IP telephony space. Redline is nicely positioned in the red hot web application acceleration market. Its 2004 $4+ Billion acquisition of NetScreen gave it a foot hold in the enterprise market as well and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìmarket permission" to talk about network security. And talk about network security Juniper sure does under the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìsecure and assured networking" banner. Juniper is clearly on a roll; its last quarter net revenues were $493 million, compared to $306.9 million for the same period last year, an increase of 61%. They are nowhere near the $22 billion that Cisco made last year, but they are growing significantly in the service provider market.

So with all this going for them — acquisitions, growth, being in the right markets, having good partners, etc., — why would I question whether Juniper could be a factor in the Trusted Networks market? There are a few issues that give me pause when I consider Juniper´s potential corporate network success.

Pause 1: Lack of direct enterprise relationships. Netscreen´s products were distributed to the enterprise market mostly through service providers. While this allowed Netscreen to grow at low cost, it didn´t capture the enterprise relationship in most cases. Juniper´s Netscreen acquisition gave it another set of products to sell to service providers, rather than build and enhance enterprise relationships.

Pause 2: Product strategy. Juniper´s Redline acquisition is layer 4 through 7 appliances. Juniper does not own any layer 2, i.e., Ethernet switching and WLAN products. You can make the argument that this is smart as Ethernet switching and WLANs are a commodity and there are many, maybe too many, players, offering similar products. But layer 2 is also becoming a platform in which Trusted Network services are hosted. Just look at Cisco´s catalyst switches and Network Admission Control (NAC), Nortel´s Ethernet Routing Switch Portfolio with Threat Protection System (TPS), ProCurve Networking by HP´s Interconnect switches with Virus Throttle, Extreme´s switches with its Clear-Flow security technology and Foundry´s switches with its IronShield Security technology. All of these product families will deliver some form of network access control to stop the propagation of exploits before they enter the network. This hole in Juniper´s product strategy relegates it to an appliance-based security approach. Doing network access control in appliances will not be an effective mitigation strategy as a session has to flow through the network to reach the appliance, leaving that network path open to exploit propagation.

Pause 3: Sales and marketing. Juniper is a company that sells to service providers. Its sales, distribution and marketing are all geared toward that customer or market segment. While it may be building a sales and marketing channel to reach the enterprise market, it´s not there yet.

Pause 4: Making the jump. No company in a post-1984 divestiture world has been able to start as a service provider equipment manufacturer and leap into the enterprise market successfully. Yes, you can look at IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, et al., as serving both markets successfully, but they all started in the enterprise market. Lucent sold off Avaya to focus on the service provider market because it couldn´t serve both. Nortel purchased Bay to enter the enterprise market, but enterprise revenues are far below its service providers. You can make the same observations about Alcatel, Nokia, Ericsson, Marconi and Siemens. The door just does not seem to swing both ways. Could it be the competencies gained from serving the enterprise market of a faster product development pace, quicker market and sales cycles and deep distribution allows a company to enter the service provider door from the enterprise side? Possibly, but there aren´t any examples that show the door opening the other way.

Perhaps Juniper is the exception. And maybe the world of convergence is the special hinge that allows the door to swing both ways. Or maybe analyst expectations are too high on Juniper and Juniper would be satisfied being a leader in one or two enterprise segments that are closely aligned to the service provider market? They can talk network security to build enterprise
relationships, moving product deeper into the enterprise. For sure, they are on a roll and have market attention. But the real question remains: will Juniper be a niche Trusted Networks player or a major influence and force?

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Nortel, like so many networking companies, has certainly had more than its fair share of difficulties over the past four challenging years. But in a meeting with Nortel in March, I felt for the first time, in a long time, that Nortel had turned the corner and regained its footing in the enterprise market. Its enterprise revenues are nearly $600M/quarter or $2.4B/yr making it a solid provider of broad-based enterprise network equipment. Nortel has focused on converged networking, security and wireless networks. It has rationalized its product lines, streamlined its operations and sharpened its enterprise message.

With all that work behind them, Nortel is now about to announce a new line of high end routers and Ethernet switches. One of the most important changes and priorities within Nortel is a focus on network security that permeates the entire organization and its products. This new organizational initiative is from the top down. Bill Owens, Nortel CEO, says that he wants to be #1 in the network security space including applications, content and MM security. Bill does know a little about security, having been Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the second-ranking military officer in the United States under President Clinton. With a range of new products with deep network security features, Nortel seems poised to reassert itself in the enterprise market as a major trusted networks player.

Nortel gets network security and trusted networks. It has layered security framework centered around providing a holistic Enterprise wide Threat Protection System (TPS) built on features in ASICs, modules and in the software that runs on its switching and routing products. Three key aspects of this TPS architecture are 1) network access control for wired and wireless access; 2) heuristics of flows to detect anomalistic network behavior; and 3) policy to provide conformance rules and distribute enforcement. With all three aspects of TPS working together, Nortel can deliver intelligent traffic management which controls access, and guides and monitors flows while shutting down irregular or abnormal IP flows.

The key word here is flows and not ports. If a flow is earmarked as abnormal, TPS will shut down the flow, not the port, allowing other devices plugged into that port such as IP phones to continue operating. In network access control Nortel has chosen a clientless approach, meaning that no special client software need be resident on IP end-points. This allows for the widest range of IP end-points to operate securely in a trusted network architecture. Those end-points could be IP phones, PDAs, desktop, laptop computers, etc., providing seamless secure access. Clientless network access control eliminates the IT operational burden of distributing client software to every end-point along with its patches. Also, there is no user training required. These are two huge advantages.

Nortel is working with Symantec and a list of others to provide an enhanced level of network access conformance testing beyond operating system version, patch checking, applications running, user ID and password, anti-virus version, etc. For example, a user may have different entitlement rights depending on his/her location and device being used.

Heuristics of flows is Nortel´s ability to build network based anomaly detection into its switching and routing products. The process of heuristics normalizes traffic flows so that irregular flows are detected and dramatic pattern changes are identified. The heuristics process also participates in the AAA handshake between a client and network servers such as DHCP and DNS which protects those systems from being corrupted. Another important attribute of heuristics is the capturing of network wide event logs, as operating systems do, to aid in forensics. Policy is central to this threat protection architecture and is in fact centralized. Guiding network access so that users are allowed access to only authorized IT resources is the new role of policy managers. Distributing ACLs to switches and routers will be an increasingly important role for policy managers to guide as they become the brains of network enforcement. Scale is going to be key and the next generation policy manager will look like enterprise policy managers on steroids.

Nortel currently has an Enterprise Policy Manager (EPM). Moreover, Nortel also supports TrueControl by Rendition Networks for centralized configuration management. An example of how and when the above architecture will find its way into products is Nortel´s new high end routers slated to be out this fall. Nortel´s new high end routers will perform IP flow-based inspection and pattern-based recognition to detect anomalies and enforce corrective measures in the router to defend the enterprise against threats. The key here is to provide this level of inspection at full wire speed without performance degradation. Think of it, every enterprise pipe that supports incoming and outgoing traffic to a service provider will contain identity, location, voice and data information, all of which will be scrubbed and cleansed for virus, worms, etc.

Its new line of IP phones are nothing short of awesome. They are sleek, SIP-based, feature rich and secure. The new IP phones support 802.1x and participate in network access control. Beyond routing and IP phones, Nortel´s security architecture spans end-points, the perimeter with its Switched Firewalls, Threat Protection system and Intelligent Traffic Management, Remote Access with secure application gateways, VPN routers, and its Alteon application switch. In the core of the network, Nortel can leverage its Alteon application switch and a combination of the above technologies which can be delivered in a tightly integrated architecture or as services inside the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600. Its VPN Gateway and routers and wireless security switch provides communications protection and security within the enterprise. All of the above is aimed at allowing Nortel customers to move beyond detection toward first attack or zero day protection. Nortel´s security solutions scale both up and down to support deployment regardless of size and demands.

It´s clear what the above means for an enterprise: secure convergence. Nortel is working to protect corporate productivity by eliminating external and internal attacks. Its strategy is to also secure corporate proprietary and intellectual property. As more and more companies use the internet to link suppliers, customers, and partners, its new routers endeavor to maintain those links securely.

The balance that Nortel is striving for is to provide deep network security within the network fabric without inhibiting users from doing their job. They allow access from anywhere, be it remote users, wireless access or in the office without compromising security. Their security architecture transcends IP voice and data and will increasingly include applications such as peer-to-peer and multimedia applications that strive to increase productivity.

Nortel Security is built around three pillars: transparent to users, simple to manage and no sacrifice of performance.
Beyond security there is one other huge factor that is favorable to Nortel, in a word (or three) its wireless networks. Over time as public wireless networks increasingly take share from fixed phones and fixed transport services, Nortel is in the position to bridge the gap between enterprise and wireless service providers. Think of it this way — Nortel could be able to offer enterprise customers key value such as transparent quality of service between enterprise and wireless service providers. In addition, since it´s one of the largest wireless equipment suppliers, it could provide
features in its service provider products that are accessible to enterprise wireless devices, such as dual mode WiFi/GSM devices, improved roaming, presence, identity, etc. In short, what Cisco is to MPLS based carrier services Nortel could be for wireless and mobile service providers.

If you haven´t looked at Nortel in awhile, it´s time you did. Its IP telephony product line is rationalized now with its Communications Server (CS) 1000, the CS 5100 multimedia servers and Business Communications Manager or BCM for branch office solutions which give it a wide range of form factors and price points. Couple these IP telephony infrastructure products with a wide range of IP end-points that support both digital and analog phones and you have an architecture that allows network executives to regulate the pace of change toward a converged network. Its 8600 Terabit core Ethernet routing switch, 8300 chassis edge products, 5500 series stackable edge, PoE 10/100/1000 switches, wireless security switch and Trapeze Networks relationship provide Nortel with breadth and depth of LAN infrastructure products affording a multitude of options for the network designer to build out a secure converged network. Features such as SMLT, HA Mode, QoS, and PoE enable highly reliable and available secure converged network designs capable of self healing and routing around failures in milliseconds without
reliance on Spanning Tree. In fact, this very point allows Nortel to build highly resilient networks with all links active and forwarding at all times regardless of network topology.

Nortel is a broad-based equipment supplier for the secure converged enterprise network market. Its focus on trusted networks is impressive. But wait until this fall ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ you´ll see what I saw when Nortel unleashes new routers, switches, IP end-points and deeply embeds security into them, and I think you´ll be impressed.

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The ProCurve Networking by HP group has built a broad switched Ethernet product family over the past few years. The product portfolio spans stackables including the 2600 10/100 switches, 2800 Gigabit Ethernet switch, the 3400 24/48 Gig and 6400 10GbE series. Its chassis products start with the triple speed 10/100/1000 4100 series, then the popular 5300 series adds PoE while the 9300 series is its high performance and functional 100/G/10G chassis OEMed from Foundry Networks. In addition to its switched Ethernet product set, the ProCurve group has introduced the 420 and 520 wireless LAN access points and the 720wl Access Control Server providing secure roaming services.

The intelligence within the ProCurve product set, i.e., its software, is distributed, yet the ProCurve group has been steadily moving network services closer to network access points or the edge of the network. This means that network services such as power over Ethernet, quality of service, deep packet inspection, load balancing, caching, encryption, virus protection, etc., are available at the point that packets enter the network rather than in the core of the network. HP calls this the Adaptive EDGE Architecture®. Network management of a ProCurve-based network is centralized via ProCurve Manager, Manager Plus and Identity Driven Manager 1.0 software. As the edge becomes more service rich, the core´s role becomes one of high performance and availability. Limiting the core´s service responsibility to switching and routing across a dense set of high performance modules, which enforce edge service decisions, should lower network acquisition cost. In effect the Adaptive EDGE Architecture strives to deliver intelligence at access, performance and reliability in the core while centralizing management. This should all add
up to lower capital and operational cost in theory.

The ProCurve group has taken a significant step at expanding its product set with the introduction of the ProCurve Secure Router 7000dl, the ProCurve 5300xl software release 3 and ProCurve Switch xl Access Controller Module. HP has re-entered the wide area router market, joined the Trusted Network initiative that we have been discussing here and closed the gap between wired
and wireless LAN security. The ProCurve Secure Router 7000dl is a branch office router platform that will go head to head
with Cisco´s popular 2821 and 2851 routers. There are two products in the 7000dl series, the 7102dl and 7203dl for small and medium sized branch offices, respectively. 7000dls offer integrated stateful firewall, VPN support, secure access control via ACLs, 802.1x and RADIUS. Its routing protocols are RIP V1/V2, OSPF and BGP4 support. The 7102dl and 7203dl form
factor is a 1U rack mount that supports two 10/100 ports and up to 8 wire speed T1 ports. Here´s the kicker: HP offers a lifetime warranty on hardware and software, an item that would cost as much as 18% on top of acquisition ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨list" cost from other vendors. HP has priced the 7000dl platform between 40% and 50% below acquisition cost of similarly configured Cisco 2821 and 2851 branch office routers. When you add HP´s lifetime warranty the cost difference is 50% to 60% below Cisco´s 2821 and 2851 routers. Expect an increasing range of router products that scale up to large sites over the next few quarters. Entering the router market at the branch office is a good move for HP as MPLS transport services diminish the need for large routers at central
sites.

Invented and patented at HP Labs, HP has introduced its first Trusted Networks product in the ProCurve 5300xl software release 3. This software release provides client-based anti-virus software protection for end points connected into the ProCurve 5300 series managed Ethernet switches. Included in software release 3 is what HP calls virus throttling, which monitors network
behavior across all ports to detect virus propagation. If anomalous virus traffic behavior is detected on a 5300 port, it will slow down traffic on that port and notify ProCurve Manager Plus so further action can be taken if warranted. Software release 3 possesses NBAD or Network Based Anomaly Detection functionality fully integrated into the switching fabric rather than
housed in a separate appliance. The ProCurve group, like many in the industry, is unifying wired and wireless access so that
mobility and roaming is enabled in 802.11 networks. To meet that end HP has introduced the ProCurve Switch xl Access Controller Module. This module plugs into the 5300xl series Ethernet switches and provides all the functionality found in the standalone ProCurve 720wl. This means that wireless security, access control, and layer 3 roaming can now be provided by the 5300 xl.

Integration of authentication or AAA services can now be provided to both wired and wireless end points from one database, simplifying administration. This is a significant announcement from HP which demonstrates its expanding presence in the
networking market place beyond Ethernet switching. The ProCurve group is fully committed to Trusted Networks by integrating virus scanning and NBAD functionality deep within its switching fabric to provide network security services at lower acquisition and operational cost than with an appliance-based security architecture.

The most significant aspect of this announcement is the ProCurve group´s entry into the routing market. ProCurve Networking by HP is the number two market share leader in Ethernet switch ports. Clearly the ProCurve group has not been shy in competing with Cisco. But its gloves have been taken off since Carly Fiorina stepped down from both Cisco´s board and as CEO of HP.
With Carly on Cisco´s board the ProCurve group felt constrained in which markets it could enter and compete with Cisco. That´s all changed now and the 7000dl is perhaps the first silo in what, more than likely, will be a blistering array of routing products to come out of the ProCurve Networking by HP group. Its financial stability, excellent brand, innovation, distribution, sales
and price leadership have served it well competing in the Ethernet switch market. Expect the same in the router market with the addition of this big motivator; enterprise customers want another option to source routers. The ProCurve Networking by HP group is well positioned to receive a warm enterprise welcome as it enters the router and Trusted Networks markets.

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Local Area Network or LAN changes have ebbed and flowed on a nearly consistent five-year basis. In 1990 the worldwide $100M plus 10Mbs shared Ethernet market was emerging as the LAN standard. It was only five years later that the introduction of 100 Mbs fast Ethernet and the introduction of Ethernet switching usurped 10Mbs shared Ethernet. Between 1995 and 2000 two
very important introductions were made to switched LANs: virtual local area networking (VLANs) and 1 Gbs Ethernet. Now with every new generation of LANs, the market has grown by billions of dollars. The transition from shared to switched LANs was explosive, growing a $5.2B market in 1995 to over $14B in 2000. Part of this nearly triple market expansion was due to the transition from switched LANs to VLANs. The period between 2000 and 2003 showed flat to negative growth, due mostly to the global economic slump, but the LAN market is about to make another fundamental transition from VLANs to ?¢‚Ǩ?ìTrusted LANs", which will grow this market again by billions of dollars. The key value proposition of Trusted LANs is the provisioning of secure internal networks or LANs at high speeds independent of whether transport is wireless or wired. In short, Trusted LANs will be the new organizing principal for LANs.

Nearly all vendors are involved in the development of this new Trusted LAN market. Companies such as Cisco and their partners (including IBM, Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro, Microsoft, Computer Associates, etc.) are taking a lead in spearheading Trusted LANs. Cisco, with its acquisition of the PIX firewall, drove revenue from nearly zero to hundreds of
millions in just a few years and is now a network security powerhouse. The major switched Ethernet vendors such as Enterasys (the Cabletron Spin-off), Extreme, Foundry, 3Com, Force10 and HP are all working on and investing in their Trusted LAN solutions. Enterasys has in fact focused its entire company and much of its R&D efforts on secure networking which makes it a leader in Trusted LANs. All WLAN players such as Aruba, Reefedge, Airmagnet, Legra, Bluesocket, Chantry, Colubris, etc will be Trusted LAN providers as Wireless LANs increasingly become folded into the Trusted LAN framework.

Network security will indeed drive the growth of Trusted LANs and it´s where most of its value proposition resides. But just like VLANs is a feature of switched LANs, Trusted LANs will be integral to 1 and 10Gb Ethernet, WLANs, IP telephony, IP communications, data center networking and networked storage, etc. At present, network security services are the cornerstone
to Trusted LANs. But network security has been focused on perimeter defense for the past ten plus years. This perimeter-focused network security approach has resulted in the creation of a hard shell around an enterprise but a soft core within a company where vulnerabilities are the highest. We all know the stories: an employee plugs a laptop into the enterprise network only to
spew a virus or worm that infected the laptop the night before while the employee worked at home. If it´s not an employee it´s a consultant or a guest. This little accident has the potential to shut down buildings and send operational staff running for days to contain and disinfect corporate systems. There is a multitude of ways to infect a LAN but our industry has not provided the
protection or resistance to these internal vulnerabilities until now.

In order to protect LANs without driving up operational cost, security services will have to be integrated into the network fabric. What this means is that firewalling, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, NBAD, virus and worm scanning, VPNs, etc. will be increasingly distributed into modules, boards, ASIC and the internal software of switches, access points, routers, end points and servers. As this integration and distribution of security function occurs its management becomes simplified with a single interface to manage LAN and security services. In short, there is no need to have two groups, one managing switches, access points and routers and one managing security devices and their enormous output of alarms and alerts. This reduction of the number of management interfaces reduces the staff cost necessary to operate Trusted LANs. Now, not only does management become simplified in Trusted LANs, but most importantly network security services can be put to more effective use delivering a tighter and more secure LAN environment. Trusted LANs will link unified directory services with employee profiles, with network and device profiles with AAA databases and host based virus scanning so that when anyone plugs a laptop or PDA or IP phone into the LAN they will be authenticated, scanned for viruses or worms if needed, their profile consulted and access provided to those
resources available to them. The linking of these systems is called the backend of Trusted LANs. The backend security architecture goes a long way toward closing internal network vulnerabilities. Clearly there is a lot of effort required to make the backend of Trusted LANs work, but to close the largest vulnerability in corporate networking, these systems need to be
architected and linked into a Trusted LAN framework. Companies such as IBM, CA, Avaya et al will offer professional services to build and maintain the backend of Trusted LAN.

With a robust Trusted LAN backend in place, IT staff can now segment their organizations into Trusted LAN ?¢‚Ǩ?ìsecure domains". A secure domain is a space that segments users, systems, applications, locations, end points, etc. into combinations that fit the business requirements of the enterprise. For example, some employees may be working on a federal contract that restricts the
access of data, messages, information, applications, etc. to only those on a need to know basis. A secure domain can be wrapped around those employees and systems that firewalls them from all other corporate IT resources. Financial performance information can be placed into a secure domain that includes only the executive, financial and accounting staff. The development of a new product can be placed into a secure domain, which consists of only engineering and marketing teams. Secure domains will crisscross over Trusted LANs; some may overlap while others will be mutually exclusive from each other. Secure domains can be porous as well, allowing global access to printers for example, or other shared resources. In short, IT resources
will be organized into security domains while a Trusted LAN will be an organization of secure domains.

There is a lot to cover here and we will be exploring various important aspects of Trusted LANs over the next year including backend architecture, design approaches and secure domain guidelines.

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Architecting networks are once again back in vogue. But with executive management still disillusioned with IT after the internet bubble and telecom crash, most network architects are finding that their designs have to be put into a budget and sold to executive management, and depending on the size of the spend, the Board of Directors (BoD). This planning process usually includes three professionals: the network architect, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO). While many network architects view this as a stressful and unpleasant task, it does have an upside. In short, networking is
becoming the single most important IT activity in corporate board rooms, thanks both to this new scrutiny and, frankly, exposure to the economic and business benefits networking affords to the most senior executives within corporations. Unparalleled US productivity increases over the past five years are being widely attributed to the corporate use of networking technology, applications and services.

In this Lippis Report we provide assistance to the network architect and CIO in up selling their converged networking plan to the CFO and eventually the corporate BoD.

In 1991 I wrote an industry report entitled ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨The Internet Decade" which was published by McGraw Hill. Just for reference, in 1991 voice dominated corporate networks, the Internet was still locked within the confines of government and academic institutions, LANs were just starting to be implemented and IBM´s SNA was the dominant networking technology in use. Our goal was to sell reports. We didn´t sell that many since a huge ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨The Internet Decade" supplement appeared in Data Communications magazine, but that supplement was widely read and very influential. I´m not bragging, but we were dead on. I am convinced that IP Communications will be bigger and have a far greater impact on corporate performance than ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨The Internet Decade" had on corporate operations. What convinces me is the consulting work I have been engaged in over the past three years and how the equipment suppliers and service providers are re-tooling for IP Communications. In short, we are in a two-phase industry
evolution. The first phase is the fact that equipment suppliers and service providers are giving away IP telephony and VoIP to lower the barrier of entry of this technology into corporate networks. Giving it away? Yes giving it away. IP telephony, if done right, will reduce the total cost of network ownership by as much as 30%. Some of my clients have a $100M annual budget for telephony and data networking which will be reduced to $70M over a four-year period after their converged network is fully operational. That is $30M in increased profit. IP telephony is a technology platform, which gives way to the second phase: IP
Communications is a business platform. Think of it this way — IP telephony is a PC and IP Communications is the software application business runs on. This second phase is just taking shape, and our industry is in the process of implementing a new organizing principal to create an ecosystem that will enable many companies to build IP Communication applications, which run on various IP telephony platforms.

So how does all of this help you up sell your converged network plan to the CFO and BoD? Simple. The vendor and service providers will make it increasingly difficult and costly to run networks the old fashioned way (i.e., separate voice and data networks). Over the next several years it will simply be too expensive to run two networks, your corporation will fall behind its competitors who adopt IP Communications and you will be increasingly pressured by your customers and suppliers to adopt and implement your own IP Communications strategy. So here are some helpful hints on up selling your plan.
First, you need to architect your network, taking into account business requirements and the existing state of your network and staff. This process is often best done by consultants since they are best equipped to extract business requirements from managers and impartially assess and calculate the current network cost. Consultants also have a wider and deeper view of vendor and service provider offerings while IT staff are confined to their existing vendor set. In this architecture development process don´t forget to add mobile devices and associated cost. For most of my clients mobile spend is nearly equal to toll. Mobility has to be included if you want to provide a true representative view of all network spend and technology used.

So the first step in ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Up selling your IP Telephony budget to your CFO" is to start a network architecture review driven by business requirements. In part 2 of ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Up selling your IP Telephony budget to your CFO", I´ll give you the Lippis Top Ten Convergence Budget Assumptions.

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SouthTrust Bank Background

SouthTrust Corporation is one of Cisco’s first and largest IP telephony deployments and it is now successfully deployed. SouthTrust Corporation is a $51.9 billion regional holding company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. This Fortune 500 financial services company employs nearly 13,000 people and operates almost 800 banking and loan offices and 850 Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) in nine states. Services include traditional retail banking, corporate and commercial banking, mortgage banking, brokerage and trust services, and insurance products. 2003 revenues were $2.3B while net income was $705 million. As an aside to this case study, on August 9th, U.S. antitrust authorities have approved Wachovia Corp.’s proposed acquisition of SouthTrust Corp.

SouthTrust had grown through a merger and acquisition strategy over the years and as most companies that grow this way, it inherited multiple different key systems, PBXs and networks to manage. An effort to rationalize the cacophony of disparate systems was underway at the same time it required more wide area bandwidth to support increased data traffic. Capital and operational economic efficiencies realized through consolidation of vendors and equipment types drove a converged network review. The bank understood early on that it could realize savings in both local access and long distance (LD) voice trunking charges if it consolidated voice and data into IP. It had a Frame Relay (FR) data network that linked each branch, and they were able to add a separate PVC for VoIP traffic, thus supporting voice and data traffic on a single T1 access circuit terminated into AT&T’s frame relay and voice network. This strategy would prove out handsomely with an 80% reduction in local access and LD trunking spend, saving SouthTrust nearly $225K/month or $2.7M/year. That’s nearly a half of a percent of increased net income, or put another way, the network architects were able to add $2.7M of profit to SouthTrust annually.

SouthTrust’s vendor selection was Cisco for data networking and IP telephony, with AT&T’s frame relay integrated access providing transport, plus local calling service. Delta Communications was used for long distance calling, as all off-net voice calls were backhauled to SouthTrust Birmingham facility. In addition to economic considerations, SouthTrust decided to deploy IP telephony knowing that it provided a foundation for IP communications, their new business platform. SouthTrust knew that over time it would want to add value to its branch offices with features or applications such as:
?Ǭ? Rich media for e-Learning, stored locally, but centrally managed
?Ǭ? Multi-site videoconferencing capabilities
?Ǭ? Unified messaging for branch personnel
?Ǭ? Increased bandwidth in order to deliver rich media through ATM machines for advertising and promotions

The Devil Is In The Details

SouthTrust installed IP telephony in 790 sites in 9 states with more than 10,500 IP phones deployed. They have over thirty sites that have been operational for more than 3 years. They have built three new data centers in Atlanta, Houston and Orlando. There are three Corporate Offices, two in Atlanta and one in Birmingham. There are two call centers in Atlanta. The centralized call processing in Birmingham processes some 8,000,000 calls per month. There are some 6,000 integrated voice mail and e-mail boxes in operation. So what are the economics behind this IP telephony deployment at SouthTrust? Millions of dollars of savings per year. For example, SouthTrust has realized savings in the following areas:
- Local Service 38%
- Long Distance 42%
- Move/Add/Change 75%
- Maintenance 50%
- Conference Calling 93%

In the process not only have the network architects at SouthTrust improved its corporate bottom line, but they did so with state of the art equipment and new features/attributes that the network did not possess before its implementation. For example, SouthTrust saw a 6 fold increase in bandwidth. It received all new voice and data equipment. Desktops now have desktop video. With the mobility benefits of IP telephony, SouthTrust is now better prepared to recover from potential disasters. It also has a network architecture that can accommodate more changes, i.e., an easier acquisition by Wachovia and the ability to add new
competitive IP communication applications. Also, with voice delivery as software residing on a few centralized servers, the cost to add more IP phones does not require a large capital outlay as in the days of PBXs.

