The Cisco Motion announcement today is a major enhancement to their Mobile Services Architecture and a significant development for the wireless LAN market as a whole. This multi-faceted announcement has implications in terms of the mobile unified communications user experience and introduces a platform for the development of a much richer set of wireless communications enabled business processes.

At the core of the announcement is the new Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine (MSE), however, this is more than a simple product announcement. According to Ben Gibson, Cisco’s Director of Mobility Solutions Marketing, the MSE will provide a set of mobile service functions that include Wi-Fi/cellular roaming, context-aware location, adaptive wireless intrusion protection, and client security management. The immediate payoff will be a fixed-mobile convergence solution with automatic handoffs that Cisco has lacked, and a vastly improved location and intrusion prevention capabilities.

More importantly however, the MSE will come with a set of application program interfaces (APIs) allowing developers to build applications that link directly to the wireless network. Besides opening access to the mobile network from higher-level applications, the architecture will extend those capabilities beyond Wi-Fi networks to encompass RFID, ZigBee, Ultra-Wideband, cellular, WiMAX, and other radio transports as well.

The announcement is being made in conjunction with a number of Cisco partners who will be building products that make use of those open architecture elements. Included on that list are HP, IBM, Nokia, and Oracle, technology partners like Agito Networks and AeroScout, and industry-specific applications providers like IntelliDOT, Johnson Controls, and Philips Healthcare. At the macro level, Cisco is attempting to define a new wireless ecosystem with Cisco’s wireless products at the core.

The Announcement

The announcement encompasses a product, a software upgrade, and an architecture (see Figure 1). The product is the Cisco 3300 Series Mobility Services Engine (MSE), an appliance-based platform with open application program interfaces (APIs) that will allow solution providers to access services provided on a Cisco controlled wireless network. The MSE will work in conjunction with Cisco’s Unified Wireless Network Controllers (WNCs), the central control servers on a Cisco WLAN network. The WNCs are getting a software upgrade designated Release 5.1 that will support the interface to the MSE as well as providing a number of other enhancements.

Figure 1 

Among the services provided by the MSE are:

• Mobile Intelligent Roaming: This function will support fixed-mobile convergence, or the ability for stations to seamlessly roam between WLAN, cellular, and eventually other wireless networks. The “intelligent” part deals with the fact that the Wireless Network Controllers have a clear view into the wireless network and therefore can provide better guidance regarding the need to switch a call to a cellular connection. The MSE does not manage the handoff itself, but merely provides a set of metrics to an external mobility controller that executes the call transfer. Cisco’s partner Agito Networks will be providing the mobility controller (See “Cisco Partners” article).

• Context-Aware Location: Cisco has been marketing their 2700 Series Location appliance for some time, but the MSE will increase their capabilities significantly. First, the number of tracked devices increases from 2,500 to 18,000 and they have added a number of important new capabilities as well. Using technology from their partner AeroScout, the MSE can collect sensor information like temperature or status as well as location, and with open APIs, that information can now be made available to other applications (See “Cisco Partners” article).

• Adaptive Wireless Intrusion Prevention System (WIPS): Adaptive WIPS builds on Cisco’s current wireless intrusion detection/prevention capabilities in some important ways. According to Chris Kozup, Cisco’s Senior Manager for Mobility, the Adaptive WIPS capability will increase their threat detection capabilities six-fold. Along with traditional features like rogue AP detection, the system will also incorporate spectrum analysis, and the upgraded WNC software will provide a security dashboard to help identify vulnerabilities. In conjunction with Version 5 of the Cisco Compatibility Extensions (CCX),the security capabilities will also include management frame encryption (a key feature in the pending IEEE 802.11w standard) to thwart management frame attacks.

• Secure Client Manager: The Secure Client Manager is a software product based on technology from Cisco’s Meetinghouse acquisition, and it is designed to centralize the secure provisioning of mobile devices. According to Pat Calhoun, Cisco’s CTO for the Access and Network Services Group, with the growing number of mobile clients being installed, network managers need a way to activate those devices securely using 802.1x-based authentication. He goes on to note that the Secure Client Manager will address the provisioning of new devices and is not be a substitute for the type of remote wipe systems seen from RIM or Nokia.

