Effecting Business Transformation: Cisco and System Integrators
The role of system integrators is increasingly important in today's complex enterprise IT environment. System integration unites the component subsystems, processes, people, and operations of a business enterprise into a single integrated system, bringing together disparate networks, computing systems, and software applications physically, logically, and functionally. System integrators more than ever play an important role as businesses are increasingly looking to virtualization to reduce duplication of resources and capital expenditures (CapEx), and Web 2.0 and service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based composite applications to dynamically combine data from various sources in real time.
System integrators can enhance their value to a business by taking advantage of the Cisco® Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) and applying it to a customer's business process or mission. Cisco offers the widest range of networking equipment and services available in the industry - giving system integrators a platform on which to build powerful new business capabilities - as well as a team of experts adept at crafting solutions using commercial equipment, designs, and best practices. The remainder of this paper will discuss Cisco SONA and its benefits to enterprises and system integrators.
The Cisco SONA Approach
Increasingly, many businesses are using a planning approach that links business and technology architectures. This trend is driven by the need to reach the next level of productivity and innovation in the business, and a realization that IT can be a strategic asset in reaching that goal. Whether based on TOGAF, Zachman or an internally developed framework, a methodical architectural approach can help transform IT from a cost center into a strategic partner to the business.
Network and network-based appliances are key to overall technology architectures. Globalization in all its aspects - delivery of products and services, sourcing of talent and suppliers, and competitors - is driving businesses to change the way they operate. People and the applications they use are broadly dispersed. Applications themselves are also evolving. Once considered monolithic, applications and the data they incorporate may now be formed from many different sources both within and outside the business.
In this environment, applications and their performance cannot be separated from the network. Applications run in the network, not on it.
The Cisco Service Oriented Network Architecture is a framework that illustrates network services that business applications leverage for desired business outcomes.
Figure 1. The Cisco Service-Oriented Network Architecture
Cisco SONA comprises seven major core service groups which deliver consistent and robust capabilities throughout the network. A core service group is a collection of one or more functional services that create a common quality, ability or feature that can be used or developed by higher level applications. The core services are delivered by physical infrastructure, which may include one or more products or solutions.
The ubiquity of the network ensures pervasive services that all types of applications - commercial off the shelf, internally developed, web, Software as a Service (SaaS) and emerging composite - can rely on for predictability and availability. Cisco SONA core service groups include:
• Real Time Communication Services are integral to Cisco Unified Communications solutions and offer session and media management capabilities, contact center services, as well as identity and presence functions.
• Mobility Services offer access to location information, and also offer device and presence dependent services.
• Application Delivery Services are concerned with performance optimization based on application awareness and consist of a rich set of acceleration, compression and protocol optimization capabilities.
• Security Services help protect the infrastructure, data and application layers from constantly evolving threats, and also offer access control and identity functions.
• Management Services offer configuration and reporting capabilities.
• Virtualization Services deliver abstraction between physical and functional elements in the infrastructure, which allows for more flexible and reliable service operation and management.
• Transport Services are concerned with resource allocation and deliver on the overall QoS requirements of the application (end-to-end availability, latency, jitter and packet loss guarantees), as well as routing and topology functions.
The Cisco SONA framework includes two service types: transparent or exposed. Transparent services enhance or provide functionality for data and applications without direct interaction from an application. Exposed services have a well documented, well defined Application Programming Interface (API) and are explicitly invoked by applications to provide new functionality. Cisco SONA services use a variety of open protocols (such as SIP and XML) and published APIs that allow developers within the business IT organization as well as an innovative community of global development partners1 to improve application reliability and performance as well as deliver new capabilities.
An Open Architectural Approach
SONA is designed as an open architecture based on industry best practices. A systems integrator can position these best practices in customer requests for proposals (RFPs), aligning SONA methods and procedures with requirements for rapid deployment and solution compliance. A trusted systems integrator may use SONA as a value-add competitive differentiator, based on its enriched solution set, roadmap for multiple solutions, and integrated technologies such as secure unified communications and mobility.
Integrating SONA with Existing Networks and Systems
SONA creates a suite of functional areas, or blocks, that interconnect existing physical infrastructure and network services to applications. If a customer has already made a recent investment in one of these areas, such as purchasing a security firewall, there is no need to replace it. In many cases, new equipment is not even necessary, as the technology will already exist as a virtualized service in updated enterprise equipment and solutions.
Consider the following example of SONA in an existing environment: a connected imaging performance and management solution for healthcare (Figure 2). Imaging services and centralized image storage and retrieval access are provided by an application called Acuo DICOM Services Grid. The challenges in this environment lie in addressing image size and retrieval time, availability, and load balancing among many different servers and routers. Based on a SONA approach the network supports and enhances the environment to improve the overall business and technical processes associated with image management.