Most of the cost savings above came from facilities, operations and maintenance cost reductions. In short, IP telephony can drastically reduce wide area communication spend. This reduction in monthly expense is usually much greater than the cost of new hardware or capital. The major characteristics of the SouthTrust network are the following: VoIP over FR is used for on-net
calling and backhauling long distance off-net traffic to the central PSTN gateways at headquarters; the backhauling of long distance off-net traffic to a centralized location is a key cost saver as it increases volume to a service provider delivering steeper discounting; VoIP over Ethernet is used for on-net calling in the campus or between two extensions in branch sites; local off-net calling from a branch to the PSTN is accommodated by AT&T’s Integrated Access PSTN gateway.

The Hub-and-Spoke network topology of the original FR network is preserved with the hub site at the headquarters location, while FR bandwidth to the branch offices has been expanded from 56 K or 64 K to 256 K for small and medium branches and to 512 K for the larger branches. Compressed Real-Time Protocol (CRTP) is used on all branch PVCs. Each branch is equipped with a PVC for VoIP and one for IP traffic. For companies that have a greater need for inter-site communications I recommend MPLS and
starting to move away from FR since FR cost will increase over time. Also, I view the hub and spoke architecture as too rigid for most non-retail applications. Standard QoS features like FR Traffic Shaping (FRTS), Low Latency Queuing (LLQ) and FR fragmentation are enabled to preserve voice quality across the IP network and to gain WAN bandwidth efficiency.

Cisco’s SRST (Survivable Remote Site Telephony) is deployed in all branches to protect IP Phone survivability. Emergency calls to 9-1-1 are handled by SRST and a local voice gateway to allow the call to complete via analog Foreign Exchange Offices (FXO) to the local Central Office (CO). Non-emergency local calls are also handled during a WAN outage, but these will be routed via the local voice gateway’s PRI access into the AT&T network. Cell phones offer another level of redundancy as well to WAN
outages.

The Call Manager (CM) and Unity deployment in the network is based upon a centralized call processing model used with a Publisher and Subscriber CM cluster in each five geographic regions. Each cluster manages approximately 100-150 locations. There is a single Unity server per region. Number portability was used to transfer BellSouth Direct-Inward-Dial (DID) numbers from the old voice network to AT&T for the new network. Cisco 7960 IP phones are used. G.711 compression is used for calls within a site, and G.729 is used for calls across the WAN. Fax is handled via the PSTN.

There are a tremendous amount of details to review and sort through as you plan your converged network. As mentioned above there are now a few stability points upon which to build but that just lets you be creative about the type of converged network structures that are possible. To do this right, network architects have to map business requirements/process into network requirements and get your CIO engaged early on. The job of the network architect is to be a business partner to various corporate
divisions/stake holders making sure their requirements are met in the converged network architecture. With business profit drivers in hand and translated into network requirements, the network architect can start the process of design, financial model development and review. For most companies converged networking delivers significant cost savings as SouthTrust proves. IP telephony is doing an odd thing – it’s turning network architects into corporate heroes.

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Network security is so important and complex that I decided to provide a framework on the subject. What follows is a short version of the Enterprise Network Security Framework white paper I have authored. You can view the white paper at www.businessrealities.com/default.asp? RC=MI61. I recommend that you view the ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Protect and Prevail" webinar /on-line forum where I am a featured speaker along with John Payne, CIO San Francisco International Airport and George Sullivan the Chief Technical Officer at Avaya Global Services. The Protect and Prevail webinar is very well done, perhaps one of the best produced on-line forum that I´ve been involved in.

Introduction

Over the past 3 years most CIOs were tasked with finding ways to reduce network cost by increasing returns on existing investments. During this time, most CIOs made their networks more efficient and secure to mitigate business risk, but kept the network structure relatively constant. Most corporations are in fact analyzing, planning and starting to implement structural changes to their network, thanks to an improving economic climate. Most CIOs realize that the economic efficient phase of the last three years has run its course and now the only way to grow revenue profitably and deepen customer and supplier
relationships while achieving a further 15 to 30% reduction in network spend is to redesign their network.

Key in this thinking is the fact that during the economic down turn, most corporation´s established new business processes that allowed a greater focus on core competencies, which are now being supported with new applications such as contact centers and customer relationship management packages. But network spending to support new applications lagged since budget was held back to a tight 12 month ROI. CIOs are now getting the go ahead to seek out “structural” changes that will reap huge rewards even if it takes a few years to realize.

And what kind of structural change is on the minds of most CIOs? In a phrase, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìsecure convergence". The time for secure convergence is right thanks to the maturity of IP Telephony offerings, the emergence of Managed Security Service Providers or MSSP, wireless local area networking or WLANs and a slightly more lenient time frame for ROI calculations. In short, a post recession network is an IP converged network that wraps IP communications securely around corporate profit drivers within a robust business continuity context. As corporations migrate toward converged IP networking, an enterprise network security framework is a must to eliminate the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìall eggs in one basket" vulnerabilities, which lie inherently within a single network structure.

The distributed and urgent nature of today´s business environment has driven enterprises to increasingly rely on their networks and the Internet to deliver on customer requirements and gain a competitive advantage. This has forced the enterprise to extend and open its network to partners, suppliers, customers and other ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨untrusted" third parties, as well as to make corporate resources accessible via the Internet. In short the number of network connections continues to grow unabated. As a result, the enterprise must now focus considerable attention on securing its network and resources from hackers, intruders, other unauthorized users and even employees.

Enterprise network security is now at the top of every IT manager´s list of responsibilities. A 2003 IDC study found that security was second only to uptime in a survey of CEO IT concerns. This prioritization of CEO concerns remains steady in 2004. Numerous new threats and vulnerabilities have led to the development of new security technologies, devices and applications ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ all contributing to increased complexity in this area. Further, deploying new security technologies increase capital and operational expenses with no positive impact on overall productivity ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ exactly what IT managers have been instructed not to do by executive management. The business case for network security is exactly like insurance: it neither increases revenues nor reduces cost, but rather provides a safeguard in the event that an incident should occur.

While large enterprises can afford to staff IT with specialized security staff, small/medium enterprises (SME´s) face significant challenges in designing, implementing and managing a network security infrastructure. In fact, it is known that as much as 95% of all security breaches are attributed to misconfigurations. As a result, many SME´s have turned to Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP´s) to assist in the design, implementation and ongoing management of their security infrastructure. MSSP´s enable SME´s to economically extend the security infrastructure and expertise while simultaneously reducing overall spending and enterprise liability.

Enterprise Security Risks

Many corporations have implemented new business processes to streamline operations in direct response to the economic down turn over the past three years. Applications that automate these new processes have been the extension of new virtual business models and increased web based applications and infrastructure. Enterprise IT managers have been tasked with providing security solutions for these new applications and initiatives. In the area of communications, a new set of tools and options, which enable collaboration, are growing. Collaboration will allow corporations to achieve another level of productivity and automate new business process during the secure convergence era. Collaboration enabled through a set of IP communications that use various medium, such as instant messaging or IM, email, voice, video, text, etc., bring colleagues together to solve a problem or seize an opportunity. The economy is entering a new growth stage where businesses will take advantage of convergence by implementing IP Telephony to increase productivity with IP Communications as the new business platform enabling collaboration. But to deliver on the promise of collaboration, communication channels need to be secure.

Enterprise IT managers have long been challenged by a variety of hackers, system vulnerabilities, viruses and other attacks against the enterprise network. Over the past several years, the sophistication of these attacks, and the extent of their damage, has increased significantly. In recent years, there have been several distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) launched against some of the world´s most prominent websites and companies, including Amazon.com, eTrade, CNN and Charles Schwab. An epidemic of email-borne worms, including iloveyou, nimbda, W32klez and MSblaster, as well as rapidly propagating
viruses like the infamous SQLslammer, have caused tens of billions of dollars in damage. For example MSblaster cost Time Warner $500,000 in operational cost alone to clean up the mess it left behind. In addition to this operational cost, several facilities had to be taken off line for two days to disinfect IT resources from MSblaster. While Time Warner is a large firm with a highly skilled IT staff, the result would be worse for the small to medium sized business which can not afford a large IT staff with highly specialized network security skills In addition to these ?¢‚Ǩ?ìtraditional" security threats, enterprises now face a new breed of non-technical threats, including terrorism, the SEC and medical privacy regulations. IT security is now accountable for matters of national security, fiduciary integrity and personal privacy. New legislation and presidential initiatives such as Homeland Security initiatives, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Presidential Decision Directive 63 (PDD 63), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) carry severe non-compliance repercussions for employees, executives and enterprises at large. These new requirements have placed additional strains on already struggling IT departments that are understaffed and under budgeted to address such issues. With the promise of voice and data convergence finally being delivered upon, enterprises also now face serious security concerns in their IP telephony network. Moving voice to an IP infrastructure introduces voice communications to the same threats and vulnerabilities found on pure IP data networks. In addition to security threats, there are also privacy and billing concerns with IP phone spoofing. Reliability is also an issue, with many implementations of call management being implemented on a Windows-based operating system. The culmination of all of these IP telephony issues, are now compromising the one network IT managers once felt was secure and reliable.

Many corporations have implemented wireless local area networks or WLANs to increase mobility and productivity. But security, configuration and on going management have paused the acceptance of WLANs within the enterprise market. Concerns of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwar driving" where hackers or intruders equipped with a simple laptop computer and wi-fi card gain access to corporate LANs and its resources pose a serious security threat. Rogue access points or ad hock WLAN end points can also breach security defenses.

Unfortunately for many enterprises, security is an event-driven, reactive process. A major incident, such as a DDoS attack or virus outbreak, is the only thing that drives the update of the security infrastructure. When such an event occurs, it is isolated and addressed individually, rather than in the context of the overall enterprise network. The result is a ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Jacob´s Ladder" effect, leaving IT managers constantly running to catch up with security issues, only to end up worse off than they were previously.

So how are IT managers to cope with the complexity, cost, vulnerabilities and liabilities imposed upon the enterprise, which network security both creates and solves? We offer a four-tier network security architecture that segments defenses in to a simpler and more manageable model. You can view a multimedia online forum on this topic at www.businessrealities.com/default.asp?RC=MI61.

The Vulnerability Gap

While it is clear that developing and implementing a robust technical security architecture is a complex process, the day-to-day operations, management and maintenance of this security infrastructure can be outright daunting. Many enterprises make the mistake of viewing security as an event, rather than an ongoing process. Once the components are in place and have been initially configured, they employ the ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨plug and dust" mentality and assume that the policies and deterents in place will remain adequate into the future. This ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨once and for all" mindset could not be further from the truth. Several new vulnerabilities and exploits are discovered every day, on the order of 3500-4000 annually according to BindView Corporation´s RAZOR vulnerability research team. These exploits compromise firewalls, applications, operating systems and antivirus systems.
While the vendor community is diligent in providing rapid fixes to newly discovered vulnerabilities, many enterprises (particularly SME´s) find it difficult to keep up with patches and virus definition updates, leaving their systems vulnerable to these exploits. In fact, Gartner estimates that 95% of all attacks target vulnerabilities for which a fix already exists. While the ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨0-day" virus (a virus for which there is not yet a fix) does occur, these are few and far between. Most outbreaks involve known viruses that have been previously addressed. Some enterprises with extremely low risk-tolerance thresholds have implemented ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨zero tolerance" policies with strict repercussions (including immediate termination) to motivate end users to keep current, but such stern policy is impractical for most organizations.

The fact is that the speed of security outbreaks and propagation of viruses greatly outpaces most enterprises´ ability to react and contain them. For example, SQLslammer propagated throughout the globe in just 9.5 minutes. Perhaps large IT staffs can react to a propagating virus on this time scale, but the small to medium size enterprise is totally unable to respond until well after the virus has done its damage. This is a factor of the limited security budget, expertise and proactive initiatives currently in place within the small to medium size enterprise. In fact, many companies receive funding for network security well after an outbreak and apply that money to fixing an outdated security problem. In essence, many if not all SME´s find themselves totally unable to respond to new security threats thus always fighting a losing battle as their vulnerability gap grows faster then they can close it. The security incident ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨speed coefficient" and resulting vulnerability gap leave enterprise IT managers constantly running behind security issues, instead of enabling them to establish a solid defensible position.

To view the entire Enterprise Network Security Framework white paper please go to www.businessrealities.com/default.asp?RC=MI61.

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ReefEdge Networks was founded in June of 2000, and is a pioneer in the wireless LAN systems market. The company established a strong reputation as a WiFi gateway provider, and has most recently created a lot of excitement in the industry by launching their new ReefSwitch product line of WiFi switches that seamlessly delivers wireless services across the entire enterprise. ReefEdge has strong venture capital backing with over $40M raised to date from top-tier VCs. ReefEdge has earned numerous industry awards and distinctions over the past few years, most recently winning the Best of Show Award in the WLAN Switch category at the WiFi Planet Conference in December 2003.

The Enterprise Networks 2004 conference www.en2004.com is taking place from April 26th to the 28th at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. We are very fortunate to have Don Peterson, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Avaya deliver the Monday morning April 26th keynote on “Going Mainstream With IP Telephony”. I hooked up with Don to get his take on the direction of the enterprise communications industry. We talked about the shifts and changes that are occurring in technology, industry structure, and communication applications as the enterprise market migrates to IP communications. I also got his views on the future of our industry and how he, with his executive team, is structuring Avaya for that future. We also talked about how Avaya competes against Cisco. It’s a fascinating interview. Enjoy.

Nick Lippis: The days of procuring enterprise voice systems via large capital expenditures seem to be over as IP Telephony features are increasingly bundled within computing, operating systems, Ethernet switches and routers. In short, the procurement of an enterprise voice system is shifting toward a software and service business. First, do you agree with that assertion and if so then how are you organizing Avaya to participate in this market?

Don Peterson: Value is certainly shifting to the software layer. We recognized this early and translated it into a number of initiatives. The first was the creation of Avaya Global Services, an organization dedicated to providing comprehensive multi-vendor communications services to small, medium and large enterprises. The second was investment in open standards-based software, culminating in the Avaya MultiVantage suite of communications applications, which comprises a significant portion of the value we deliver to our customers. It is important to note that we will continue to pay attention to converged infrastructure, like media servers and gateways, as well as communication appliances. These are important solution components, given the mission critical
nature of the applications we deliver and our commitment to quality and availability.

