Earlier this week, Network World ran one of its “Face-offs” — between an engineer from Cisco’s Application Delivery Business Unit, and a technical director from the office of the CTO at Ciena. The debate — on whether users need application-aware networks — extends the discussion of where intelligence should reside (and not reside) in the network.In Issy Ben-Shaul’s (of Cisco) argument FOR application-aware networks, he concludes that “by embedding intelligence and common functions, application-aware network products offer a more easily managed and more affordable way to deliver higher levels of performance and add greater functionality across an IT infrastructure.”Meanwhile, in Ranghu Ranganathan’s (of Ciena) argument AGAINST application-aware networks, he says that “Coupling ever-evolving applications with stable network elements doesn’t make economic or operational sense.” This particular debate isn’t just interesting from an application performance perspective … it’s also a really interesting continuation of the blurring of the boundaries between network and systems management. Networking pros have long pointed to this “blurring of the boundaries” (http://weblog.infoworld.com/gridmeter/archives/2005/08/systems_managem.html) between operating systems, networks and middleware — and now with the heavy web services flavor of today’s enterprise applications, the networking players have more opportunity to interact with the applications and control them directly.As Cisco’s Application Oriented Network business unit continues to grow, it’s likely that we’ll hear additional debate on how far network intelligence should extend its hooks into the applications. Technology Industry