Trac Research http://www.trac-research.com/ are about to publish their report on WAN Optimization Controllers. In the mean time Trac’s Jeremy Rozen has published a short summary of the five key trends. Now I’m a Product Manager, so my boss should sack me if I have to tell him “Hey, I didn’t see that one coming” for many of these. Is my job safe?
Trend 1 – User Experience is becoming a key WAN performance indicator.
Well we’ve been saying for more than three years that it’s about “usability” not “bits on the wire”. The network numbers are a proxy for the important information – are users working efficiently, effectively and are they happy?
Trend 2 – WAN Optimization is not a single market
Ok, we’ve long viewed data center to branch and mobile users are distinct and poorly served segments and we’ve focused on being the most cost-effective solution for these markets. I don’t regard companies such as Silver Peak as competitors – they do what they do very well and they’ve specialized in data-center to data-center from the start and good luck to them.
Trend 3 – Emergence of Cloud and Mobility is changing the definition of the WAN
YES! This is why Replify exists. The growth in remote and mobile users and the migration of apps to the cloud fundamentally changes the WAN optimization problem for a large proportion of use cases. We’ve been focused on those use cases from the start.
Trend 4 – Emergence of new deployment methods
Well of course when I read this, I think Virtual Appliances and CLAN, so I’m very happy. Branch sites are neglected because of the cost and inflexibility of deploying hardware. All the vendors know this of course, but most don’t want to impact their core “tin” business by offering more scalable cost-effective software based solutions.
Trend 5 – WAN Optimization technologies are becoming a key enabler for major IT projects
Ok, this I hadn’t really foreseen. When Replify was founded Big data/Hadoop, for example, was unheard of. I’ve been thinking of virtualization as a means of delivering WAN optimization and not thinking about the benefits that WAN optimization can deliver to virtualization projects. I get it.
So 4 out of 5 – not too shabby. Have Trac missed anything? Well I think there are a couple of other trends which perhaps have not yet reached the scale at which they become fully visible:
1) Convergence of the data center technology. I think the boundaries between ADC, APM, UTM, WOC, WAN Virtualization, MDM, are blurring – and some capabilities, such as WAN Acceleration, can form a useful part of any of them. Consider what is happening with packaged platform offerings like the VCE Vblock - if you can buy the server, storage, virtualization and networking in a pre-integrated bundle, why do you have to buy the application support environment in pieces and glue them together.
2) Commoditisation and ubiquitisation (is there such a word) of WAN optimization. We know better than most, because of our OEM activities, that it’s relatively easy to pop WAN optimization into another product – be that a GSM base station, or a WAN virtualization appliance. Our technology is highly performant in a small, portable, form. With the cost of processing and storage so low, and still falling, there’s an argument for using WAN optimization on every link, every end-device and embedded in every application.
Check out the full Trac article and keep an eye open for the full report due soon. It will really help you make the right choices.
As for me, I’ll not update my resume just yet.