Nick Lippis: With Avaya enjoying the leading share of the voicemail market, thanks to your Octel products, how will you hold onto that share as voicemail becomes an application running on standard hardware platforms?

Don Peterson: As with the rest of our portfolio, we have transformed our messaging offerings to meet customer needs and embraced open standards. Key to retaining and growing share is commitment to ease of migration and innovation. We’re now shipping the Avaya Modular Messaging System, a software product that operates on industry-standard hardware platforms. It integrates easily into customers’ infrastructure and interoperates with all of our current Octel and Intuity AUDIX Messaging systems, so customers can add capacity or migrate at their own pace, protecting their investments. Customers also value the new desktop capabilities such as Web, Microsoft Outlook and/or IBM Lotus Notes access to messages. For mobile personnel, we have a new speech-command interface to messaging and calling. We believe many of our customers will choose to update and refresh their messaging systems and networks over the next few years; we will be there to support them.

Nick Lippis: What is Avaya’s primary value proposition when it competes against Cisco?

Don Peterson: The ability to migrate customers to IP telephony at a path and pace of their choosing is a major differentiator. Our migration approach enables customers to leverage their existing investments, on average retaining up to 85% of their existing network investment. At its most basic, they don’t have to rip out and replace what they have. We can IP-enable their existing PBX or provide client server architecture – the important factor here is choice. A key aspect of our value proposition is the global multi-vendor services capability provided by Avaya Global Services. Anywhere in the world, customers have a single point of accountability to design, build, manage and maintain their IP communications network, irrespective of whose label is on their equipment. Last but by no means least is our strength in software applications. Our MultiVantage IP telephony software is industry standards-based and runs on multiple platforms. With 700-plus feature applications, we offer applications to suit unique business needs. Solutions – the combination of applications, systems and services – rather than infrastructure is the key to unlocking business value and competitive advantage.

Nick Lippis: What is your view of how enterprises will connect Avaya solutions between sites with service providers such as AT&T, MCI, Quest and many others offering VoIP services?

Don Peterson: Service Providers (SPs) are offering enterprises an array of VoIP options with ever more sophisticated IP pipes becoming available. Technologically we will support these options, particularly if they prove cost-effective, simple to manage and provide appropriate QoS to meet customer needs. I see a role for our consultants to simplify the issues, helping customers to make informed decisions that best meet the needs of their business. Our SP division is working closely with SPs to create IP-based applications that are hosted in their network, residing in the SP’s ‘cloud’. By leveraging SP’s IP networks and service offerings, enterprise customers can enjoy feature/functionality at both HQ and branch offices in a fully hosted solution, or interconnect existing on-premise equipment via the SP’s network in a managed service across multiple locations. Put simply, we are committed to serving customers any way they want to buy. We offer a range of hosted and managed options to enable customers to leverage the benefits of IP telephony together with SPs as their partners.

Nick Lippis: With so many different parts of the communications equipment, service providers, and IT industry shifting toward IP Telephony and VoIP, what is your vision of corporate networking over the next three to five years?

Don Peterson: Technologies, vendor sectors and markets will continue to merge and blur, both in the applications, i.e., voice, data and video, and infrastructure space — public networks, private networks, wireline and wireless, in-building and out-of-building. Successful enterprises will integrate communications applications into the fabric of their business processes. Communications applications based on industry-standard software make it possible to modularize communications “services” into building blocks. This trend will continue apace, but with the major addition of ‘presence-based’ functions like ‘create a conference’ or ‘find the user’ woven into them. Of crucial importance to presence-aware networks is development of rules and policies, governing how the enterprise, and we as individuals, will communicate. It’s worth repeating that the power of the network and how it will be used will be determined not by vendors, but by users. They will look to solution partners, those with the know-how and services capability to help them through the changing environment, and partner with them to make it work. For all of these reasons, Avaya has embraced open standards and interoperability — from TDM to IP, Linux to Lotus, Sun to Microsoft — and end-to-end services, from consulting to maintenance. It’s going to be a very exciting stage of communications history. I’m looking forward to it.

Nick Lippis: What are the big growth engines for Avaya over the next three to five years?

Don Peterson: The transition to IP telephony is a major growth engine. Just how big will be determined by the speed of adoption. Currently there are about 400 million lines of business telephony installed worldwide of which a little over 4% are IP lines. Conservative estimates indicate that, by 2007, the number of business lines will grow to 440 million with IP accounting for about 27%. No matter whose figures you read, this is a big opportunity. We also envisage significant demand for communications applications, such as contact center, unified messaging, wireless, and eventually, presence/SIP-based applications. Adoption and integration of these new technologies will drive demand for services, in particular professional consulting services, systems integration, maintenance, outsourcing and SP hosted solutions. Geographically, we foresee significant growth opportunity outside the US. Our move to expand ownership of Tata Telecom, in India, underscores our confidence in growth opportunities overseas and the importance of SP and technology partners as key distribution channels.

Nick Lippis: What industry triggers, events or products will shift the basis of IPT procurement from an economic efficiency solution toward a way to increase corporate earnings and productivity?

Don Peterson: Most companies realize they can’t save themselves to success; they have one foot on the cost pedal with the other on the growth accelerator. IP telephony serves both masters with the potential to reduce costs and grow revenue through optimizing performance and creating new business models. For example, a major telecom provider in Asia used our IP solutions to reduce expense and improve customer service. The enhanced capability enabled it to launch revenue generating outsourcing services for its enterprise customers. Significant technology triggers are likely to be the linkage of communications applications with web services platforms; increases in bandwidth for communications-enabled devices, both wired and wireless; and the proliferation of open standards. These will fuel communication and business application integration to levels unimaginable a few years ago. While there will also be triggers relevant to vertical sectors and compliance issues, I believe the main catalyst for growth will be sustained economic recovery and job creation.

Nick Lippis: It’s pretty clear that the adoption of IP Telephony will not stop; the only question is what its pace of adoption is. With that said, what is the next step or evolution in IP Telephony?

Don Peterson: To date, the majority of adopters have been driven by the opportunity to reduce overall expense, through toll avoidance and simplified administration. The next phase of evolution will be characterized by applications that drive revenue growth and competitive advantage. ‘Presence-aware networks and applications’ are set to have a profound impact. The technology will support unprecedented mobility, intelligence, and distribution of the enterprise. It will address top line growth needs, helping forge consistent, seamless customer experiences; intelligent, precise, customer interactions; increased effectiveness of mobile workers; and more productive internal collaboration. While vertical sectors may have different killer applications, they will all benefit in this new phase. There are exciting times ahead.

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ReefEdge Networks was founded in June of 2000, and is a pioneer in the wireless LAN systems market. The company established a strong reputation as a WiFi gateway provider, and has most recently created a lot of excitement in the industry by launching their new ReefSwitch product line of WiFi switches that seamlessly delivers wireless services across the entire enterprise. ReefEdge has strong venture capital backing with over $40M raised to date from top-tier VCs. ReefEdge has earned numerous industry awards and distinctions over the past few years, most recently winning the Best of Show Award in the WLAN Switch category at the WiFi Planet Conference in December 2003.

Mr. Gopal and I chatted on January 24, 2004. Ajei brings twenty years of expertise in technology and executive management to his position as CEO and co-founder of ReefEdge. Prior to ReefEdge, Ajei served as Chief Technology Officer for IBM’s Pervasive Computing Division. He held a variety of senior roles during his career at IBM, where his contributions were also recognized by election to IBM’s prestigious Academy of Technology. Ajei holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and a B.Tech. from IIT Bombay. He is the author of dozens of publications, and has over 20 patents awarded or pending.

The Interview

Ajei: Hi Nick, I´m happy to be speaking with you today.

Nick: My take is WiFi has stalled in the enterprise. Do you agree?

Ajei: I wouldn´t necessarily say that Wi-Fi has stalled. It is clear to me that WiFi is going through an adoption cycle that is fairly unique. Today, Wi-Fi represents a mission-critical technology being used in hundreds of ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨vertical" enterprises across multiple industries to provide data connectivity to wireless devices such as wireless cash registers, handheld barcode readers, wireless printers, scanners and laptops. What is interesting and perhaps unprecedented is that Wi-Fi started in the home and then
moved to the enterprise ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú because WiFi is an ideal solution to the problem of distributing broadband access in the home. The technology fit, sales took off, rapidly driving down the price points for access points and Wi-Fi access cards. The use of WLANs for general business applications will be fueled by the integration of Wi-Fi radios into the newest generation of laptops. For this segment of the market, we expect fullscale rollouts to begin in earnest in 2004.

Nick: There are other WLAN switch vendors in the market. What makes ReefEdge different?

Ajei: ReefEdge Networks targets ?¢‚Ǩ?ìmulti-site" enterprises, which have many geographically dispersed locations of varying size that are typically interconnected via a WAN. ReefEdgedelivers an open end-to-end WiFi solution for multi-site enterprises with support for different wireless connectivity requirements at each location. This includes multiple wireless devices and clients, access points and switches from multiple vendors, and support for central NOCbased management. ReefEdge further distinguishes itself through extensive security and management capabilities and comprehensive support for mobile users and devices. With a
continued focus on interoperability with other enterprise vendors, ReefEdge permits customers to maximize their current investments in access points, L2/L3 switches, and legacy wireless devices.

As a pioneer in this industry, ReefEdge has been successfully shipping products for over 2 years; many of our customers have deployed mission-critical WLANs with ReefEdge equipment running key business applications.

Nick: Securing wireless access has been a cause for pause for many network architects. What is ReefEdge´s network security strategy?

Ajei: Security is indeed still a cause for concern. However, most of the security issues associated with WLANs have been resolved by technology vendors like ReefEdge, and the biggest issue that remains is one of market education. ReefEdge recognized early on that security is a complex issue that needs to be addressed at multiple levels. Within our ReefSwitches, we provide comprehensive encryption alternatives to securely ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨lock the air" using 3DES, AES and other methods. ReefEdge was recently awarded FIPS 140-2 Level certification which permits government organizations, including the military, to use our products. We support multiple user and device authentication methods, including integration with corporate directory services, such as Active Directory. With comprehensive policy management of users, we can manage and control any individual user´s
WLAN experience, via access control, bandwidth management and quality of service. ReefEdge is committed to supporting standards. We implement 802.1x, which standardizes a user authentication framework and dynamic key management in WLANs. Further, we do not force an organization to pick a single security mechanism across the WLAN deployment. We are able to simultaneously, in a single deployment, support multiple encryption, authentication and policy management mechanisms.
This complete approach to security ensures that ReefEdge has the right Wi-Fi security solution for any organization deploying wireless.

Nick: Being able to manage wireless LANs has been an afterthought for many WLAN providers. How does ReefEdge Networks´ WiSe OS software plug into an existing enterprise management system?

Ajei: ReefEdge´s philosophy from the start has been to provide a complete and comprehensive end-to-end solution for enterprise WiFi deployments. This includes a number of management features, including management of users and devices, support for rapid multisite and large-scale rollouts, support for the deployment and management of access points, and the management and monitoring of the RF spectrum. It is important to understand that existing enterprise management systems alone should not be
relied on for system-level wireless management. It has taken us years to develop a set of tools IT administrators can use to cost-effectively manage their entire WLAN system. Frankly, we have a sizable lead on the competition in this particular area, and it is an important one. WiSe OS, the ReefEdge software loaded on all our hardware, provides both the operational ?¢‚Ǩ?ìline speed" services and the management services needed for enterprise WiFi deployments. WiSe OS is fully compatible with established enterprise management platforms such as CA and Tivoli.

Nick: Many network architects and planners are struggling with implementation such as RF and power management and site survey work. What is ReefEdge´s strategy around automated RF and power management?

Ajei: Nick, our new RF management tool, Air Manager, specifically addresses the RF and power management requirements. Our approach is particularly powerful, since we can dynamically manage power, channels and so on for standard 3rd party APs from the market leaders such as Cisco and Netgear. In contrast, other WLAN switch vendors can only manage the RF if the customer has deployed their proprietary access points.

Nick: There are so many 802.11 standards such as 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g and 802.11n. Two questions: First, how can network architects pick or choose the right WLAN standard to deploy?

Ajei: These standards refer to the over-the-air link. 802.11b provides 11Mbps of performance, which has proven to be adequate for many enterprise applications. 802.11a and g support higher levels of throughput; the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìn" standard will further increase speed, but it is still in the definition phase. The choice of which standard really depends on the overall bandwidth and coverage requirements.

Nick: Second, how can network architects easily upgrade their WLAN deployment to take advantage of the availability of a new standard without throwing away their existing WLAN investment?

Ajei: It is important to realize that no matter what WLAN technology is chosen today, as needs change and as technologies evolve, most customers will deploy access points based on multiple over-the-air link technologies. Therefore, a customer must be sure that their WLAN infrastructure is compatible with existing standards, and that their vendor is committed to emerging standards. Committed as we are to standards, ReefEdge can support WLANs based on a heterogeneous mix of access points from multiple vendors using different technologies. This approach is in sharp contrast to many of the competitive WLAN vendors, who require the use of their proprietary APs for anything above basic connectivity. Looking beyond the access point, ReefEdge can support a large number of mobile devices, including legacy devices such as handheld terminals, etc. Once again, we did this so that a customer could upgrade their WiFi technology to the latest in the market, without having to purchase new devices or rebuild working applications.

Nick: ReefEdge has focused its implementations on specific verticals. Why is that?

Ajei: As we discussed earlier, the vertical industries such as retail, healthcare, etc., were the first to embrace WLANs as a strategic technology. Naturally, we focused our sales efforts on the verticals ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ that´s where the opportunity is largest at this time.
That said, we have built the ReefEdge EcoSystem to be a general solution for all multi-site enterprises, not just those in specific verticals. These multi-site environments have unique needs that are not satisfied by other WLAN Switch vendors.

