Cisco unveils services approach to enterprise mobility

Be the first to comment | 4I like it!
June 18, 2008, 10:48 AM —  Network World — 

Cisco unveiled a network appliance Wednesday that is intended to reshape enterprise wireless LANs by collecting device data and making it available for use by higher level applications.

The Mobility Services Engine (MSE) runs software programs that collect, store and manage data from wireless clients and Cisco access points and controllers. The MSE can use this data itself for jobs like rogue radio detection, and share it with higher-end Cisco security, access control and network management applications. MSE also can share data with third-party mobility applications, such as wireless asset tracking, cellular-to-Wi-Fi voice roaming, and RFID data management.

The appliance is part of Cisco's larger plan to create a unified software layer that spans different physical networks and the mobile clients that use them. Mobile devices such as laptops, RFID tags, dual-mode smartphones, embedded devices and sensors could be using any combination of access networks -- including wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi, passive RFID, cellular, WiMAX, Ultra Wideband, and wireless sensor networks such as Zigbee. The MSE is the start of collecting and coordinating data about all these clients, in large numbers, across these different types of networks, and feeding it via a XML/SOAP-based API to other applications.

"What it shows is that Cisco is finally realizing, although they don't overtly state this, that networking is no longer [about] LAN, WAN and PAN [personal area network]," says Ken Dulaney, a vice president with research firm Gartner. "Networking is converged among wired, wireless, personal, business. The next step to watch is how they deal with security, which is still fragmented. Will they have a more unified vision for security on top of [this vision] of the converged network?"

Today, applications from WLAN vendors typically run on their controllers. (Compare enterprise WLAN products.) Third-party applications, such as asset tracking via Wi-Fi tags, run on separate computers and have to collect data from separate wireless sensor networks or by directly contacting individual controllers or access points. MSE offloads the application processing from controllers to a dedicated device, creating what Cisco executives call a "services plane." It's a smart move, according to some analysts.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

wi-fi

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Post a comment
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace