With reliance on IP networks steadily growing, organizations risk losing revenue and business opportunities with each instance of network downtime or poor application performance. For this reason, organizations need an effective strategy for gaining greater control over their networks in order to minimize outages as well as more costly, difficult-to-detect service degradation. This white paper describes the requirements of next-generation IP networks, the performance, availability, and scalability issues affecting existing networks and the benefits of Brocade IP Network Infrastructure Services.