Tony Kourlas
Director, Service Provider Strategy
Solace Systems

History tells us that network evolution is about the incorporation of what the enterprise is doing at the edge of the network, into the network itself. Enterprise Layer 2 deployments led to frame relay and ATM service offerings, TCP/IP adoption led to the birth of Internet service providers, and IP virtual private network (VPN) equipment sales spawned MPLS VPN service offerings. With recent enterprise activity at the edge focused on distributing applications and content, content-aware networking is set to become the next major frontier in network evolution.