The pace of business today is accelerating, demanding increased global collaboration with interactive communications and immediate secure access to business applications. This anytime, anywhere access for any user requires a more sophisticated and intelligent real-time network infrastructure.

Applications can no longer be thought of as a different domain to the networks upon which they run. One of the consequences of the consolidation and centralization of corporate applications is that business-critical software is no longer confined to servers serving a single site; Instead they are found in data centers serving a region or the whole company. This has made the corporate network a vital part of the application infrastructure, rather than a separate entity.