Focus Your Network Strategy On User Experience, Not Application Delivery

Networking isn't about applications or technology — it's about users. The business pressure to consolidate IT, support empowered users, and provide customized experiences to customers is stressing today's architectures and reshaping networks. The old approach of building networks around applications is too static. Application delivery networks (ADNs) aren't designed to support the user-centric collaboration tools, Web 2.0 tools, and cloud services that are needed to solve today's business challenges. ADNs can't connect users to services that are relevant to the moment, are aggregated at the point of use, and originate from multiple locations. A new architecture will emerge: the user experience network (uXn). The uXn will: 1) monitor the users, their devices, their location, and their needs; 2) combine the appropriate technologies to deliver the best service; and 3) control the delivery of the service to meet a user's SLAs. To create an end-to-end uXn, I&O professionals will need to combine wide-area network (WAN) optimizers, application delivery controllers, and cloud gateways.