CSCO announces alliance w/ ORCL to tie its policy-based network management to ORCL's biz appl suits.
Cisco turns to Oracle
to hone strategy
By Ben Heskett
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
April 16, 1999, 5:20 p.m. PT
Cisco Systems is turning to third-party business
application software providers to round out its
management and overall networking strategy.
The networking giant plans to announce an alliance
with Oracle on Monday that will tie elements of its
management tools with the database giant's set of
business applications. The move aims to boost
Cisco's bid to play a greater role in the market, as
software becomes more dependent on networks.
Cisco is looking to make sure its line of
policy-based network management
software--including its recently released policy
manager and associated tools--can prioritize traffic
on a network from providers of business application
software, such as Oracle.
The combination of Cisco's software with Oracle's
applications will allow an administrator to prioritize a
quarterly sales report sent across a network, for
example, over an employee's email. The
collaboration between the two companies will
consist of software "templates" for Oracle,
implementation guidelines, and a series of test
reports.
Cisco announced a similar partnership with
application provider PeopleSoft earlier this month.
Since Cisco plays a large role in enterprise
corporate networks, the company aspires to extend
its competence from networking equipment and its
associated Internetworking Operating System, or
IOS.
To make the networks built with its equipment more
intelligent, Cisco needs to make sure the
applications can communicate, according to
executives.
"The larger strategy is application-aware
networking," said Joe Hielscher, director of
marketing for CiscoAssure policy networking. "As
part of that, there are a great many things we are
doing."
In addition to these deals, to be announced at the
firm's applications user conference in San Diego,
Cisco will likely create ties with the other giants of
the business application industry, such as SAP and
Baan.
Company executives refused to comment on
potential partnership plans.
Competitors such as 3Com, Nortel Networks, and
Cabletron Systems also have plans to produce a
series of policy-based networking tools--but industry
analysts believe Cisco has the edge.
"As the policy manager is a key component within
nearly all policy networking strategies, Cisco gains
a short-term competitive advantage from being an
early adopter," said Ed Hold, analyst with market
watcher Current Analysis, in a research report. |
