Cisco Cisco Application Performance Assurance Network Module White Paper

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The solution is to have a complete system that is distributed and loosely coupled enough to allow flexibility of change while still maintaining

centralized control and manageability.

CISCO AON: A PERVASIVE FABRIC FOR APPLICATION INTERACTIONS

Cisco AON is the foundation for a new class of network-embedded products and solutions that help converge intelligent networks with

application infrastructure, allowing the network to speak the language of applications.

For more than 20 years, packet networking based on the IP protocol has provided a unifying network fabric across heterogeneous environments. IP-

based networking has changed both the makeup and the economics of user and machine communications with radical improvements in global

reach, ease of use, and cost reduction. Cisco has been leading the way in this social and economic transformation.

Today, this same idea holds the promise of a pervasive, distributed network for applications that will help businesses to realize equally dramatic

advances in cooperative and coordinated business processes. Once again, Cisco is leading the way.

Cisco AON, the first network-embedded intelligent message routing system, speaks the language of applications (Figure 2). Because the network

touches all parts of enterprise infrastructures, using Cisco AON to embed intelligent intermediary services within the network helps enable business

policy decisions to be enforced within the network fabric. This intelligence allows the network to play a more active role. A Cisco AON-powered

network makes more informed decisions about how the activities of applications and services should be handled and transactions processed. It also

provides unprecedented, broad, real-time visibility into application and business transactions.

Figure 2. Cisco AON Allows the Network to Speak the Language of Applications

By embedding application-oriented foundation services within the network fabric, the cost and complexity associated with deploying application-

level functions will decrease significantly over time. Instead of repeatedly needing to write this functionality into each application, or programming

it through proprietary middleware, developers can make use of the functions offered within the network simply by turning them on.