The Mobility Architecture

It is important not to confuse the product announcement with the architecture announcement. The architecture describes a framework in which developers can build applications that link to the wireless network. Further, the definition of the “wireless network” will now extend beyond Wi-Fi.

As shown in Figure 2, the overall architecture can be viewed in three layers: the network layer (controlled by the Wireless Network Controller), the mobility services layer (managed by the Mobility Services Engine), and the applications layer (provided primarily by Cisco’s partners). The critical idea is to abstract the services layer from the network layer. The applications will link to the mobility services layer through a set of SOAP/XML-based open APIs allowing applications providers defined service links to the wireless network. The MSE in turn communicates with the WNCs using the Cisco-controlled Network Mobility Services Protocol (NMSP), over which each wireless controller will advertise the services it provides to the MSE.

At the network layer, the wireless controllers currently use CAPWAP to communicate with the thin access points that comprise a WLAN switch implementation. Mr. Calhoun notes that the CAPWAP working group is now splitting the specification into base and binding specifications allowing it to address other technologies including wired Ethernet, cellular, WiMAX, ZigBee, and Ultra Wide-Band (UWB).

Figure 2

While the number of boxes involved in the wireless network is proliferating, Cisco argues that this architecture provides for better scalability. The WNCs are optimized for a high capacity data path while the MSE will be equipped with a high capacity CPU. This is particularly important in centralized WLAN switch architectures like Cisco’s where all of the traffic on and off the wireless LAN is passed through the wireless controller. Controller capacity is becoming more of a concern with the introduction of the higher capacity 802.11n radio link.

That proliferation of servers is a persistent concern in the Cisco approach. My UC Strategies colleagues Marty Parker and Don Van Doren of UniComm Consulting provided their assessment of the impact on Cisco’s overall strengths in unified communications. They noted that while many of Cisco’s individual UC products are strong, their strategy of expansion by acquisition has left them with a tangled collection of pieces that are poorly integrated. As Marty half-jokingly puts it: “One server per application”. However, both Don and Marty they both feel that mobility is critical to UC, and that anything that can be done to improve that is a plus.

The Strategy

From a strategy perspective, Cisco is clearly looking to change the rules of the wireless LAN game. With their dominant market share in wired and wireless local area networks, and their growing presence in the IP PBX market, Cisco is uniquely positioned to pull off something on this scale and to do so convincingly. The only other vendor with a product line nearly this wide is Siemens who has an IP PBX, a wireless LAN solution (through their Chantry group), and what many consider to be a superior unified communications solution in their OpenScape platform.

Cisco will now be in a position to paint a far more comprehensive picture of enterprise mobility. In essence, adding the Mobility Services Engine allows them to offer an expanding set of functions in the wireless network and by enhancing CAPWAP, they can expand the definition of the “wireless network” beyond Wi-Fi. With open interfaces to the architecture, they can attract partners to develop application solutions that depend on functions only their wireless network can provide.

The key element in this vision is that Cisco products are at the core of the infrastructure. As Van Doren puts it, “In Cisco’s strategies, all roads lead to selling more switches and routers”. However, this can be good news for enterprises. Mobility is a core capability of unified communications, and users are struggling to determine how they should add mobility to the UC environment. At the same time, enterprise users are keenly interested in the productivity enhancements available even with the relatively limited set of fixed-mobile convergence solutions we have today. Cisco’s evolving Mobility Services Architecture addresses those near-term applications as well as providing the foundation for a much wider range of wireless communications enabled business processes.

Conclusion

The wireless business has advanced by leaps and bounds since the introduction of enterprise wireless LANs in 1999. The technology has gone from being a rickety mobility convenience to an essential part of the modern business environment and along the way it has spawned add-on businesses like Wi-Fi Hot Spots. The adoption of WLAN voice, fixed mobile convergence, and mobile unified communications will make the wireless network an indispensible part of the communications infrastructure.

Cisco has put a major stake in the ground, and it will be interesting to see which, if any, of the other UC players tie into Cisco Motion. The MSE has certainly added a new angle to the debate over centralized versus distributed WLAN switch architectures. The other WLAN vendors will now have to adjust their message in response. They may try to downplay the impact, identify the deficiencies, but in the end they will have to demonstrate a vision and a set of capabilities that is as all encompassing as what Cisco has put on the table.