The requirement of being agile in today's market means having business processes at one's command that can easily be modified for different requirements. This requirement, along with usage of open standards that addresses the problem of interoperability, compels today's business units to move towards service-oriented architecture (SOA). This article talks about the impact AON would have on such business systems.

Over the years, enterprise business seamlessly integrated assets by virtue of enterprise application integration (EAI). EAI systems were largely proprietary and came with lots of adapters that needed hands-on attention from experts. Application communication has become a set of configurations and settings for the integration solutions.

As time went on, business application development time has been reduced. Organizations have to mix and match lots of systems, as well as the richness, complexity, and interdependency of information systems too. Today the computing world is increasingly complex and interdependent. It has lead to a huge demand for an implicit integration platform or a message routing backbone.

The paradigm for SOA is proliferating at a reasonably good pace, but before it can reach its full potential, there are certain issues that need to be addressed such as reliability, security, and performance issues. Application-oriented networking (AON) has provided a mechanism to control network traffic and make the network more intelligent (see Figure 1).

An underlying, implicitly executed integration component like AON is the need of the hour, but how will AON help, and what impact would it have for SOA-based applications?

Traditional networking equipment moves packets across destinations solely by looking at the packet headers of incoming traffic. Application artifacts, integration applications, or SOA are wholly software based and have redundant usage of XML-based operations and routing. Integration brokers are quoted as the application software analogous to the hardware-based networking routers and switches. The marriage of the application software to the networking components means an intelligent messaging network system at the behest of a single network component. This concept gives birth to application-oriented networks.

AON has given organizations an opportunity to optimize the use of networks to bring flexibility and visibility into their business. The added intelligence to the network has overcome many overheads by making the applications more business-centric. AON has provided networks with an ability to look into the messages so that it can route and transform messages according to business rules.

AON helps because:

• It is a hardware alternative to traditional integration suites
• Enhances XML processing capabilities
• Integrates visibility to the network
• Analyzes the content of messages over the network
• Provides secure and fast movement of XML and non-XML messages
• Provides consistent policy enforcement for security, transaction routing, etc.
• Fosters XML-based technologies and SOA

This is a big leap in terms of restructuring and reengineering the whole business architecture. Adopting AON will mean not only removing the already existing middleware, but also amending existing applications.

There is a whole paradigm shift here. IT needs to define the specific functionalities performed by each application server, the business applications, database, and network appliances in the distributed business system. The danger occurs when one layer overrides the functionality of the other layer. It is still remains to be seen whether some of the functionality that is put in the network will really suffice well, or if there will be some functions that will serve best in the application tier itself.

AON fosters implementation of SOA. SOA talks about implementing various functionalities in the form of services of appropriate granularity. With AON, the applications need not worry about implementation of services like implementing and monitoring security policies. Moreover, AON does the XML processing after analyzing the content of XML or non-XML messages. For traditional systems, the use of AON will require few changes in the application because the functionalities for security implementation and application redirection based on message content etc. are taken out of application and implemented in the network boxes. In contrast, if the architecture is based on an SOA paradigm then it is easy to implement changes in the application because there is very little change associated with it. By offering flexibility and effective use of resources and time, AON has already started a trend towards SOA.

AON enables implementation of functionality layers in the infrastructure itself. This approach will foster the adoption of SOA because the underlying infrastructure would itself pave the path for implementing it.

AON well fits with the SOA paradigm-based applications. The network appliances can replace the middleware and bear the burden of transformation and application-based intelligent routing. By removing a layer of complexity and offloading some of the responsibilities of applications, AON in an SOA-based system has made enterprises more agile.

AON is very well suited for the SOA-based architecture because of the nature of data transferred. SOA is characteristic for the large-scale XML-based transfer of data and has often being accused of performance slowdown as a trade-off for open standards usage. Now AON comes to rescue of SOA because it has provisions for processing XML data, such as the performance of parsing, transformation, etc. for XML traffic, thus providing a huge gain in the performance. Apart from this AON, is capable of peeking through the packets that are transferred across the network and thus provides an intelligent security implementation mechanism through policies along with intelligent message routing.

AON integrates message-level communication, security, and visibility in the network. The concept behind this is making the network intelligent enough so that it acts like a platform for enabling business processes along with technology. This fosters XML-based technologies and SOA because the network takes the responsibility of making applications talk to each other. Indeed, AON has already started a trend towards SOA.

References

• Cisco takes aim at surging XML, RFID traffic (all articles accessed October 2005): www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3649/is_200506/ai_n14682512
• Cisco Announces Its Application-Oriented Networking: www.enterprisenetworksandservers.com/monthly/art.php/1555
• DataPower Extends Lead in Application-Oriented Networking: www.datapower.com/newsroom/pr_013105_xi50_3dot1.html
• IBM Teams up with DataPower to Offer Application-Oriented Networking Devices to SOA Engagements: www.webservices.org/ws/content/view/full/72834
• Kenamea ENS Integrates with Cisco Application-Oriented Networking: www.eeproductcenter.com/showPressRelease.jhtml?articleID=X368691
• Procera Equips ColoSpace's New Internet Data Center: www.proceranetworks.com/news/071405.asp
• Cast Iron Offers New Application Integration Appliances: www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/30/HNcastiron_1.html
• Application Infrastructure Primer for Network Professionals: www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6438/ products_whitepaper0900aecd802c2000.shtml