A systems integrator can bring value by mapping healthcare domains to SONA domains and deploying the appropriate infrastructure to support the imaging application, as well as new technologies (such as mobile wireless) that are introduced as part of the overall process and availability. Also, key infrastructure services such as QoS enable the imaging application to perform without impacting other applications such as IP telephony.
Certain application features are then offloaded into the network in the form of common network services, which are better positioned to enhance the process flow as multiple applications have needs for the same image data. The network supports identity services so the proper physician receives the proper patient images. Identity services, combined with security services, help healthcare organizations meet compliance regulations regarding patient information and confidentiality. Storage virtualization services provide SAN islands that host, back up, and serve the images across the network to any authorized client making a request. Because these images can be large and may need to be accessed across the WAN to and from remote branch locations, application delivery services can be deployed to provide compression, caching, and acceleration services in the network, allowing for greater scalability without requiring additional bandwidth.
Looking at the healthcare applications themselves, there are multiple client/server models that access the same images. To help ensure the same functionality across applications, encryption keys must match, compression algorithms have to align, and identity credentials must be the same. By centralizing and standardizing these services into the network, you can deploy new clients and capabilities more readily without having to worry about compatibility and version control in the applications.
Figure 2. SONA Improves Imaging Application Performance in a Multi-Vendor Healthcare Environment
SONA Relationship to Enterprise Architecture Frameworks
Numerous architecture frameworks (such as TOGAFF, Zachman, etc.) are available today, describing how to organize the structure and views associated with an enterprise. Each framework defines the elements of the architecture and where the elements interconnect. However, it does not necessarily define how the elements connect, what to use to connect them, or what is inside these elements. SONA defines network-based services that can be incorporated of the customer's existing enterprise framework.
System integrators can take advantage of Cisco's certified expertise in IP and networking to augment their ability to integrate new Cisco technologies into the existing framework of the customer enterprise. By working with Cisco early in the process, the customer benefits from a strategic network investment that scales and grows to accommodate new architectural elements introduced throughout the system's lifecycle.
The service-oriented architecture (SOA) is relatively old, but has received renewed interest as a paradigm for applications that promote reuse, growth, and interoperability through the use of services distributed across different enterprise domains. SOA is not itself a solution, but rather an organizing and delivery approach that enables more value from the use of distributed capabilities. Key to unifying these different capabilities or services are the network and its nodes. The Cisco SONA provides three categories of services for SOA applications:
• Fundamental enablement: The ability to reach network nodes is a prerequisite for service interaction; SOA participants must be able to communicate with each other to perform. In addition, network QoS parameters - bandwidth, latency and packet loss - have a direct impact on application performance.
• Performance optimization and security: SONA offers three service categories that are of vital importance to further enable composite application deployment. Application delivery, security, and virtualization services are particularly important given the nature of composite applications and the protocols, such as XML, that are used in their implementation.
• Application enrichment: Enriching business applications can be of paramount importance to boost productivity and accelerate business processes. One aspect that may hamper the business process is ineffective collaboration, be it internal, or with partners and customers. A key trend to change this is known as "communication-enabled business processes" where communication and collaboration services are built into the enterprise application. In addition, other services that the ubiquity of the network best provides such as location and presence can be called and used in a SOA deployment.
Figure 3 shows how SOA or composite applications use the network as a platform and take advantage of integrated network services to enhance their capabilities while continuing to support business processes and flow by collecting and sharing information, enforcing business policy in support of strategy, and connecting personnel across the enterprise and externally.
Figure 3. Applications Functioning in a SOA Environment
The SONA Approach: Benefits for the Enterprise
To summarize, the SONA approach establishes a set of logical and physical domains that extend across the borderless enterprise. Each domain is a functional building block within the overall business solutions being designed. This model provides enterprises with a standard paradigm for designing current and next-generation networks and linking network services with business applications. Benefits to the enterprise include:
• Increased business agility: The ability to react quickly to changing markets or competitive environments by utilizing network services to improve the performance of applications, such as those delivered by context-based routing services, and network-based encryption. Examples include wide area application acceleration and collaborative applications.
• New business models: The ability to use information only available in the network to deliver new internal and external-facing applications and capabilities. Examples include location and presence services.
• Increased efficiency of IT resources: The SONA approach reduces CapEx by taking advantage of common services. These services include identity; location; access control, which reduces development and deployment times; encryption; and virtualization, which can be offloaded from servers to the network to increase server utilization and efficiency. Virtualization is an easy way to increase usage of IT resources - network, servers, and storage - without increasing costs.
• Optimization of existing technology investment: The SONA approach permits full use of previous technology investments, while enabling a roadmap for technology migration and standardization on the enterprise platform.
Three key attributes of the SONA approach enable these business benefits. They include:
• Network services and infrastructure standardization
• Ubiquitous network services across the enterprise
• Services virtualization
These three attributes of SONA help businesses expand profit margins through increased resource-sharing and closer alignment of IT resources with business objectives. Additionally, by lowering the long-term costs of application development and maintenance, customers can reap direct cost savings by reducing capital and operational expenses with standardized and centralized management.
