Magic quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers
According to Gartner, “The WOC market is maturing rapidly, but remains dynamic, with a high level of innovation from vendors. Organizations looking to acquire WOC capabilities should identify their specific needs and conduct real-life trials before committing to any purchase”.
Typically, WAN optimization Controllers prevents network latency that have a severe impact on the performance of applications and underlying protocols. WOCs help organizations reduce the bandwidth upgrades. The WOC market becoming mature and rapidly growing has led to various vendors offering different combinations of features. A complete understanding of the applications and services running on a network and the protocols used is very essential. A detailed analysis of network traffic to identify problems like excessive latency, lack of prioritization of traffic types or bandwidth oversubscription is essential. Service level agreement and performance measurement reporting are other characteristics that are aligned to WOCs that vendors can add to increase value. Currently, WOC capabilities are delivered and purchased by the user organization.
According to Gartner, - As the market develops, we expect to see increasing deployment of managed WAN optimization services, increasing "openness" of WOC platforms to third-party applications, and some integration of WOC features into other network equipment, such as routers. We also expect software-only "virtual" WOC implementations to emerge.
Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers, 2009- Figure 1
Source: Gartner (June 2009)
Market Overview
As we know, WAN optimization is about improving on the performance of
business applications over WAN connections. Most of the networks carry
different types of traffic varieties of varying characteristics. There
are many organizations that strive towards managing these traffic for optimizing
the response times of critical applications and bring down costs, based
on the fact that bandwidth continues to represent a significant proportion
of operating expenditure for wide area data networks. Nevertheless, the
cost of bandwidth is not the only consideration to match the WAN resources
to business needs which is also important. Virtualization and new application
environment, for e.g. web services and cloud computing can become a strain
on the network.
The different kinds of traffic and IT architecture present challenges and
pitfalls for improvising on the response times of essential applications.
Some examples of these are:
- Microsoft SharePoint make wide use of forceful content can bog down WAN links .This could happen while transporting poor end user response
- No time sensitive traffic like backups, e-mail and personal web access can also flood WAN links that lead to slow response times from business-critical applications.
- World-wide centralization of branch office servers and data centers can depict latency sensitive protocols leading to slow response times
- Operating system patch distribution and similar applications to that like delivery of training videos can quickly soak WANs.
- Repeated transportation of such applications or like objects, files or data patterns can create challenges for data compression.
Market Description
A WAN Optimization controller is a customer premises equipment that is connected to the LAN side of WAN routers. It could also be termed as a software that is integrated with client devices. WOCs are made use of in a balanced way that is accessible across a WAN. They take care of application performance problems that are caused by bandwidth drawbacks and latency or protocol pitfalls. The main function of WOCs is to improvise on the response times of business-critical applications over WAN. They also can aid in maximizing the return on investment in WAN bandwidth and they sometimes avoid the need for expensive bandwidth upgrades.
These objectives could be met by using a combination of techniques:
- Reduce the effects of network latency by making use of methods like protocol and application specific optimization
- Prioritizing on business-critical traffic by Qos and Traffic shaping.
The Magic Quadrant above actually gives a review of vendors that tackles the common problem/need to make more efficient and effective utilization of wide-area connections, whatever be the type of traffic or application. The need for this is to optimize the connection between users and the IT centralized resources. According to Gartner, there is also the witness of the emergency of the need for optimization of connection between data centers. There are also early indications of the need to optimize traffic to mobile devices.
Studies show that the development of the application acceleration market is driven by demand for high integrated solutions that make use of a wide range of techniques for optimization of network traffic offering scalability and fault tolerance. The competitors in this space first addressed either traffic shaping/QoS market/compression or caching market. The segments have merged with most of the products supporting the sets of capabilities. These capabilities address the problem of inadequate bandwidth – symbolizing that network latency is a limiting factor on remote application performance.