Nick: There is much interest in voice over WiFi. What is ReefEdge´s strategy and direction on voice over WLANs?

Ajei: VoIP over WiFi has some unique requirements. For example, when roaming between subnets, handoffs must be accomplished at sub 50ms to ensure the integrity of voice quality. There are also requirements for managing the limited wireless bandwidth across voice and data applications. ReefEdge supports the mobility and performance requirements for VoIP
over WiFi. In general, we have found that customers see the WLAN as a potential backbone for a variety of voice, data, public access, and legacy application services. ReefEdge products provide the tools needed to manage this complex ?¢‚Ǩ?ìnetwork utility".

Nick: There is much discussion and confusion in the industry around thick vs. thin access points. What is ReefEdge´s strategy and direction?

Ajei: The thick vs. thin debate is really a vendor debate and not a customer debate. Some WLAN vendors, in an effort to distinguish their proprietary offerings from those of other vendors, are making the claim that ?¢‚Ǩ?ìthin" access points are more cost effective than the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìthick" access points available from vendors such as Cisco. This claim is very debatable, given the precipitous decline in the price of access points overall. ReefEdge supports both thin and thick access points from multiple vendors. Where possible, we take advantage of the features built into the access point; our ReefSwitches are able to compensate for features missing in individual access points.

Nick: What are the key issues the wireless industry needs to address to see wireless ports being 50% of wired?

Ajei: From an infrastructure perspective, the key is to develop the products and components that allow a WLAN to be deployed with the same degree of management and control available for a wired network. For security, the bar for the WLAN is even higher than for the wired network. From a device perspective, it is the integration of WiFi radios into laptops and PDAs. This is,
of course, already happening. Once this is done, the key to growth is the deployment of applications that leverage the
mobility and convenience afforded by WLANs. By the way, this isn´t a wired vs. wireless debate. I expect both wired and wireless networks to coexist in the enterprise, as there will always be a need for both.

Nick: That´s all the time and space we have, Ajei. Thank you for your time today.

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During our Dec 4th ?¢‚Ǩ?ìIP Telephony Economics: Does It Add Up To Savings and Productivity?" webinar, it became obviously clear that IP Telephony is moving into prime time. There are a few data points that bring me to that conclusion. First, the sheer number of attendees (as mentioned above) indicates wide spread interest. Second is the large number of questions, over 100, and the type of questions asked during the webinar. Third, and the strongest indicator of all, is the excellent large scale deployment experiences the panel members shared with the audience. In fact, every speaker presented over an IP phone!

But to gauge the market´s acceptance level, it is the questions that provide the most insight. They indicate that Chief Network Architects (CNAs) are thinking through developing their implementation plans. As deployments follow education, one thing is very clear: there is a large demand for IP Telephony information. Only when that demand is satisfied will CNAs move toward implementation.

Here is a sampling of the type of questions asked and education needed to move IP Telephony into prime time.

Justin Stevens, CNA International Monetary Fund or IMF: ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWere phone features a high factor in your vendor selection either in parallel to your existing pbx or to your greenfield installations? We are looking at this also and are finding phone features vary among the different vendor offerings. Was this an issue with your organization?"

Brian Walker, CNA, SunTrust: ?¢‚Ǩ?ìHow were the savings achieved, specifics please."

Leon Schuman, CNA, Sedgwick CMS: ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhat monitoring and diagnostic tools do you use?"

There were many questions on cost justification through PBX or Centrex displacement, if and how to factor in IP Telephony applications into the cost justification, quality of service requirements, feature comparison between vendors, meeting e911 requirements, security concerns, plus probing on IP Telephony reliability etc. We were able to go through a lot of these questions during the webinar. Rather than re-hash them here, you can view the webinar on demand at www.en2004.com. What follows are a few insights gained from the session.

IP Telephony: Does Cost Justify!

If you´re not exploring how to take advantage of IP Telephony with its cost savings and corporate productivity increases, you´re delinquent in your duties as a chief network architect. A few examples: Lehman is saving $1M/year alone in the cost reduction of moves, adds and changes (MACs). MAC is a huge and relatively easy cost justification metric for IP telephony as is the cost avoidance of running IP voice and data over a single RJ45 Ethernet connection. A client of mine estimates their MAC cost at some $6.5M/yr, most of which can be eliminated with IP telephony´s mobility feature. Outside of MAC savings are toll bypass, especially for international links and employee-to-employee voice calls over the existing wide area IP network. IP telephony does provide productivity increases measured in increased revenue per employee. Yet no CNA factored this into their cost justification. In short new business process drives new applications, which is driving IP telephony deployments.

IP Centrex´s Success Doubtful

There is huge interest in IP Centrex offerings by AT&T, MCI, BT, Cable & Wireless, SBC, Verizon, Quest, Level(3), et al which all describe versions of IP Centrex in various stages of development. But these service providers may get a chilly reception when selling their services to enterprises. For example, David Greenfield, International editor for Network Magazine asked John Manville of Lehman Brothers, ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Did you ever consider the hosted VoIP/IP Centrex solutions? And why didn’t you pursue them?" John Manville and all the panel members answered the question in the same way: IP Telephony is a new technology with inherent risks. None of the panel members trusted putting this technology and their enterprise voice service in the hands of service providers.

These chief network architects wanted control of their architecture, including its design, its deployment and operations, and wanted to use it as a platform to wrap applications around business process. They all agreed that it was the right choice not to use IP Centrex, as an IP Telephony implementation requires tender loving care to keep it running smoothly. They also considered their converged network an ?¢‚Ǩ?ìapplication development platform", not just an IP phone that rides on top of an IP network. Their
thinking is, IP Telephony is a platform on top of which they are building applications. Most importantly, these applications increase the productivity of their organization and create a competitive advantage. The panel members also agreed that there is no killer application for IP Telephony. Rather it´s the culmination of small applications that incrementally provide real, tangible productivity value.

This thinking doesn´t bode well for AT&T, MCI and all the others offering IP Centrex service. The other knock against IP Centex is that most if not all of the regional service providers insist on bundling their own transport with IP Centrex, thus driving up the cost. I believe that the traditional service providers are entering the hollowing out process as enterprises move their voice service to private IP Telephony implementation. In fact, this may bode well for different service providers such as Dimension Data www.didata.com, IBM www.ibm.com or wholesalers such as Level (3) www.level3.com, who do not force companies to buy transport from them. If this model becomes reality then the traditional service providers may be relegated to transport providers while high value services such as IP Telephony will move to companies such as IBM Global Services, Dimension Data, Level (3) et al.

It also became clear that companies such as Vonage, Net2Phone, VoicePulse, SBC, Packet8 and Skype who offer basic voice services at zero to near zero cost may also receive a chilly reception in the large enterprise market as IP Telephony is much more than low cost dial tone. While there is always a large market for free things, corporate phone service is not one of them. Corporations will always expect reliability, quality and service, especially from their enterprise voice service.

Wither MPLS?

One topic that surprised many was the high quality voice service the panelists are experiencing on both their local and wide area network with limited QoS deployed. On the local area, by keeping voice and data in separate VLANs and just tagging packets, quality was reported as being excellent. In the wide area, tagging voice packets and establishing prioritized queues was all that was needed to deliver excellent voice quality. Also, the cost of wide area bandwidth over the past three years declined along with the telecom crash. MPLS based services have not fallen nearly as far as private lines and frame relay, making MPLS relatively expensive. Couple low cost bandwidth with the tagging of packets and queue prioritization and what do you get? Private lines and frame relay, not MPLS for VoIP transport.

VoWiFi Will Be A Big Deal This Year

A surprising number of questions focused on VoIP over Wi-Fi. VoIP over Wi-Fi is the new cordless phone for corporate networks. There is a lot of industry activity within the vendor community such as Avaya, 3Com, Mitel, Nortel, Cisco, Symbol, et al offering Wi-Fi phones. While there are a few Wi-Fi phones on the market today, I expect to see an explosion of them during 2004. The Wi-Fi or WLAN switch vendors need to beef up their voice support on access points as only 5 to 7 IP voice calls can be accommodated on an access point today. But all the questions on this topic were in search of experience and guidance as the market
ponders Wi-Fi corporate IP phones.

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Over the past several years our industry has been distracted, yes distracted by the dotcom bust, telecom crash, global recession, bankruptcies and executive scandals. During this period, the networking industry has continued to innovate and produce new technologies and products. While we had or heads down working hard reacting to external pressures and threats, the networking industry changed. Over the past three years the networking vendors have financed billions in R&D investment. What we got for that investment is network security products, IP Telephony, wirelesses LANs, 10G Ethernet, storage area networking and broadband. All these new technologies are now reshaping enterprise networks in ways that were unanticipated. For example, a new two-tier LAN structure made up of smart workgroups and a distributed core backbone is emerging.

As a result of this investment, all the assumptions and enterprise network design rules from the 90s have changed. How we design voice networking is totally different now as are LANs, wide area networks and network services. An excellent example of this change is the WLAN design tool Trapeze Networks has developed to assist network managers in access point placement, spectrum coverage, channel assignment, etc.

At the same time many IT executives struggle to get up to speed on new design techniques, high on enterprise’s list of funded projects are hardening the infrastructure through network security, identifying vulnerabilities and developing disaster planning
scenarios to assure business continuity. Clearly network security and business continuity are important projects for these times. But there is one problem with these projects; they are inflationary to IT budgets meaning that they don’t provide one
additional dollar toward revenue/employee productivity. In short, security and business continuity projects allow us to sleep better at night but they don’t do anything to increase revenue or earnings. They too present new design approaches and challenges to enterprise networks.

Network design is changing is because corporations needs have changed. We are entering an era where enterprise networks allow companies to be more adaptive and responsive to their customers and suppliers plus transparent to shareholders and
investors. In this Lippis Report we’ll explore the new two-tier DIN LAN structure. Companies that are building product for a two-tier model are HP’s ProCurve Group www.hp.com, Avaya www.avaya.com, 3Com www.3com.com, Enterasys www.enterasys.com, Foundry www.foundry.com and Extreme www.extreme.com. While Cisco www.cisco.com champions a three tier LAN structure it clearly has the products and motivation to shift to a simpler two-tier model. We can add Nortel www.nortel.com to that list of DIN supports as well after a discussion I had with Greg Merritt, VP Enterprise Networking Marketing at Nortel.

Three-Tier LAN Structure

The traditional three-tier LAN structure includes low cost workgroup switches to distribute access to desktops. This distribution tier connects to an aggregation tier made up of modular LAN switches in a wiring closet. The aggregation tier then connects to the third core backbone tier. The third tier is made up of a large chassis switch usually located in a data center or facilities room. The third tier is sometimes referred to as a collapsed backbone with all traffic flows transiting the core switch backplane. In essence the switch backplane provides the key bandwidth for inter-LAN segment traffic flows. The collapsed backbone connects into a router for wide area connectivity. Over the years the collapsed backbone switch has been the platform where most network services and features emanated from, burdening the core switch with endless software releases and fatten feature sets of questionable value. In essence this feature load on core switches invariable increases its cost and complexity. Backplane speeds in collapsed backbone switches have been able to keep up with traffic demands, but all traffic is forced to flow through the collapsed backbone, which may not be the best path for optimal user performance.

Today’s core switched networks are dominated by legacy chassis based designs, which offer high cost of acquisition and complexity. During the mid to late 90s legacy chassis designs offered a degree of freedom to IT managers as LAN standards were in consent flux. While the networking industry was working its way through various LAN standards such as token ring, versus FDDI, versus Ethernet versus ATM plus shared versus switched networks, IT managers needed a way to migrate and transition between these standards. Legacy chassis offered a network design that allowed network managers to experiment and change directions with the change of a module. IT managers were willing to pay the high price of a legacy chassis in exchange for the flexibility to change LAN standards and migrate between them. Today’s LAN market is different. Ethernet is the standard and the need for LAN type experimentation is a thing of the past. There is no need to pay the high price of legacy chassis solutions just to hedge on a LAN standard. Ethernet won that war. During this process IT managers were trained to pay high prices for core switches. Well its time to get re-educated.

Two-Tier LAN Structure

The two-tier structure includes smart workgroups and a distributed core made up of modular/chassis based products. First, the role of the core backbone network is changing to one that provides a highly reliable transport service. Why do network services have to be centralized in core backbone switches? In effect, as workgroup networks become smarter with the increased intelligence, core networks become simpler and less expensive. Intelligence is moving to workgroup switches in part to stem off the onslaught of firms like Dell www.dell.com, Linksys www.linksys.com, Intel www.intel.com, et al, who offer nearly feature free switches to the small enterprise market. As the traditional equipment suppliers add network services to workgroup switches, a barrier of entry is added, capping the commodity players from participating in large enterprise networks. Another reason is network security features need to be in smart workgroup switches to close access vulnerabilities of both wired and wireless
connections.

A new simpler core design with distributed switching is emerging. This core design is not based upon the exclusive use of chassis based switching placed into a collapsed backbone structure, but on distributed switching delivering lower cost of acquisition and increased network design flexibility. Figures 1 and 2 illustrates two and three tier structures respectively. In figure 2, the distribution layer has been omitted. Network services such as VLAN tagging, load balancing, WLAN security, roaming, QoS, port security, Power over Ethernet etc, identified as circles of color in figure 1 & 2 are delivered through a centralized network
management system in distributed core networks. Notice how services shift from the collapsed backbone switch toward smart workgroups with core networks providing key transport, reliability and service distribution.

Two or Three-Tier LAN Structure?

