WAN Optimized network as a service

The biggest area of change in the WAN optimization market over the last few years has been the delivery method of these solutions. The majority of announcements that have been made by WAN optimization vendors were centred around turning their hardware solutions into virtual appliances or enabling their products to better support managed WAN optimization services. This trend has been driven by the end-users’ request to simplify the management of WAN optimization solutions, reduce the total cost of ownership, support different network topologies and make these products more appealing for organizations that are deploying virtualization and cloud computing services. Aryaka’s solution takes this a step further and provides an innovative approach for addressing some of the key concerns that end-user organizations have about deploying WAN optimization solutions.

The trend of moving WAN optimization hardware out of the branch has been resonating with end-user organizations and a majority of WAN optimization vendors have been doing a good job of trying to adjust to it. However, Aryaka is not only taking WAN optimization solutions completely out of the branch, but also moving them into the cloud in a completely SaaS based model, providing an almost CDN-like infrastructure for delivering these capabilities (which should not come as a surprise if you know that the founder of Aryaka was also a founder of Speedera Networks, a CDN company that was acquired by Akamai in 2005).

A few vendors are providing a managed service for WAN optimization at low cost, with a full guarantee for response times of applications that are being delivered over the WAN. This solution comes in two flavors: software and cloud-based, both of which mitigates the need for deploying any dedicated WAN optimization hardware at the branch.

For years, organizations have been reporting that the inability to create a business case for deploying WAN optimization solutions is one of the biggest challenges for supporting their remote employees. Also, estimates on the growth of WAN optimization technologies in the enterprise and saturation rate of this market were based on an assumption that these capabilities come in “boxes”. Organizations that have less than ten users per branch office find it very difficult to justify putting a WAN optimization hardware appliance at each location and worry about configuring and managing it. Even though many of these organizations understand that the performance of their business-critical applications is lower than expected, traditional WAN optimization solutions are just not a viable option for many of them.

There are very few companies that wouldn’t benefit from WAN optimization solutions, but the way in which they are currently designed, delivered and priced, puts them out of range for even being evaluated by some of these companies. In order for WAN optimization capabilities to become truly ubiquitous, WAN optimization vendors have to figure out a way to deliver their solutions to end-users in such a manner that would make them more appealing to a wider range of market segments. And while some WAN optimization vendors saw this trend, and used their virtual appliances and software solutions to try to address this area of the market, others used these types of products as more of a sales tool; as a way to get their foot into the door of new prospects, so they can eventually sell more hardware.

Aryaka’s cloud solution for WAN Optimization is based on a number of globally distributed points of presence that sit on a dedicated, private, secure cloud around the world. Aryaka allows organizations to deploy WAN optimization capabilities based on a SaaS model in only a few clicks, without having to deploy any additional hardware.

For more information visit:

http://www.aryaka.com

http://www.trac-research.com/wan-optimization/can-wan-optimization-become-a-commodity