The trend therefore is:
- An increasing need for application-specific and generic optimization to bring down the impact of network latency on remote application performance.
- Some vendors are merging enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) and WOC products. ECDN attracts the players with the capability to deliver live and on-demand streaming of media content by breaking the unicast streams and by positioning in advance the content in the cache. The merit of this is that it increases the scalability of media servers and also helps to improve the response times for semi-static content like software upgrades and business procedures.
The trends in the WOC products are the following:
- The capabilities of WOCs will evolve to the position where they can support server-less branch operations also called as branch office boxes, requiring a minimum of the addition of supporting features that include Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, active directory, caching, print serving and Domain Name System.
- An increasing focus on security that include the acceleration of protocols like Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and the security of data stored on WOC systems.
- As basic acceleration capabilities get themselves established, an interest in visibility and control, both as a means to demonstrate WOC effectiveness and as a response-time planning tool is expected to emerge again.
- Application, user performance measurement and SLA reporting are the emerging needs for WOC equipment.
More on WAN Optimization Market
Criteria involved in Gartner’s Research
Inclusion Criteria
Gartner has assessed vendors that offer generic WOC products than those
that offer applications or protocol specific capabilities for Web Caching,
remotely mounted file systems, HTTP compressions or QoS. Gartner has
included vendors that were the original developer of WOC products as
the WOC technology is fast maturing and there is a noteworthy variation
between different implementations. Vendors that source the bulk of the
technology under OEM or resale agreements have been excluded from the
list.
As the market develops and expands, vendors that offer a mix of techniques
of generic and application or protocol-specific as the most successful.
The vendor’s products must be inclusive of capabilities in the four categories
of WAN acceleration techniques like:
- Caching, Compression or data deduplication or reduction capabilities
- Generic protocol acceleration (for TCP or HTTP, for example)
- Application or higher level protocol optimization features like Common Internet File System file-sharing protocol
- WAN QoS traffic management capabilities, enforcement or traffic shaping
Vendors Dropped
Among the vendors dropped in the Magic Quadrant is Packeteer because the
company was acquired by Blue Coat Systems in 2008.
Exinda, Certeon, Stampede Technologies and ICT have been dropped, because they did not meet the revised inclusion criteria.
Evaluation Criteria adopted at Gartner
Gartner analysts assess the technology providers based on their quality
and effectiveness of the processes, methods or procedures that enable
IT player’s performance to be competitive and effective. This would ultimately
have an impact on revenue and retention.
Product/Service
This category includes products and services capabilities, quality, skills
of providers. It also includes the category of how they are offered –
either natively or through OEM agreements and partnerships. For the WOC
market, this is based on the capabilities of the product and the hardware
and software platforms on which the vendor’s products are based, the
breadth of the product range and the product’s suitability in order to
support the features in future.
Feasibility options – Financial, Strategy, Organization and Business Unit
The options like financial, strategic planning options, and the likelihood that business unit will continue to invest in and offer the product are important to be taken into consideration.
Sales and Marketing Execution/Pricing
The technology players’ capabilities in all pre-sales and market activities are other options of evaluation. These include pricing and negotiation, deal management, pre-sales support and also the effectiveness of the sales channel. The sales execution criterion is rated higher than the pricing criterion in the WOC market.
On the marketing aspect, quality and efficiency of the programs are designed in such a way to offer the organization’s mission in order to influence the market to promote business through increasing awareness of products and services.
Customer Experience
Clients are the most important part of any business. They should get proper technical support or account support. This could be done with proper auxillary tools, customer support programs.
This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and
the quality thereof), the availability of user groups and SLAs.
However, market responsiveness and track record and operations under overall
viability have not been evaluated.
