Large Bank Implements Cisco's ACE

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.