Businesses today find themselves in an increasingly complex and volatile global economic climate. As technology continues to advance, business challenges only intensify. Today businesses are forced to do more with few resources and smaller IT budgets. The days of excessive IT spending is now a thing of the past as the impact of the global economic downturn is causing IT and network executives to examine every planned project for clear and documented return on investment.

This paper provides an overview of the challenges businesses face today and how IT addresses the explicit need to manage network costs, provide choice and flexibility and reduce complexity. In addition, this paper highlights the difference between proprietary and standards-based networking and how innovative networking solutions that embrace a standards-based approach allow organizations to break free from restrictive proprietary networking solutions and enable better business outcomes.