The SONA Approach: Benefits for System Integrators
Using the Cisco SONA approach, system integrators can help realize the following benefits:
Increase Revenue Through Implementation of New Business Applications
System integrators are in a unique position to provide insight into new and improved business applications that can best be enabled by the network. Examples include using location services to monitor and track key business assets to improve customer responsiveness, and integrating collaborative applications into key business applications such as ERP or CRM to speed decision making. SONA also provides the ideal platform for Web 2.0 implementations, which can enhance profitability and business innovation under the system integrator's guidance.
Reduce Design, Deployment, and Implementation Time
Reduce development time and reduce equipment requirements by using pervasive network services. This enables competitive differentiation in the total cost of integration and potential for an accelerated schedule for deployment as network design and deployment are simplified.
Gain Additional Credibility
System integrators and channel resellers can participate in certification programs that accelerate time-to-market for advanced technologies. These programs educate integrators on Cisco products and solutions and provide planning workshops for different vertical markets, as well as offering certification programs for customers.
Increase Role as a Trusted Advisor
System integrators are able to showcase their expertise in optimizing business processes by utilizing network services. As the trusted advisor status increases, the integrator gains visibility into new business initiatives in the customer roadmap and can recommend additional projects based on the SONA approach.
Risk Reduction
Cisco Validated Designs3 are technical documents detailing the deployment of Cisco solutions, which are developed, tested, and supported by Cisco engineers. System integrator partners reduce both technical and project-delay risk by taking advantage of Cisco Validated Designs.
Cisco Validated Designs are available at no charge to integration partners for each layer of the SONA model.
• The Cisco Validated Designs for Network Systems are deployment guides for infrastructure and services and include guidelines for deploying campus architectures with access, distribution, and core layers; deploying branches with single, dual, and/or multi-tier architectures; etc. There are also deployment guidelines for infrastructure services such as IPv6, QoS, NetFlow, and IP SLAs.
• The Cisco Validated Designs for Technologies include guidelines for architecting and deploying network services that use the tenants of the SONA architecture, enabling innovation in customer solutions. These include network infrastructure virtualization, security, mobility, unified communications, storage, identity, computing, application delivery, and application-oriented networking.
• The Cisco Validated Designs for Industry Solutions are deployment guides that have been developed against customer requirements in vertical industries. They have also been fully tested end to end, providing a quick deliverable plan as opposed to extensive testing in unplanned solutions. There are Cisco Validated Designs for Financial, Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Retail, which address industry-specific challenges. System integrators can quickly build upon these designs to bring additional value to the customer.
Working with Cisco
Cisco offers professional and advisory services on a worldwide basis with expertise in architectural design, business transformation workshops, network design, planning, and project management to assist with new rollouts. Resources and services available to system integrators today include:
• The Cisco Business Transformation Workshop helps explore, identify, and analyze business problems and opportunities that are specific to an organization. The workshop is facilitated by a team of Cisco engineers who are intimately familiar with the business requirements and will go through the process of discovery of network infrastructure. The Cisco Business Transformation Workshop provides a roadmap of how the network plays a crucial role in supporting business needs, and provides practical next steps for successful deployment of the architecture.
• The Cisco Business Transformation Optimization Service lets you create an actual Cisco SONA solution in a controlled environment that addresses the complex integration of strategic applications. With the help of Cisco experts, you can also improve application performance by aligning networking technology with business needs. This proof-of-concept approach can ease the introduction of emerging technologies into a production environment and help meet business objectives more quickly.
• The Cisco Technology Developer Program also offers engineering subject matter experts in APIs to assist with product-level and systems integration. Systems engineering groups further develop solutions and document them in Cisco Validated Design reference guides for customers and system integrators. Dedicated service managers support integrators and customers alike, assisting with order and delivery management to support each phase of the project.
Conclusion
Enterprise architectures must be designed to align business strategy, mission execution, and IT investments. As such, they allow traceability from business strategy down to the underlying technology. System integrators have the role of working with customers to define this business strategy and optimize business processes by harnessing the power of enterprise systems.
Cisco provides the foundation for the fully matured architecture with validated technologies, services, and design guides developed, tested, and supported by networking experts. With the SONA approach, system integrators can utilize network services that enable deployment of optimized business solutions. SONA's standardized and centralized network services help simplify network management and reduce OpEx, offering additional value to the customer. At the same time, system integrators benefit from reduced development time and support, focusing instead on delivering new, innovative solutions that work with the network and deliver more value.
Cisco's breadth of coverage and leadership helps system integrators and customers to get the most out of their network's capabilities, achieving significant return on investment while utilizing current technology investments. The Cisco network of products, support engineers, system integrators, and ecosystem partners continues to evolve toward a single united vision, providing years of expertise and value to integration customers.
