WAN Optimization Controllers
The amount of application traffic that transits the WAN increases as the use of software as a service and other forms of public and private cloud computing also increases. The interest in WAN optimization vendors and products is driven by the fact that many organizations have taken applications out of branch office and consolidated them into centralized data centers.
WAN optimization is a blooming technology that helps a wide range of organizations improvise on efficiency of networks that enhances performance and reduces costs. It also can assist organizations that seek to boost sustainability by server consolidation and data centers.
Benefits of WOC:
They benefit businesses by enhancing the performance of applications that operate over the WAN and /or reducing WAN bandwidth expense. The WAN optimization controllers improve performance by:
- Reducing the effect of inefficient network protocols like TCP and the amount of data over the WAN by implementing functionality like caching and compression
- Protecting traffic that is sensitive to delays and critical to businesses from being affected by other traffic types with the implementation of mechanisms like quality of service and traffic shaping
- Implementing application-specific optimization to boost the performance of higher level protocols and applications like HTTP, Messaging Application Program Interface (MAPI), CIFS and Share point.
Segmenting the WAN Optimization Market:
A way of segmenting the WAN optimization market is to analyze the WOC’s potential to endow the optimization between the following data centers:
- Branch offices and data center
- Remote users and one or more data centers
- Disparate data centers
Initially it was a physical appliance of the first generation of WAN optimization that used to be deployed to support optimization between data centers or branch offices. In the present day, it is the many WOC vendors who support a software solution. This is referred to as a soft WOC.
In this segmentation, a data center is owned by the IT organization or by a cloud computing service provider. In the case of the WOC vendors who support a software solution, the IT organization has very limited control over optimization capabilities that exist within the data center.
For enterprise network managers looking into WAN optimization products, a recent report by research firm Gartner could provide the technology details they need to narrow down their search.
A very important aspect of WAN optimization is the WAN optimization Controllers that essentially address the bandwidth consumption, protocol and latency issues. Some factors that drive the need for WOCs within an organization and WOC adoption drives are:
- Organizations make use of WOCs to carry out network and application optimization for the branch offices networking
- Organizations are taking applications from branch offices and consolidating data centers
- Remote employees make up for the vast majority and access the applications over the WAN
- Organizations are increasing their use of public and private cloud computing and software as a Service
- The amount of application traffic transiting the WANs are predicted to increase
According to Gartner’s study, "The WOC market is rapidly maturing, but it is still dynamic with a high-level of vendor innovation. This has led to different vendors offering different combinations of features," the report reads. "So before choosing a vendor, ensure you understand the applications and services running on the network and the protocols that they use."
Added to this, when options in WAN optimization controllers there may be conflicting claims about key features and architectures that are the factors to determine which product is better than the other. However, most products are mature and are competitive in the markets. This could be better understood by an example of how stable a device is under a heavy load. It is on one hand for a device to perform good on an average load or to operate reliable near the rated load. This can be carried out by most equipment – there are however, some questions emerging from this to be considered- how a device will perform on a heavy load that disintegrates over the rated capacity? In addition, if it would withstand the load or block traffic taking a longer time to recover, the rate of accuracy of performance reporting of information, if the device accounts for overhead like packet headers or does it report on payload while determining the compression and caching benefits. This could be noteworthy for applications that user small packet streams and accurate reporting is important for determining the benefits.
An unsurprising Operating System revision cycle and avoidance of many upgrades are needed that could be disruptive to smooth operation. Checking and verification of vendor’s account of software might depict the stability of the product in production.
