Dawn of the App Aware Network

Part of my research is looking at moving apps from the core of the network to the edge (or network aware devices).

Web services (and XML-RPC and REST) and Enterprise Service Bus fit this model quite nicely.

XML accelerator Devices such as Cisco AON or Cisco ACE (ex-Reactivity) or IBM Datapower can be used to replace the Web services routing function required by modern distributed applications into the network.


The implication?

This changes the model of application development from a software-architecture centric viewpoint into a services oriented architecture.

And the commoditisation of this will drive costs down for enterprises and will harm revenue for middleware vendors.

The edge is here.
Why not go a step further? How about pushing application processing to the edge of the network?
In my Faculty [Engineering and IT]/School of Computing and Communications, we are developing Mobile Health applications using 'motes' - tiny devices running a pico-net (and a mutant version of Java)