Abstract
This IDC Buyer Case Study describes the implementation of datacenter switch
technology, specifically Layer 4-7 switches, at one of the country' s largest
banks. In 2004, the bank began to implement an enterprisewide MPLS network with
both carrier-supported networks and private networks. Building upon this
infrastructure, the bank' s IT team began to deploy datacenter Layer 4-7
switches from Cisco and a few other vendors to tightly control and isolate
application server traffic to the bank' s externally facing Web servers,
internal portals, mail servers, and development servers. Additionally, as the
MPLS infrastructure was being implemented (along with the datacenter Layer 4-7
switch technology), the bank was able to consolidate its server environment
based on virtualization technology it had deployed.
This case study describes the impact of all these factors on the bank' s IT and
network infrastructure as well as an examination of the evaluation process for
datacenter Layer 4-7 switches and the implementation of Cisco' s Application
Control Engine (ACE) products. The resulting benefits from this technology can
be used as a benchmark for other end users to determine whether datacenter
Layer 4-7 switches are applicable within their environments.
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