With decreasing price points of switching across the packaging spectrum core network devices can now be cost effectively distributed. This avoids network traffic bottlenecks and increases reliability by eliminating centralized single points of failure inherent in collapsed backbone networks. From a cost point of view, core networks designed with distributed switched networking products are less expensive to acquire since IT managers purchase what they need when they need it. Also, as requirements increase, these distributed core networks scale up more cost effectively thanks to their improved price/performance metrics over large chassis. For high port density applications, chassis based switching solutions are most effective and are an important part of the new distributed core design. New Ethernet switch chassis offer a wide range of Ethernet standards such as 10/100/1000 Mbs, called triple speed, and high port density. Today’s chassis products fit in and work within a distributed core network that
distributes not only packet forwarding but service delivery too. Most importantly, there is an alignment between traffic flows and physical paths since tier two designs eliminate the requirement that all traffic pass through the collapsed backbone. This increases performance by providing a more direct path between source and destination. The distributed core can be made up of fixed configuration or chassis based switches. A key feature set of distributed core backbones are that link aggregation is common between devices allowing dynamic allocation of high-speed links to heavy destination spots. To minimize operational spend routing and management of all devices within the distributed core backbone is represented as a single image. Companies’ operations and business processes are changing. This change is occurring most acutely at the user level. Employees need to be empowered by their IT infrastructure to adapt to a new mode of operations. The two-tier DIN LAN structure with network services closest to users starts to deliver that agility.

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A confluence of trends is ushering in a new design center for building and operating enterprise networks. Some of these trends are the continued downward price points of Ethernet switching, “integrated” network security, enterprise WLAN deployments,
maturity of IP Telephony solutions and most importantly, the severe budget constraints and increased requirement demands placed upon IT managers. Most if not all IT managers have to close network vulnerabilities, ensure business continuity in case
disaster strikes and implement network solutions that improve business or public sector employee productivity. Many of these edicts from above are un-funded projects placed upon IT managers at a time when 2003 IT spending will be +/- 3% of 2002
budgets, according to IDC www.idc.com.

Some of the large enterprise players such as 3Com www.3com.com , HP www.hp.com and Enterasys www.enterasys.com see opportunity in closing what I call a growing IT gap of less budget dollars to spend while requirements continue to increase. Because of the IT gap all network design rules have changed. For example, network service placement, packaging and form factor of ethernet switching, how security is implemented, the types of wide and local area connections used to link up sites and
connect in are different and the tools used to manage are all under going fundamental change. In short, there is a realignment of network features, functions and control points aimed at closing the IT gap.

Network intelligence, or network services, such as security, quality of service, power over ethernet, directory, content aware switching, presence, traffic management, etc is being distributed so they are closer users. This is in stark contrast to the centralization of network services manifested in collapsed backbone network structures or the reliance of centralized services delivered via service provider networks. The value of DIN is realized in three important ways: 1) lower acquisition and operational cost of networking products on multiple levels, 2) improved user network experience via network services close to users, and 3) the ability to support new productivity increasing IT applications such as IP Telephony.

The Distributed Intelligent Network or DIN architecture is made up of six components:

1. Smart workgroups
2. Distributed core backbones
3. Wireless networking
4. Network services
5. Virtual WAN or VWANs
6. IP telephony

Network security is an “integrated” service within a DIN architecture rather then a separate box or software image providing authentication, key distribution, encryption, firewalling, etc. Some have argued that SAN/NAS should be a component of DINs. I’m
on the fence on this. Yes DINs will improve SAN/NAS installments with smart workgroups switching traffic based upon content in addition to destination IP address. Also a more distributed directory that locates content will also improve SAN/NAS installations.
So I come down on the side of SAN/NAS installations will improve with DINs rather then being a separate component.

In this Lippis Report we’ll cover Smart workgroups, distributed core backbones and wireless networking. In Lippis Report Volume 13 Network Services, VWANs and IP Telephony will be explored along with a final DIN wrap up.

Smart Workgroup Networking

Workgroup networks are becoming more switched, intelligent and wireless. Price points for switched LAN products continue to drop. For example, a 1Gbs Ethernet port on a fixed configuration switch is approximately $137 today. Pricing pressure will only
increase thanks to companies like Dell and Intel who have entered the networking market. Traditional equipment vendors are therefore seeking differentiation by increasing value. Value is being added into the once dumb workgroup switched network. Value is the inclusion of wireless LAN connectivity, the delivery of network services and price efficiency. The new smart workgroup design allows IT managers to deliver productivity boosting wireless mobility and business continuity. Another feature of smart workgroup networks is the enforcement of network services such as QoS, directory, security, network monitoring and configuration plus the delivery of power for IP phones. This distribution of intelligence of network services at the workgroup level
delivers powerful control of network resources to IT managers. It allows IT managers to:
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Control access to the switched infrastructure,
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Deliver QoS at the ingress of the network,
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Lowers the traffic load on the backbone network,
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Enables secure wireless mobility services,
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Centrally configure and monitor workgroup resources.

Distributed Core Networking

The role of the core backbone network is to provide a high reliability transport service. In effect as workgroup networks increase in intelligence core networks become simpler, less expensive and distributed. Today’s core switched networks are dominated by chassis/modular based designs which offer high cost of acquisition and complexity. During the mid to late 90s these designs offered a degree of freedom to IT managers as LAN standards were in consent flux. While the networking industry was working its way through various LAN standards such as token ring, versus FDDI, versus Ethernet versus ATM plus shared versus switched networks, IT managers needed a way to migrate and transition between these standards. Chassis offered a network design that allowed network managers to experiment and change directions with the change of a module. IT managers were willing to pay the high price of a chassis in exchange for the flexibility to change LAN standards and migrate between them.

A new simpler core design with distributed switching is emerging. This core design is not based upon the exclusive use of chassis/modular based switching placed into a collapsed backbone structure, but on distributed switching, delivering lower cost of
acquisition and increased network design flexibility. With decreasing price points of switching across the packaging spectrum, core network devices can now be cost effectively distributed. This avoids network traffic bottlenecks and increases reliability by eliminating centralized single points of failure. From a cost point of view, core networks designed with distributed switched networking products are less expensive to acquire since IT managers purchase what they need when they need it. Also, as
requirements increase, efficient distributed core networks scale up more cost effectively thanks to their improved price/performance metrics over chassis. For high port density applications, chassis based switching solutions are most effective and are an important part of the new distributed core backbone design. Network services such as VLAN tagging, load balancing, link aggregation, QoS, security, monitoring, configuration etc are either embedded in the switches or delivered
through a centralized network management system in distributed core networks.

Distributed core switches are represented in network management as a single entity streamlining the management of the core. This allows the core to transport the enforcement of network services at the workgroup level throughout the business network.
There’s a wide choice of vendors delivering products for distributed core network implementations. 3Com’s www.3com.com eXpandable Resilient Networking or XRN for its SuperStack 4900 family of switches plus the 4060 and 4050 switches are
distributed core networks products. HP’s www.hp.com Procurve 9315M/9308M/9304M, 5372xl and 4148gl can also be implemented in distributed core network architecture. Enterasys’s www.enterasys.com N & C series switches are built for distributed core backbones.

It is possible to distribute a collapsed backbone core network, however, the cost is high in both capital and operational cost. The price per port for fixed versus modular layer 3 configurations supporting 1Gbs is $287 vs $791, respectively. Distributed core
networks leverage fixed configuration switches affording lower cost per port switching. Multiple high cost chassis can be deployed around and within a building, but at a high cost. Operationally these chassis would have to be configured as virtual routers. This
would require operations to understand and administer virtual router redundancy protocols, virtual router IP addresses and virtual router IDs. Also, configuration and management of collapsed backbones is performed on each switch versus as a total system. In short, capital and operational cost is high to build a distributed core backbone out of a collapsed backbone network.

Wireless Networking

In the Lippis Report Volumes 9, 10 & 11 www.lippis.com we covered wireless networking in depth. Wireless LANs are finally maturing, thanks to 802.11i (network security) & 802.11e (quality of service) WLANs can be incorporated into an enterprise network framework such as DIN. Over the next 12 to 18 months access point placement will be deliberate to assure connectivity. But as wireless LAN switches hit the market from 3Com, Proxim www.proxim.com , Symbol www.symbol.com , et al access point pricing will plummet to sub $100 allowing pervasive placement. Low access point pricing coupled with hardened security, thanks to 802.11i, increased bandwidth and range plus WLAN features managed through enterprise management software will link WLANs into DIN architecture. Smart workgroups and distributed core networks will increasingly become a back haul mechanism for WLAN traffic. Over this same time period manufactures such as Avaya www.avaya.com , Mitel www.mitel.com , Nortel www.nortel.com , 3Com www.3com.com , Symbol www.symbol.com et al will be offering IP phones with WLAN interfaces allowing knowledge workers to roam around the enterprise with their IP phones. These same companies working with firms
such as Motorola www.motorola.com will increasingly offer multi-model handsets that link IP Telephony, WLAN and mobile carriers. In short, voice features will be unleashed from desktops and distributed to mobile users or put another way WLAN will enable the distribution of network intelligence closer to users.

This expansion of wireless data options increases a business’s continuity and survivability. This expanse of wireless network diameter increases its overall importance and utility to business networks over the next business cycle from a
productivity and disaster recovery perspective. The computer networking industry is entering a new age by developing networking products and applications, which allow businesses and public sector concerns be more mobile and productive via DIN.

In the next Lippis Report we’ll finish our discussion of DIN components and return to how DIN closes the IT gap.

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Short Message Service or SMS is an extremely popular data service for mobile operators in Europe and Asia. So popular in fact, that the GSM networks that support it are on the verge of breaking. In Europe SMS services are already straining mobile infrastructure. Europeans and Asians have taken to SMS like the US has taken to the internet. SMS is a text based messaging
service between mobile users. SMS messages are limited to 160 characters, but its use is wide and varied. The SMS text messages ride on the date channel of the SS7 network within the mobile network infrastructure. The number of messages sent are huge, and more importantly, subscribers pay for them. SMS has grown to 24 B messages sent in May 2002 worldwide from 7
B messages in the same month two years ago, according to the GSM Association, www.gsmworld.com.

SMS Slow To Grow In The US

But the U.S. lags far behind Europe in the use of SMS largely because operators have been slow to tackle system compatibility problems. U.K. users send as many SMS messages in a month as Americans do in a year, says Jupiter Research www.jupiterresearch.com. Considering that more fancy digital color screen mobile phones are coming onto the US market with
operators such as AT&T´s m-life www.att.com and Sprint www.sprint.com pushing the service, could SMS take off in the U.S., too?

The ability to deliver messages on the move gives SMS an edge over e-mail. For example, VirusAlert sends warnings to subscribers’ mobile phones in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg about new computer viruses. They can tell a user what they look like, how they influence a computer system and what preventive measures can be taken. Mal & Co., uses SMS
to make sure people don’t miss a party of a new artist they represent. Zurich city officials use SMS to remind people when recycling-pickup dates are coming. West Midland´s police set up an SMS number for deaf and mute people to contact them. In short, SMS is a part of European life and many are now trying to make this wireless lifestyle richer.

SMS Grows Volumetrically

Some are now considering a WAP push on top of SMS, which can grow into a more rich set of data services. But the SMS phenomena is consuming bandwidth that was put in place for a control channel not a data service and this bandwidth is near its limit in some markets. Also, European GSM mobile access networks are flat requiring aggregation equipment to support the
increasing SMS load. This fact has many mobile operators nervous and equipment suppliers ready to help. In short there is a looming bottleneck building in the infrastructure that supports SMS. Within 3 years, most of these networks will have to be re-architected to support larger volumes of SMS messages. With the potential combination of WAP and SMS, many feel that
this data service will force a re-architecting of mobile infrastructure. The boom in SMS, is much like the off-load dial-up problem we have in the US. When internet access boomed in the mid to late 90s, over 40 million PCs were dialing up internet access
services through central office switches. This added unpredicted load on central office switches clogging them with long hold down times which interrupting voice service. At times, emergency voice services such as 911 would be blocked. Erlang tables, used by telecom engineers for capacity planning of central office switch volume was no longer adequate to predict traffic load
and service levels.

Off Loading SMS On To IP

Softswitches and broadband access helped move internet access users off dial connections onto a packet mode service. To allow SMS to grow, mobile operators will have to move SMS off the SS7 network and on to a pure packet infrastructure such as IP. Cisco www.cisco.com has it´s ITP or IP Transfer Point protocol implemented in its 2650/2651 and 7507/7513 routers for
transporting SS7 traffic over IP. ITP is being used in Italy, Korea and other markets to place SMS traffic onto a packet network. This will allow mobile operators to place SMS traffic on a packet mode network and let it grow seamlessly. Cisco isn´t the only vendor providing SMS off load. Most of the other large players in the mobile market have product to scale up SMS as it
transitions from just text to MMS and/or WAP over SMS.

While SMS is big in Europe and Asia, it´s unclear if the US will follow their lead. The Europeans and Asians have been trained to pay transactionally for SMS. But in the US, data service billing is based on the internet access model, a flat, all you can eat, fee. There´s also a difference in how mobile phones are used in the US. Cell phones are not powered on all the time in the US, with the exception of Nextel customers who use Direct Connect©, the walkie-talkie feature which allows direct connections between Nextel end points without dialing a number. So the US market is different both culturally, how mobile phones are used, and how its customers pay for data service.

Experimentation is taking place now in the US to figure out how best to offer messaging services. The blackberry model has found acceptance in the business market. But many mobile operators are seeking a richer set of messaging services that may include streaming data of stock, news, weather and other information. In short, look for mobile operators to offer messaging with bundles of customizable information that is streamed to mobile phones and other devices, reachable through a variety of networks. While it´s unclear if SMS will be a consumer success in the US, mobile operators are looking more toward businesses to sell their messaging services.

Service Extension over CDMA, Wi-Fi, & IP Telephony Networks

The area that I find most exciting and promising is the linkage between mobile operators, public and private Wi-Fi operators and IP Telephony. On January 13th, 2003 Avaya www.avaya.com , Motorola www.motorola.com and Proxim www.proxim.com announced a joint relationship to extend IP Telephony solutions over wireless networks. Motorola is committing to build a duel
mode CDMA/GSM and 802.11 phone and mobility manager that allows hand-offs between Wi-Fi and mobile operator networks in mid conversation. Proxim proposed to deliver access points that support 802.11e (quality of service) and 802.11i (WEP replacement) allowing IP Telephony calls to flow over public and private Wi-Fi networks. Their focus is mainly enterprise voice over
Wi-Fi. Avaya promised to extend MultiVantage IP telephony features over Wi-Fi networks and add SIP to end points, enabling ?¢‚Ǩ?ìpresence" based messaging.

