Under a project dubbed Aeon, Cisco is working on a line of networking devices designed to handle network traffic of XML documents, a field already populated by a number of specialised start-ups.
"Cisco is going to be entering the market with accelerators, security and integration appliances for XML applications," said one industry executive.
A Cisco representative declined to comment.
As previously reported, Cisco's push into XML networking is part of the company's strategy to generate revenue from businesses outside its maturing product lines.
The Aeon initiative has about 200 people dedicated to it, including Taf Anthias, according to one industry executive. Anthias was chief technology officer of IBM's MQSeries messaging software, now called WebSphere MQ, which is widely installed integration software that sends data and transactions between different systems.
The first product from the Aeon project, which is being tested with a handful of clients in the financial industry, was expected to be released in April but has been pushed back until June, one industry executive said. Cisco intends to use MQSeries messaging within its routers to speed up transmission of XML data, he said.
With Aeon, Cisco is expected to compete with a number of smaller companies already in the field that build devices designed to speed up XML or process Web services security protocols.
