Enterprise networks, especially branch office networks, have experienced a level of service integration over the past five years that has delivered lower acquisition and operational cost while increasing the number of services available to branch office employees. Branch office routers now include switching, WLANs, PoE, network security, WAN Optimization, VPN, unified communications and advanced routing which increase application performance over thin wide area network links. In this podcast we explain the next generation of branch office optimization, which is the integration of applications into the network fabric. The networking industry has started to open up its software in the form of SDKs and APIs. Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, 3Com and the open source routing initiatives are all allowing developers to write to defined router software interfaces. The concepts here are based upon research contained within an industry paper available for download at http://lippisreport.com/2008/09/increasing-corporate-value-through-integrated-networks-and-applications-a-new-approach-to-it-service-delivery-emerges-for-branch-office-operations/. We explain integrated networks and applications in this pdocast and provide business and IT leaders recommendations to exploit it for corporate advantage.
