The last few years have seen branch networks becoming an area of increasing focus for IT executives, driven by the need for corporations to stay closer to the customers in times of intense competition. The spread and affordability of broadband Internet connectivity has enabled companies to distribute the critical information stored in such critical applications as CRM, ERP and data repositories all the way out to branch office employees.

Additionally, other applications like VoIP and video conferencing are becoming common across enterprise and branch networks. Given the dependence on the Internet to deliver these applications and content, and its open nature, organizations the world over have had to invest in a variety of security and access devices like firewalls, VPN servers, routers, security appliances and switches to maintain the integrity of the IT infrastructure and to ensure that business processes are not interrupted.

The traditional approach to building the network edge has been to deploy a number of devices in a cascaded manner, with each device catering to one or two specialized functions. While it seemed to be a logical approach to invest in “best of breed” devices, the maintenance and management of the network often became a nightmare for IT administrators. Let us take a look at the typical network edge: This approach has a number of limitations that network professionals will easily identify with:

1. Manageability: Each device typically has its own operating environment and management console, necessitating a number of people with different skill sets to manage the network edge. Additionally, integrating these various discrete devices to talk to each other is in itself an extremely challenging task. Configuration of the devices is another pain point, with changes needing to be applied individually to each device in the string.
While some third party tools are available in the market that offer a view across multiple devices, they are usually reporting tools, and not full fledged management tools.

2. Reliability: Every device in the string is a potential point of failure, making the network unpredictable and unreliable. This problem only gets compounded in an organization with numerous branches.