Phases

The Business Ready Network is phased in over time to provide increasing business value. In moving from network architectures comprised solely of interacting devices to architectures that provide pervasive services and then to fully application-aware infrastructures, the corresponding business value jumps from simply offering essential services to a Business Ready Network that enables and ultimately optimizes the organization.

• Phase 1: Converged Infrastructure -> Business Essentials – architectures that are accepted as foundational and necessary for organizations just to remain competitive in today’s fast moving environment.
• Phase 2: Pervasive Services -> Business Enabling – architectures that provide businesses with strategic advantages in enhancing productivity otherwise expanding on the business value of the network.
• Phase 3: Applications Services -> Business Optimizing – architectures that open up whole new landscapes for competitive advantage by fully leveraging the Business Ready Network for new application opportunities.

The first phase focuses on providing Business Essential functionality through a network of converged infrastructure “synergistic devices”. The architecture during this phase is defined by the following characteristics:

• Synergistic devices need to be fully interoperable, based on open standards and protocols, in order to build a foundation upon which further phases of the BRN can be built.
• The network of devices needs to be fully functional, bringing to bear the full range of capabilities necessary for the business’ communications and IT needs.
• As the network becomes the focal point of mission-critical communications and applications it needs to be fully available. The architecture needs to be designed with the appropriate level of resilience necessary to minimize downtime while having the capabilities to extend the reach beyond the traditional office.
• It is no longer feasible or practical to operate and maintain separate infrastructures for voice, video and data communications. A converged network not only brings these services onto a common IP based network, but also opens the door for the next phases by providing network characteristics such as quality of services to all applications riding on the network.
• As the BRN moves into the second phase it is imperative that it is secure, capable of fully protecting data and systems from unauthorized access, theft or damage.

The second phase moves the BRN from simply providing Business Essentials to incorporating “pervasive services” that truly become Business Enabling. In order to fully enable the business the architecture needs to be integrated, accessible, flexible and transparent.

• Pervasive services that are truly business enabling are defined first and foremost by being fully integrated with the underlying network and with other services while being fully manageable from a centralized location.
• Being fully integrated, pervasive services are also transparent. One no longer needs to think about them or how to get access to them.
• Pervasive services are also accessible when and where you need them.
• By being fully flexible, pervasive services are able to be provided not only when you need them, but how you need them.

In the final phase, the network fully becomes the application delivery platform of choice. In this third phase which is characterized by being aware, collaborative, and borderless, applications take full advantage of the business ready network architecture to provide Business Optimizing solutions.

• The power of pervasive services is further enhanced as applications become fully aware of their availability and can thereby inherently take advantage of these services to optimize the way business gets done.
• By breaking applications out of their individual silos of data and functionality and enabling them to be collaborative, business workflows and processes become much more meaningful and efficient.
• Phase 3 of the Business Ready Network enables applications to become borderless in several ways: from the virtualization of resources such as data management, CPU and memory as well as the breaking down of borders between business process and their dependant information stores.