Source Your Network Architecture From A Strategic Partner

Over the past few years in the networking industry, various vendors have claimed they offer clients a choice where there was none before. Really?! Over the past eight years, the networking industry has maintained at least 14 Layer 2 and Layer 3 networking vendors, 13 WAN optimization vendors, 12 Wi-Fi vendors, nine application delivery controller (ADC) vendors, and too many management and monitoring solutions to count. This means that we can create more than half a million different variations of Layer 2 through 7 networks. The multivendor approach is dying, however. This report examines the reasons that infrastructure and operations (I&O) personnel are embracing the strategic business partnership models used by firms like Wal-Mart, IBM, and Toyota instead of setting up partnerships with companies that have the cheapest or the best-of-breed wares.