Cloud Based Application Acceleration and Wan Optimization

Aryaka Networks, a provider of a cloud-based application acceleration and WAN Optimization service that trims bandwidth usage and latency concerns for large companies, launched last month and has raised $14 million in its first round of funding.

The 75-person company is headed by Ajit Gupta, whose previous company, content delivery network Speedera, was acquired by Akamai Technologies for more than $500 million in stock. Investors include prominent Silicon Valley VC firms Trinity Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners and Stanford University.

The Milpitas, CA, headquartered company provides Application Acceleration tools for wide-area networks (WANs), helping reduce bandwidth usage and mitigate latency issues that plague some companies that transfer large amounts of data between worldwide locations. Aryaka Networks uses a number of methods to optimize the transfers. These include TCP Optimization, application-specific optimizations for Outlook, Sharepoint, web-based apps (http), file-sharing (FTP/CIFS) and the company’s proprietary Advanced Redundancy Removal (ARR) technology that transmits only changes made to a file when it is transferred the second or third time.

Aryaka Networks uses a browser-based interface for management and monitoring while the application acceleration and WAN Optimization is provided using a cloud-based service that requires no client-side setup and maintenance, while other providers of WAN optimization offer appliances that require a “do-it-yourself” setup to handle the optimization. The transmitted data passes through a number of quick-fire optimization processes at Aryaka’s global locations (or POPs) and is then sent to its destination.

Aryaka CEO Ajit Gupta expects his company’s cloud-based model to put other WAN optimization providers that offer their services in the form of a client-side “box” out of business. The market for providing WAN optimization is not very saturated, with only about 300,000 of a potential 8 million businesses getting on board, he said. Estimates from Gartner also peg the WAN Optimization market at $4.27 billion globally by 2014.

“We discovered in our research that people were getting fed up with the cost and complexity and management aspects of it,” Gupta said. “So after about six months we cracked the code for it — which was tough, because it was something that hadn’t been attempted before — and approached our VCs with the idea and they liked it.”

Company officials claim that Aryaka delivers a guaranteed 99.999 percent network uptime as enterprises scale to accommodate new applications, users, and locations across the globe.

"Aryaka's approach is unique and has a chance to be a truly disruptive force in the market today," said Bojan Simic, principal analyst with TRAC Research, in a statement. Simic underlined that Aryaka is taking what has traditionally been a hardware play and turning it into a service, and, on top of that, they're providing the connectivity -- all in a single solution.

“This approach gives organizations more flexibility in today's virtual and hybrid network environments, and it is easier to deploy and manage than the box-based model we're seeing at the core of the other major players' strategies,” he stated. Simic pointed out that there has been a need and a market for this solution for many years, and Aryaka has addressed that need in the most comprehensive way.

According to company officials, Aryaka's lead lies in the fact that its network operates with the advantages of a private cloud combined with the economics of a public cloud, thereby offering enterprises the unprecedented ability to overcome the inherent challenges of appliance-based solutions.

Aryaka Networks was founded in November 2008 and secured its first round of funding in May 2009 but is now launching after successfully testing the product with 10 customers.

For more information visit:

http://www.aryaka.com

http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/21/aryaka-funding-wan-optimization/

http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/wan-optimization/articles/103215-aryaka-launches-cloud-based-wan-optimization-platform.htm