Evaluation Criteria |
Weighting |
Product/Service |
standard |
Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization) |
high |
Sales Execution/Pricing |
high |
Market Responsiveness and Track Record |
no rating |
Marketing Execution |
high |
Customer Experience |
high |
Operations |
no rating |
Source: Gartner (June 2009)
Gartner’s evaluation on the Vendor strengths and challenges
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
Following are the leading vendors and why they stand out
- Blue Coat Systems
MACH 5, Blue Coat’s WOC appliance operates on the vendor’s range of ProxySG appliances. This can support Blue Coat’s Proxy Edition secure Web Gateway software. Blue Coat’s WOC client, a software, and the PacketShaper visibility, control and compression applicances from its 2008 acquistion of Packeteer.
Strengths at Blue Coat- Blue Coat depicts a clear vision in bringing together security, visibility and optimization into the ProxySG appliances.
- Proxy SG applicances also offer integrated acceleration and security for Internet access from the branch office
- A wide-rangingfeature set is inclusive of QoS capabilities, HTTP, HTTPS/Secure Sockets, CIFS, caching/compression, acceleration, FTP, SharePoint and video.
- Competitive pricing is free of charge for user licenses that requires only an appliance at the central site.
- Lack of integration of Packet Shaper visibility and control capabilities into ProxySG
- Lack of bandwidth sclability for data center to data center devices for Proxy SG and Packet Shaper
- Limited SoftWOC acceleration capabilities
Cisco’s WOC product portfolio incluces Wide Area Application Services software that runs on a range of appliances and module for Cisco’s Integrated Services Router and WAAS Mobile software client.
Strengths- First in class reputation for global support
- Wide network equipment product portfolio backed by a strong channel and a very strong balance sheet
- Wide managed service provider (MSP) partnerships with nine announced services
- Partnership with Microsoft for Windows Server on WAAS.
- Competititve product pricing and total cost of ownership with its router WOC module.
- Cisco has been slow in releasing WOC features with a trend to follow rather than lead. Cisco’s introduction of a full function WOC, soft WOC and Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) acceleration wrap vendors and also its HTTPS/SSC acceleration only when it is on the general release in April 2009.
- Lack of functional integration sums up for a complex, possibly expensive solution. QoS and SoftWOC are integrated into the WAAS product: QoS are provided by Cisco IOS devices and additional monitoring capabilities by other Cisco products that includes the Network Analysis Module and third-party tools like NetQoS.
- Lack of functional integration prepares for a multi-faceted and an expensive solution. QoS capabilities are offered at Cisco IOS devices and more monitoring capabilities by other products also. These products include Network Analysis Module and third-party tools like NetQoS and others.
- The software quality, overall, is improved though the initial software quality for major releases remains a cause for concern. Thus, product performance is an issue.
- QoS and SoftWOC are not integrated into the WAAS product.
Citrix Systems
Citrix’s WOC product includes the Branch Repeater and Branch Repeater with Windows Server appliances for branch offices, data centers and larger locations as well as the Citrix Repeater Plug-in software WOC client.
Advantages- Focus on XenDEsktop that are hosted on virtual desktop users with capabilities for other optimizations
- Partnerships with Microsoft for platform and add on applications
- Wide suite of products with good coverage especially in small and midsize business markets.
- The product offered is in an early stage. Thus, its capabilities are very large and the complex networks are limited plus there is also limited complex networks
- There is a limited disk based compressed throughput at the high end.
- Windows may disqualify the platform from many opportunities when it is entrenched in the OS for the BOB product
Expand Networks
At Expand Networks, WOC capabilities are delivered as appliances or as software only virtual accelerator.
Strengths- The company's vision of an appliance-less branch with distributed caches and cooperative QoS.
- Focus on hosted virtual desktops, terminal services, branch office server replacement, QoS, and visibility and control.
- A broad feature set, including User Datagram Protocol (UDP) optimization and good capabilities for Citrix and Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) acceleration.
- An early provider of WOCs as virtual appliances.
- A lack of MAPI and HTTPS/SSL-specific acceleration.
- The WOC client (SoftWOC) was only announced in May 2009, and is not yet generally available.