How can enterprise networks use this? In essence an enterprise would be able to use the new Motorola phone to make wireless calls in and out of their office building. If you are within your building, your voice call would stay on the enterprise IP Telephony network saving cellular phone cost. When you are outside of the enterprise, you can use the same phone to make calls on your
chosen mobile network. This would eliminate the need for two v-mail boxes and telephone numbers, one from a mobile operator and one from your enterprise. It would also eliminate the need for two separate phones, one to use while at the office and one to use in between home and work.

This is an excellent start to the blurring of GSM/CDMA & 802.11 networks. In short this announcement kicks off the battle over wireless network supremacy between net heads (data or IP network companies) and bell heads (traditional CDMA/GSM companies). There is much to be done here if this type of architecture is to work. Roaming agreements and hand-off technology
needs to be put in place and proven. Integration services that tie CDMA/GSM, Wi-Fi and enterprise IP telephony networks together need to be offered. Motorola and others need to prove that they can build a handheld device for Wi-Fi networks that is cost effective and has battery life equal to or better then existing cellular phones.

Mobile operators need a strong business case to get on board too. One possible case is that mobile operators can increase messaging revenues by extending messaging services into the enterprise. In essence, within a unified messaging platform, a message could find you, based upon presence, whether you are at your computer, laptop or on your cell phone independent of
location. Currently mobile operator services are cut off from cell phones when individuals enter their office buildings since they often shut them off and/or interference blocks reception. Further, with Avaya´s MultiVantage features available to the Motorola combo CDMA/wi-fi phone, a feature set normally available on desktop phones would now be accessible on your cell phone.
The cell phone would work across wireless and IP telephony networks, opening up new revenue opportunities to the mobile operators inside an enterprise network. To achieve this model, Wi-Fi access point cost needs to plummet so pervasive Wi-Fi services can be deployed in the enterprise. Look for Wi-Fi wireless switches from Proxim, 3Com and Symbol et al within a year, which move Wi-Fi features into LAN switches dumbing down access points and reducing their associated cost. In short, a lot has to happen to create seamless CDMA/Wi-Fi/IP Telephony networks, but that’s the way all big markets start. So will the US
adopt a European style SMS messaging service? I wouldn´t hold my breath.

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No matter what you call it, the wireless LAN, or WLAN or Wi-Fi standard; after more then ten years of development, project IEEE 802.11 is a major success. WLAN deployments span home networks, telecommuters, small offices, regional sites, headquarter facilities and public spaces. The typical office WLAN deployment sits within the workgroup network offering mobility to knowledge workers. Wireless access point pricing will plunge over the next twelve months propelling pervasive WLAN deployment. Wireless switches from companies such as 3Com, www.3com.com, and Symbol Technologies www.symbol.com will be offered this fall using wired infrastructure as a backhaul for wireless traffic flows. The Wi-Fi market is poised to boom and usher in a new way of providing computer network connectivity and voice services with:

?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ Intel www.intel.com et al promising to bundle multi-function Wi-Fi cards into their laptop processors.
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ the availability of low cost access points,
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ wireless switches on the horizon
?¢‚Ǩ¬¢ public massive Wi-Fi hotspot build outs

While analyst market projections may vary, what is consistent is the general trend line. It´s up, up, up and away.

IDC www.idc.com estimates there will be 4.2M homes equipped with WLAN by 2004. In-Stat/MDR www.instat.com believes that there are 5 million devices worldwide with embedded WLAN ports today and this number will balloon to 91 million over the next five
years. There are over 2000 hotspots today. Hotspots are public places such as Starbucks, American Airlines lounges, hotels and parks that provide a public WLAN service. These hotspots are projected to grow to 41,000 by 2007 generating some $3Billion of revenue according to Analysys www.analysys.com . And this projection is low based upon resent events.

There is a WLAN flash point occurring in the telecommuter, small business and conference rooms for medium to large business taking place. As the entry price falls from $340 to now $229 for a small installation an acceleration of WLAN use has resulted. In 2000 only 9% of telecommuters used WLAN, it is projected that this has accelerated to 25% by year-end 2002 according to In-Stat/MDR.

Backward and Forward Migration Standards

While the 802.11b standard has found market acceptance, the IEEE has finished work on the new 802.11a standard and is projected to complete the 802.11g standard soon. 802.11a network interface cards and base stations are available today. 802.11a is similar to 802.11g, in that they both deliver up to 54 Mbps of bandwidth, with extensions for even higher data rates. Radio frequency interference is much less likely in 802.11a because the less-crowded 5 GHz band is used for transport. The 5GHz band also reduces the range to approximately 80 feet which is less than lower frequency systems used in 802.11b and
802.11g. This will increase the cost of 802.11a systems because it requires a greater number of access points per network diameter. However, the shorter range enables a much greater capacity in smaller areas via a higher degree of channel reuse.

The 802.11g standard is backward compatible with 802.11b while 802.11a is not unless multi-mode (802.11a, b, g) network interface cards are used. Expect them in May to June ´03 time frame. 802.11g is an extension to 802.11b. 802.11g products are available now in limited supply ramping up during Q1 ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ√Ä√∫03. 802.11g broadens 802.11b’s data rates to 54 Mbps within the 2.4 GHz band exploiting OFDM or orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access technology. The range at 54 Mbps will likely be less than existing 802.11b access points operating at 11 Mbps. 802.11b radio cards will interface directly with an 802.11g access point and vice versa at 11 Mbps or lower depending on range. For example, 3Com´s Access Point 8200/8500 products, available January 2003, support 802.11b/a/g, IP Voice, QoS, load balancing and extended roaming. Upgrades and backward compatibility will be dependent on vendor implementations, so choose your vendor wisely.

The next question is which WLAN standard to use? The answer is, it depends. For high speed requirements in small areas with a dense supply of users 802.11a may be best. For conference rooms where it´s unknown which WLAN NIC laptops are being used, waiting for 802.11g may be best. If there isn´t a high speed requirement, then stick with 802.11b. It seems like 802.11a products will satisfy niche markets while 802.11b/g will address the bulk of the market. In any case, the networking industry is delivering options for WLAN installations and the options are only going to increase.

Blurring Public and Private Wi-Fi Service

The future of WLANs will bring higher speed connections, multi-modal NICs and access points, wireless switches and new wireless devices. Pervasive WLAN access, driven by cost reductions in access point products, will enable roaming around a building without loosing a WLAN connection supporting both networked applications and VoIP services. Pervasive WLANs will deliver to IP phones what they currently don´t have; roaming. IP phones supporting Wi-Fi and bluetooth connections will be available by most vend

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I´m becoming increasingly convinced that IP Telephony projects for large enterprises will be primarily customized, built and managed through integration service agreements rather than home grown projects implemented by internal staff. We are entering an IP Telephony period which delivers productivity and increased customer satisfaction benefits through collaborative and customer relationship management applications respectively. There are huge savings to be gained too through a single IP
infrastructure for voice and data which is the starting point for many IP Telephony projects. However, large enterprises may be ill equipped to take advantage of IP Telephony´s benefits on their own. In short, IP Telephony may very well be an integrator´s game.

The future of the enterprise network market will be all about IP Telephony. (See The Lippis Report #: 006: The Future of VoIP: A Distributed Service In An IP Network at our back issues section.) Sure security is very important, there is market momentum around Storage Area Networks and the Wi-Fi or WLAN market is booming. But make no mistake about it; IP Telephony is the
next major enterprise network spend measured in the tens of billions of dollars annually over the next business cycle. With IT spending in 2003 projected to be +/- 3%, 2003 will be a year where networking vendors look to gain share and be well positioned for the IP Telephony spend cycle.

Is it Safe To Run Your Business on IP Telephony?

IP Telephony is at the same maturity point that IP networking was in 1994/1995. At that time I remember delivering the keynote at a US West conference in Denver with my main message being, it´s safe to run your business on IP. I used the new NASDAQ IP network as my proof point. IP Telephony is approaching the point where the main message can be, it´s safe to run your business on IP Telephony. We should reach that point in 2003 when a few high profile IP Telephony projects go public. While the early stages of IP Telephony will focus around preparing the infrastructure to support both voice and data in IP, the later stages will be all about custom collaborative applications that drive cost/expense down and productivity and earnings up. When you think about it, IP Telephony suppliers will be companies that sell software, end points (hard and soft end user communicating devices) and services, and not necessarily in that order.

IP Telephony A Services Business

This model of the ideal IP Telephony vendor for large enterprise is very reminiscent of IBM today and the transformation it underwent with Louis Gerstner at its helm. Gerstner took over IBM in 1993 when the mainframe business was assumed dead and the company was viewed to be the same. When IBM offered early retirement to its employees, they expected 25,000 to
take them up on the offer. It turns out that 50,000 took early retirement, sending a clear vote of no confidence to IBM executive management, its customers and shareholders. Gerstner saved IBM by focusing on the Internet from a total solution services perspective with its e-business campaign. IBM customizes e-business solutions to large enterprise customers. Key to this
strategy is that IBM sells a lot of its hardware through the general contracting service. Enterprises want services to solve complex projects with huge payoffs. Since IP Telephony projects change transport and application architecture, the implementation skill set must span these areas too. Large enterprise IP Telephony projects require broad and multiple skills making them complex
yet deliver hard measurable business value. In short, there is pain and gain. This is why many large enterprises will seek total solution based services with quick payback for their IP Telephony projects. Payback or return on investment (ROI) has to be in the 10 to 18 month time frame. As Nigel Morris, the president and chief operating officer at Capital One Financials says: “We’re willing to spend a dollar to make more than a dollar back.” Mr. Morris enforces what he calls the 10-10 rule: a project must take
“no more than 10 months, no more than $10 million.” William Zollars, the chief executive of the Yellow Corporation, a trucking and logistics company says, “We never do anything we can’t complete in under a year," Budget is there for projects that pay for themselves within a year. In IP Telephony, it´s difficult to rely upon staff to design, implement and manage the solution since it may take at least six plus months for them to get up to speed. CIOs are looking toward IP Telephony vendors to customize their IP Telephony solutions for their businesses and build it for them. In the small and medium size business market, IP Telephony is much less complex and can be implemented by a combination of value added resellers, channel partners and internal staff.

An effect of this shift toward services to deliver IP Telephony solutions is that network hardware will increasingly becoming second to services. Already the router market is looking more and more like the old PBX market. It took Cisco over a year to release version 12.0 of its IOS. The time between releases has opened a window of opportunity for many companies to build products that deliver features around the router. This is very similar to the adjunct processor market which grew around the PBX. Products such as firewalls, VPN tunnel terminators, Route Control, load balances, web caches, and SSL acceleration devices, etc, have sprung up around the router to deliver critical features.

Looking to the west there are a few large Asian firms such as UTStarcom, www.utstar.com Huawei Technologies www.huawei.com and Accton www.accton.com which offer network infrastructure products at drastically lower prices than their US competition thanks to a lower cost basis. Remember Amdahl, Hitachi and Fujitsu sold mainframes at 30 to 40% below
IBM´s S390s. This caused a precipitous dive in IBM mainframe sales from $13B in ´90 to $6B in ´93. While these Asian firms have not gained traction yet in the US, they have started to do so in South America, Asia and Europe. All it will take is a US partner for sales and distribution for these Asian concerns to kick-off a deflationary cycle of networking product pricing. CIOs feel that they have over paid and over built their network infrastructure.

Even today Cisco demands a huge premium over its competitor´s products seemingly for the Cisco brand. In short, the industry understands that it has paid too much for networking hardware in the past. In the IP Telephony future, service companies that visualize, design, build and manage total integrated solutions for IP Telephony projects and take responsibility for quality will influence the hardware/network infrastructure required for that solution. If network infrastructure is provided at a lower cost then today´s pricing and is backed by a reputable brand, then all the better for the CIO.

IP Telephony Firms: Wither Extreme, Foundry, Entrasys & Nortel?

So which companies are best positioned to deliver IP Telephony services? Well you can count out the usual suspects of enterprise networking hardware out such as Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks and Entrasys unless they get smart about IP Telephony in a hurry. And they can smarten up pretty quickly with a relationship with Shoreline www.shoretel.com or Pingtel
www.pingtel.com for starters. Nortel has re-organized its IP Telephony products under its Succession brand as it attempts to focus on this market. But Nortel is still unable to get out from under its financial mess, distracting it from the business of
networking. In short, you can only assess Nortel´s ability to compete after it solves its financial problems. Until that happens Nortel is in a holding pattern.

Cisco Enjoyed the Appetizers, What About the Entr?ɬ©e?

Cisco www.cisco.com clearly has been driving the IP Telephony market from the beginning and is a long-term player. But its IP Telephony program called AVVID is troubled. The company is organized and employees compensated around product development, sales, marketing, etc to sell networking hardware. The biggest difficulty Cisco has in the IP Telephony space is that it views it as a means to sell hardware, i.e., Catalyst Switches and routers. This is much like Digital Equipment´s thinking in the mid to late 80s when it sold networking equipment only so it could sell a VAX computer. To be a total IP Telephony solutions service provider, Cisco would have to turn its business model around from high growth and margins through hardware sales to services. But Cisco doesn´t feel the need to make such a transformation. It would have to realize further revenue and earnings
pressures. On the earnings side, it would have to reach the bottom of squeezing suppliers to increase earnings. On the revenue side, it would have to start loosing share in the Ethernet switch market. It owns the router market period. If the Asian firms are successful in entering the US market by cutting network infrastructure product prices by 30 to 40%, Cisco may find itself in
the same position IBM did in 1993. When and if that occurs Cisco will feel the pressure to change its business model.

