Empowered Branch Services

Today's businesses are affected by new applications, and these applications are increasingly collaborative, distributed, real-time, media-rich, and bandwidth-hungry.

Companies are looking for innovative ways to make their business more agile to meet customer demand and remain competitive. As the global business world is increasingly connected, companies are relying on their networks more than ever before. Companies of all sizes are using applications over the network to streamline operational efficiency and communicate more effectively with their customers, partners, and suppliers.

At the same time, corporate structures are flattening. An increasing number of employees are working in remote offices - according to recent survey data, in some industries more than 35 percent of the workforce is located in branch offices. These remote offices are empowered to accelerate business growth and make localized decisions in order to achieve greater efficiencies, enhance productivity, and grow revenue. Companies seek to provide consistency of applications and performance, providing transparent integration for the branch and headquarters across an intelligent network infrastructure, and these companies are reinvesting in their branch and headquarters offices (Figure 1).

Historically, adding a new application and functions in the branch office has increased cost and complexity. Multiple devices at the branch to deliver networking functions, security, and application optimization has translated to increased operations and support costs and challenges in ensuring end-to-end compatibility and performance. An integrated services solution, on the other hand, allows customers to take advantage of all applications and technologies regardless of location - in a compact, resilient solution that eases the deployment of converged voice, video, and data services.

The empowered branch is about providing fully integrated security, voice, video, wireless, and data solutions to give branch offices the same capabilities as headquarters. The strength of the Cisco® Empowered Branch Services solution enables the flexibility to add new technologies and services to keep the branch on par with the headquarters using the Cisco Integrated Services Router. This integrated solution approach enables unlimited business innovation and growth, while delivering business continuity and ultimate business efficiency.

Service provider partners can further enhance these solutions by developing a set of managed services tailored to the needs of the empowered branch office.

The transformation taking place at the branch opens new revenue opportunities as many enterprise and midsize businesses seek a managed solution to address deployment and operational and maintenance services to scale the support required at the branch and deliver a competitive advantage.

The Cisco Empowered Branch Services solution framework enables service providers to create new revenue streams and build long-term relationships with customers by helping them develop a network and service roadmap to evolve their business toward a more optimal use of branch resources.

Instead of simply providing transport, service providers can layer value-add capabilities and features to their offerings.

This solution-based approach can be used to demonstrate the value of intelligent network services coupled with premise-based networking functions.

Empowered branch managed services deliver additional value at the customer premises in addition to intelligent WAN services to provide a flexible and scalable solution to address business challenges and long-term goals to increase productivity and further enable branch-office capabilities.

An empowered branch managed service solution enables providers to increase their strategic relevance with customers, from transport provider to business partner. The results are increased revenue, greater competitor differentiation, higher margins, and reduced turnover of the customer base because of increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Service providers can create a set of empowered branch managed services based on the Cisco Integrated Services Router to deliver integrated data, IP communications, security, and advanced network feature sets and couple these with their IP next-generation network (IP NGN) to create value-added solutions. As service providers continue to launch managed services based on these integrated features - as well as new emerging features sets - they will build increased service differentiation and customer loyalty while generating new and incremental revenue.

The managed service roadmap shown in Figure 2 allows customers to meet their near-term business needs while planning for longer-term optimization. Viewing the customer from a business evolution perspective can reveal opportunities for up-selling and cross-selling additional value-added services.

A series of managed services for the empowered branch can be aligned with critical phases of the branch evolution - beginning with foundational network services at the branch, progressing to incorporate convergence and enhanced security services, and evolving to include advanced network services to optimize the branch environment for greater productivity-enhancing solutions. Managed services on this continuum can be offered as incremental up-sell opportunities or be used to create solutions bundles targeting distinct market segments.

Foundational services provide a fast, secure, and reliable network foundation for the empowered branch that enables connectivity to business applications, remote sites, and the Internet. Building a sound network foundation managed service based on the Cisco Integrated Services Router allows service providers to create solutions that bundle network services with the managed services platform to deliver additional services to the branch without a complete equipment upgrade to meet evolving business needs. Upgrading network environments to enable quick response times from core business applications allows the empowered branch to operate more efficiently and lay the foundation for rich-media and collaboration applications.

Managed services in this category include managed routers, managed perimeter security such as firewall and intrusion detection, managed IP Security (IPsec) site-to-site VPN for secure branch connectivity, and options for integrated managed LAN services to lay the foundation for future converged services support.

Convergence capabilities on the Cisco Integrated Services Router securely deliver integrated data and voice services as well as new rich-media communication options such as video and messaging.

Businesses of all sizes are beginning to deliver IP communications services over the same IP network they use for data, attracted by productivity gains as well as cost savings. To avoid the capital and operational costs of separate IP communications and data networks, companies can add a managed IP communications service to their IP VPN to support telephony services as well as integrate additional rich-media communication options such as video.

Managed services in this category include managed IP communications tailored for the branch office, enhanced security options to secure content and endpoints, and secure remote access for mobile employees.

Advanced managed services provide secure data access and accelerate application and content delivery for the empowered branch to increase productivity while company assets remain protected.

Applications are the key to productivity. The network must be able to streamline and optimize the delivery of applications so that the application can be used as it was intended at the branch as well as at headquarters locations.

Advanced managed services are enabled by technologies such as Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), integrated in the Cisco Integrated Service Routers. Service providers can deploy these advanced technologies with existing service capabilities, allowing providers to experience more cost efficiencies as they continue to launch more advanced managed services.

Managed services in this category include optimized branch access for application and file acceleration, managed security access to applications through Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN options, and managed mobility for branch offices based on integrated wireless LAN (WLAN) capabilities.

Service providers can tap into the growing service opportunity for the branch office by creating a portfolio of managed services oriented to further empowering branch office resources. An Empowered Branch managed services solution is tailored to meet the needs of the evolving network and application optimization requirements of the branch office. To successfully deliver managed services for the Empowered Branch, service providers need technology partners whose platforms deliver the scale, performance, and services innovation required at the branch. Cisco Integrated Services Routers not only enable a variety of managed services for the Empowered Branch, they also reduce the cost of delivering services by supporting remote provisioning, management, and enablement - providing options for service providers to reduce the cost of deploying new services and extending their portfolio to meet the needs of this growing segment of the market for managed solutions.

To find more detailed information about Cisco Integrated Services Routers and how these integrated managed services can be deployed, please refer to the following URLs: