Cisco has certainly stolen the title of King of Acronyms from Microsoft in the past year. With IIN, ANS, SONA, ACE, AVS, AON and a host of other TLAs--some of which refer to technology initiatives, others to product lines and still others to specific products--it's drowning customers in a sea of abbreviations that confuse its intelligent networking message.
Even competitors aren't certain of just what AON is designed to do and, more important, customers aren't clear how it fits into the enterprise network architecture. Add that Cisco's messaging is directed at application developers and administrators, and you've got the makings of mass chaos.
Let's clear up what AON is, so we can dig into the technology and what it means. AON is a product line in three form factors--a Catalyst 6500 blade, a network appliance and an ISR (Integrated Services Router) 3600/3800 module. AON is part of Cisco's ANS (Application Networking Services) stack, comprising a set of application-prefixed products, including ACE (Application Control Engine) and AVS (Application Velocity Services), that are part of its larger SONA (Service-Oriented Networking Architecture). SONA is a set of shared services, such as conventional network services and application services, that are centrally managed but distributed throughout the network; it's an implementation of Cisco's IIN strategy for the enterprise.
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