The question then is will it be too late? Its AVVID architecture is expensive from both an acquisition and operational perspective. AVVID, at times, requires a large spend in Catalyst products to deliver Cisco´s IP Telephony functionality increasing acquisition cost. Based on work with clients, AVVID is complex to manage requiring more operational resources than some of Cisco´s competitors. Cisco has also been on the defensive attempting to clear its position on open IP Telephony standards as the industry, including Gartner, questions its commitment to open standards. It apparently has security vulnerabilities on its IP Phone 7960 and supporting IP Telephony environment, according to Ofir Arkin of The Sys-Security Group (www.sys-security.com). With all of the above, it´s no surprise that Cisco has been losing market share in the IP Telephony space, according to the Dell´Oro Group. They report that Cisco has dropped from 54% to 44% share from ´00 to the first half of ´02, as Mitel and Avaya have entered the market and surged.

Avaya To Lead With Services

After meetings with Avaya www.avaya.com executives including chairman and CEO Donald Peterson, it´s clear that Avaya has a strategy and vision for the high-end enterprise IP Telephony space. Avaya more than any other player can be the IBM of the networking industry and take a page from Gerstner´s new book ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨Who Says Elephants Can´t Dance?" Its service revenue is $2.5B as is its converged systems business. It understands customized solutions to meet business needs earned through decades of
enterprise networking experience. During its recent analyst conference it stressed a business model that leads with total solution services, which is unique in the IP Telephony space today. Avaya services will support a multivendor network infrastructure and IP Telephony application environment. In short, Avaya intents to be the architect and general contractor for IP Telephony projects to large enterprises.

The challenge for Avaya is all execution. It recently reorganized all of its applications, Ethernet switching, WLANs and PBX businesses under the converged systems group. The question is whether this group can develop differentiated converged infrastructure products and collaborative applications that deliver on Avaya´s IP Telephony service promise. Also Avaya will have to make a choice if being either a hardware or software and services company. The differences between these two choices are
enormous. Cultures, compensation, sales and marketing internal structures are very different. It´s not clear if Avaya is truly ready to make the shift to a services and software concern.

3Com Goes For The Middle Market

I recently spent time discussing 3Com´s www.3com.com strategy with its CEO Bruce Claflin. 3Com has an opportunity to lead the industry in simplified network infrastructure and take the middle enterprise market. We are fast approaching the days when networking companies that sell products surrounded with techno babble, fatten features and high prices are a thing of the past. 3Com has all the right products for today, WLAN, VPNs, IP Telephony and Ethernet switching that link together to create practical
networking solutions. It has a solid financial picture with $1.25B in cash and equivalents and positive earnings. Its´ customer service and support is excellent too and it has loyal and profitable channel partners as well. The 3Com brand is still widely known and respected. What 3Com needs to do is deliver an enterprise-wide infrastructure value proposition to the industry rather than sell point products. It also needs to focus on leading with IP Telephony services to its market segments.

Mitel Targets Small Business And Offices

Mitel www.mitel.com has burst onto the IP Telephony scene over the past few quarters with great success. I met with Mitel’s Chairman Dr. Terence Matthews, who purchased Mitel in February of ’01. He and his team are responsible for the renewed Mitel vigor and focus on IP Telephony. Dell’Oro reports that Mitel has gone from 0% to 8.2% IP Telephony market share from ’00 to first half of ’02.

When talking with Terence and other Mitel executives, they lead with the user experience, ROI, IP Telephony applications and features rather than the products themselves. For IP Telephony, Mitel is delivering solutions to the hot integrated communications platform or ICP market segment. They are focused on the small business solutions market or small offices of large enterprises. They provide IP and soft phone end points. Their new 3300 ICP boast the support of 30 to 30,000 users. It comes bundled with embedded voice mail, auto attendant, ACD, automatic route selection, IP trunking, least cost routing and multiple vertical-specific features. It also has an embedded 802.11 wireless gateway. Mitel enjoys relationships with Foundry Networks, Hewlett-Packard, and Extreme Networks for network infrastructure fulfillment The question for Mitel is can it compete without an infrastructure solution of its own. I do believe that when the industry is at the height of the IP Telephony spend cycle, network infrastructure will take a back seat to applications. What’s not clear is when that will happen and if you need to provide network infrastructure now as admission or if you can skip this step by partnering?

CxOs: IP Telephony Gatekeepers

IP Telephony will change enterprise networking on multiple levels. Companies will lead with services, upsetting the current set of vendors. Distribution channels to market and customer relationships will shift too. Not having CxO level customer relationships now will hurt IP Telephony vendors in the future as CxOs become the important gatekeeper to solution sales. There is a new basis of competition emerging that will require a new set of metrics to measure the industry´s success. Gone may be the days of
measuring networking companies on the number of ports or boxes shipped. What will be important is how fast a company can customize a total worldwide IP Telephony solution, its implementation and management. It may turn out that the above equipment vendors simply supply large integrators such as IBM, EDS, et al as they become the main business partner to enterprises implementing IP Telephony solutions. It´s too early to tell if the equipment suppliers can become services driven. So when you think IP Telephony, think total solution service.

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Over the past month I´ve spoken to over ten CIOs of F1000 concerns about their enterprise networking plans. Besides security, organizational changes and budget woes, understanding converged infrastructure with VoIP cost/benefits is becoming top of mind. Voice over IP, IP Telephony or IP Communications – pick your tag line; the moving of voice over IP networks is finally in the limelight and interest is cautiously high.

There are four ways VoIP will manifest. It will be implemented either from the carrier to the enterprise, as a managed service, from the enterprise to the carrier and/or a grass roots VoIP over a public Wi-Fi service.

1: From the Carrier to the Enterprise

In this scenario, service providers will deliver voice service over IP infrastructure rather than their current circuit-switched platforms. Here service providers would transition their circuit-switched voice switches to routers and soft-switches that deliver the voice features we all use today. While VoIP is routinely used in the public network core, don´t hold your breath for ILEC VoIP access projects. This approach was hyped three to four years ago when Chambers tried to sell the industry on free voice service.

2: Managed VoIP Service to the Enterprise

Managed VoIP is in essence the next generation Centrex service or, as some call it, IP Centrex, where a service provider delivers all the services and features that an enterprise would expect from a private PBX. WorldCom is offering such a service it calls its network-based Voice over IP Solution. WorldCom provides enhanced voicemail and on-net /off-net long distance calling, via Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Access, in the US, is either Option 2 Frame or ATM, with dedicated Internet access available in the second half of 2002. This is a managed service where WorldCom supplies, installs, and maintains all routers and equipment associated with the service. Key to this industry segment is the target customer base, that being the 7.8 million small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). This is a key industry segment to watch, as it will be the first to recover from the IT depression since SMBs enjoy shorter decision cycles and closer customer interaction than the F1000. Over the next 18 months, look for many more services, as it provides a lower cost basis to deliver service.

3: Enterprise To The Carrier

Bottom line, this is the VoIP market with the strongest value proposition and subsequently measurable growth. The PBX market is some $30B large. These systems are very much closed proprietary systems with high barriers of entry and vendor lock-in. What Cisco, 3Com, Shoreline and a host of others with no installed base hope to do here is break the PBX apart with open systems made up of open protocols such as SIP clients, Ethernet, IP, Megaco, H.323, MGCP, H.248 and a host of other standards.

In short, the new voice vendors will be inflicting Moore´s law on the PBX. The incumbents such as Nortel, Avaya, NEC, Hitachi, Mitel, Alcatel, Fujitsu, et al have offered IP link and trunk cards on their PBXs in an attempt to slow down the onslaught of the newcomers. In essence, IP link and trunk PBX cards have given the voice manager some time to fend off the data guys who say the world is going to IP and so should the PBX.

But over the past six months a change has occurred, and a kink in the circuit switched armor is now apparent. The voice manager may be warming up to the data manager´s IP ideas. For starters, Hitachi has bowed out of the PBX business while others are waving at the door as they get a whiff of the open systems wind blowing in enterprise networks. The key turn of events has been the willingness, or survival instincts, of the incumbents to join the newcomers and eat their own by offering VoIP solutions from their circuit-switched offering to packet-switched voice architectures.

Case in point — I was at Nortel´s analyst meeting last week where Frank Plastina President of Nortel´s Metro And Enterprise Networks extolled the virtues of Nortel´s CSE MX, short for CSE Multimedia Xchange. The CSE not only ties Nortel´s PBX product line of M1, Sl-100, BCM, Norstar, CSE 2000/1000 into an enterprise IP network, it provides key interoperability services. These services include the support of analog, digital or IP phones and interoperability with key applications such as its CallPilot unified messaging system, IP contact center and its Symposium call center. It is Nortel´s willingness to provide a comprehensive transition to IP voice that is compelling here. Nortel´s position says this is the way the world is going and, rather fight it, we´ll protect our installed base and cannibalize the slower moving circuit-switched players. In short, the race is now on to transition the PBX to VoIP solutions.

Will enterprise users care? I think so, and many already do. The value proposition here is economic efficiencies in facilities and operational costs plus an enterprise productivity boost through unified messaging, all of which are good for EBITDA. Good news to a sagging economy and CIO´s who are now starting to report into the CFO rather than having a seat at the executive round table.

A comforting note to enterprise managers planning a transition to a converged infrastructure supporting VoIP is that they are not alone. Some VoIP installations have over 8000 IP phones installed, spread over multiple buildings and sites. Also, there have been more then 500K IP phones shipped to date. And just in case you didn´t know, Windows XP has a SIP client bundled with it, making every PC and laptop a VoIP client capable of voice communications. Installations are both small and large, with the bulk of new installations going into the SMB market place thanks to companies such as Shoreline, 3Com, Cisco and now Nortel.

For those with existing PBXs, change is inevitable. PBXs are typically depreciated over a 7-year period. That means every year approximately $4.2B of the PBX market is ripe for replacement. That doesn´t mean that every enterprise will transition their PBX over the next seven years. Many have kept their PBXs for well over 15 years, simply because they just keep working. Also, there are issues with VoIP that need to be overcome. One issue is in-line power, which is just starting to ship within some vendors layer 3 switches, including Cisco and Nortel, in the fall. Another issue is presence-based messaging. Say you need help and dial 911. The police or fire department need to know what floor you are on and your approximate location on that floor so they can provide assistance. Logging of transactions is another key issue. There are some 40 million lines of code in a PBX that provide many functions beyond convenient features. It´s this intellectual property that has staying power unless it is housed in a different form factor. You can bet on that.

4: Grass Roots VoIP over Wi-Fi

While enterprises will be busy implementing VoIP solutions, a host of new service providers are building public Wi-Fi infrastructure for both Internet access and VoIP services. Service providers such as VoiceStream, HereUare, WIFI Metro, Boingo, iPass, Sprint (with its service relationship and investment in Boingo) and AT&T (to announce next year) are building out ?¢‚Ǩ?ìhot spots" in places such as airports, hotels, coffee shops, parks and other public meeting places where you can sit, open up your laptop and connect to the internet or make an internet voice call at 11Mbs or faster for a fee between $20 to $75/month. Data point: there are approximately 1000 commercial hot spots today, with 5,000 projected by the end of the year. That number is projected to grow to 41,000 by 2007, generating some $3 billion, according to the research firm Analysys.

There are now 802.11 VoIP phones from companies such as Symbol et al that could be used while in a hot spot to place a phone call or simply plug in your earphones and microphone to your laptop and use the SIP client in Windows XP. Over time there will be other device options as well. In the next 5 years, 91 million devices such as handhelds and laptops will ship with a WLAN port embedded. Hopefully before then, security will be solid, tight, impenetrable and integral to these products, eliminating the current porous nature of Wi-Fi offerings, a major must-happen event for this scenario to unfold.

Hot spots are far less expensive to build than 3G systems and offer far more bandwidth, prompting nearly all IXCs to view Wi-Fi as a back door into the ILEC voice market. AT&T, Sprint and WorldCom/MCI are all exploring hand-off arrangements so that when you´re in a hot spot you can use Wi-Fi to place a call, but when you leave the hot spot you jump on-to their wireless network. And while airports, parks and public spaces may make up only a small part of the ILEC voice revenue market, by 2007 Analysys projects there will be 21 million users accessing public Wi-Fi systems. Then there is the voice revenue that will be siphoned off by enterprise VoIP and WLANs in both SMBs and homes. WLANs, which use the same technology as public Wi-Fi, are the fastest growing networking products being consumed by the SMB, with the home market right behind them. According to IDC, by 2004 there will be 4.2 million homes equipped with WLANs. Bottom line, there is only one-way to go for voice over Wi-Fi access and that´s up. This has the RBOCs trying to figure if public Wi-Fi is friend or foe. Here´s a hint – It´s a foe. If I were an ILEC, I wouldn´t feel comfortable with this thing out there.

So VoIP will manifest itself in three ways: 1) from the enterprise out, 2) via managed services and 3) public Wi-Fi access. The managed VoIP service ties into a major trend that is occurring due to the economic downturn and IT depression. The CIOs I talk to all have a common theme: they are under pressure, either to keep budgets constant or to reduce them while increasing services. They are looking for new approaches. Service providers typically generate $18K of annual dollars if they sell connectivity solutions versus $250K of annual dollars for managed services, according one ILEC who chooses to remain anonymous. Managed services may offer enterprises, especially the SMB, a new way to deliver voice service at a reduced price to the enterprise while at the same time delivering what the service providers need; increased revenue. This approach works all the way up to large enterprises where the weight of paying six figure salaries to the small army of staff that designs, builds and operates corporate backbone networks is becoming to heavy to carry. Managed services may just be the CIO´s best friend during this frugal business cycle.

Most enterprises over time will employ all three VoIP approaches. While enterprises build their intranet VoIP networks, managed services will connect them to remote sites. Public Wi-Fi services and other remote access technologies such as VoIP over VPNs over Cable/DSL will connect the home worker. If you thought that the telecom crash crushed VoIP, think again. If anything, this downturn has accelerated converged infrastructure plans and the willingness to change the status quo to reap productivity and cost dividends.