Signalling a further emphasis on the intelligent delivery of information, rather than handling plain data packets, Cisco has declared its Application Networking Services an 'advanced technology'. The networking vendor has also set up a new business unit to support the products.

The services aim to improve the performance of networked applications that reside inside a corporate network or are delivered from a central office to a remote location.

"Many applications have been designed with a broadband network in mind. But there is limited bandwidth in branches," Cisco chief development officer Charlie Giancarlo said in a presentation at the company's annual World Wide Analyst Conference in Santa Clara, California.

The new business unit will offer acceleration engines, caching engines and diagnostic tools to improve network performance. This will allow enterprises to deal with latency issues, and to better utilise bandwidth. Cisco claims to be able to cut network latency by an average of 80 to 90 per cent.

The market for network acceleration tools reached about $1bn last year, according to data from analyst firm Gartner, and is expected to grow to $1.5bn this year. 

But Cisco is late to the party, according to Joe Skorupa, research director for enterprise network infrastructure at Gartner, and is trailing behind competitors including F5 and Netscaler.

"The rise of this market segment is an existing trend, and I'm surprised to see Cisco brand it as one of its 'advanced technologies'," Skorupa told vnunet.com.