Over the last decade, networking devices have been slowly moving up the protocol stack to deliver transformational business benefits. For example, load balancers moved up the stack from L4 to L7 as they became application front ends that actually understood applications well enough to improve services for them. As a result, companies were able to take advantage of distributed resources much more effectively. This is what happens when companies invest in sophisticated products - things work better – it’s not rocket science.
More recently, WAN acceleration companies realized that load balancers were on to something, and they developed and deployed L7 knowledge to transform WAN application use and business practices. While the idea of adding L7 intelligence to your product is obviously one of the best ways to get ahead of the competition, developing the technology isn’t easy (in fact, that part might be considered rocket science).
Now L7 application understanding – tied to individual users – is offered in LAN switches. It’s not in every LAN switch, of course – the majority of switch vendors are still selling 15-year old technology based on L3/L4 information. These switches, based on the legacy architecture, are actually becoming business-limiting in their lack of support for today’s needs for visibility and application and access control. If you ask IT managers, “Would you like to simplify the process of controlling network resources and have the ability to direct LAN policy to users according to their different roles in the organization?” my guess is they would probably say “yes.” It’s just an educated guess though.
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