- Limited compressed throughput in high-end devices.
- Expand is a small, privately held company in a market led by large companies.
F5 Networks
F5's WOC features are available under the vendor's TMOS architecture supported
on its BIG-IP platforms. Advanced WOC features need BIG-IP's WAN optimization
module. F5’s Web Accelerator provide some features and is also available
as a module for BIG IP platforms.
Merits
- Asymmetrical or symmetrical acceleration for HTTP(S).
- High throughput device for data center to data center links
- Company’s vision of integrated application delivery services are available on a range of platforms from branch to data center code as well.
- F5's WOC products are currently in transition from the original WANJet platform to the vendor's mainstream BIG-IP/TMOS platforms. Features, although broad, are spread over a number of different products, making product selection complex.
- The lack of a branch office platform at this time, resulting in high entry-level pricing that will limit applications.
- There is currently no EMC E-Labs qualification for BIG-IP WAN optimization platforms.
- Very basic SoftWOC.
- The product lacks demonstrated capabilities in large and complex networks.
Ipanema Technologies
Ipanema's WOC capabilities are delivered through the vendor's ipIengine appliances.
- A vision of WAN optimization delivered as a managed service, with end-to-end application SLAs matched by products designed to serve that market.
- A credible set of go-to-market MSP partners, including BT, Orange Business Services, Cable & Wireless, Belgacom, Swisscom, Reliance and Tata Communications.
- Asymmetrical and symmetrical visibility and QoS/control.
- Focused on service provider partners, resulting in limited market visibility in the general end-user market.
- No SoftWOC or HTTPS/SSL-specific compression or MAPI acceleration
- Protocol-specific optimizations (including CIFS acceleration) are not yet proven in complex environments and at scale.
- . Ipanema is a small, privately held company in a market led by large companies
- Limited compressed throughput in high-end devices.
Juniper Networks
Juniper's WOC products include the WXC Series of appliances, and the WXC ISM 200 module for the vendor's J-Series routers.
- A broad product suite, from switches to routers to security to WOCs, with an excellent reputation for quality and support.
- Competitive product capabilities (including UDP acceleration), and competitive prices.
- Service provider partners include Sita, Verizon, Orange Business Services and IBM.
- The company is nearly invisible in the broad general market, with low, and declining, market share.
- SoftWOC not expected to be available until the third quarter of 2009.
- Limited compressed throughput at the high end.
Riverbed Technology
Riverbed's WOC capabilities are delivered through its Steelhead appliances, and the Steelhead Mobile client software.
- A leading vision combined with great brand recognition and an excellent product reputation.
- A broad suite of accelerations, including Exchange 2003/2007 (MAPI with encryption), SSL (HTTPS and other), CIFS (with SMB signing) and others.
- A broad set of MSP partnerships, including BT, SingTel, NTT America, Orange Business Services, AT&T, T-Systems and Bell Canada.
- Easy installation, even in complex networks.
- A partnership with Microsoft for Windows on Steelhead.
- Riverbed's QoS capabilities are weaker than most other leading vendors are.
- Its channel and sales force can be perceived as being arrogant.
- Its pricing and discounting policies can sometimes result in high prices compared with other WOC vendors.
- The lack of a multi-gigabit device for storage applications.
- No specific Citrix/RDP acceleration.
Silver Peak Systems
Silver Peak's WOC capabilities are delivered through the vendor's NX appliances, which include Advanced Encryption Standard disk encryption.
- A strong focus on storage replication, backed up by segment-leading products.
- Differentiated optimizations, including UDP as well as TCP, and compensation for error-prone links.
- Very high performance systems with very low insertion latency.
- Silver Peak is a small, privately held company in a market led by large companies.
- A very limited suite of application-specific optimizations.
- The company's solutions can be expensive for small sites with low-speed WAN links (for example, T1 and below).
- No SoftWOC or HTTPS/SSL-specific acceleration.
