Achieving optimum performance

"There are a lot of silver bullet players in the space who are offering just one aspect of the solution such as a QoS device or just an application acceleration device," Hackney said.

The WAN optimisation controller market was offering up some nice opportunities for partners, he said. Citing a recent survey of top A/NZ CIOs, Hackney said 40 per cent planned to deploy some sort of WAN optimisation this year. Three pain points were identified: total cost of ownership, performance and compliance.

"Customers are adopting it [WAN optimisation] at unprecedented rates. They realise WAN optimisation will give them business-level visibility of key applications and network performance, and will improve application performance," Hackney said. "There's not a CIO in Australia not talking about server consolidation, and reducing the TCO, which are top market drivers for WAN optimisation."

Trial run
While IDC dubs it WAD, Gartner calls it WOC [WAN optimisation controller]. The analyst firm claims the market is dynamic with a high level of innovation. This has led to different vendors offering a different combination of features.

Part of Cisco's WAN optimisation approach is to add smarts straight into the router, thereby offering a turbo router, its business development manager for applications and mobility, Brad Engstrom, said. He forecast the industry would move towards a world where the intelligence would be embedded in the router.

Engstrom said integrating Cisco Integrated Services Routers with Cisco wide area application services (WAAS) network modules provided optimal performance for applications delivered from a central datacenter to branch-office users. It consolidated costly branch-office server, storage, and backup infrastructure into datacentres while maintaining LAN-like service levels for remote users and minimising WAN bandwidth expenses. Some analysts say because a router's purpose varies widely from acceleration and optimization technologies it doesn't necessarily make sense to integrate those capabilities into the equipment.

"We're at the beginning [in terms of development]," Engstrom said. "Once we settle down, it will become part of what a router does."

Juniper's Bunt said the integrated router approach was good if a customer was updating its entire routing infrastructure, but wasn't suitable if it had legacy equipment.

"We want to provide a solution that doesn't impact the routing, switching and security already in place," he said.

While vendors are getting the strategies all sorted and testing the water in terms of product innovation, Gartner advises customers insist on a real-life trial before committing to any purchase. Cisco's Engstrom suggested resellers could help customers make the first step.

Service provider, Dimension Data, has done its fair share of WAN optimisation trials. "It's a very hot topic, there's no question about it," connectivity general manager, Roland Chia, said. "Cisco, Blue Coat, Packeteer - everyone's jumping in. From our experience, it's still an emerging market and technology is still being improved."

He said the sale involved a lot of hard work. "It's not like you can go in and install a router and a switch and walk away. You have to migrate all applications: It's not just a networking, server or storage play, but involves all apps across the entire company," Chia said.

Skilling up
Resellers needed to brush up their networking skills, as well as have a good knowledge of Microsoft's Active Directory and some security know-how. Chia claimed encryption was a good starting point.

Partners can offer consulting, deployment and management. Help an organisation accomplish gains in application performance, server consolidation, data replication and cost reduction in WAN environments. "WAN optimisation is the hottest product in networking.

We're excited about it. Talking about a faster switch doesn't excite me, but this does because it delivers real business value," Chia said. "Branch office customers, particularly those with Auto-CAD files, are seeing the benefits. Engineering companies doing lots of CAD design are ideal markets."

But while many are touting the benefits, Chia warned it's not the be-all/end-all. "This sort of technology helps a certain group of apps, but it's not a magic wand whereby every app is improved. Understand the apps and its behaviour and ask yourself, is this the right thing for the business?" he said.

Juniper's Bunt suggested partners become a trusted advisor at the application level by touting application awareness. Tasks included assisting organisations relocate applications, doing an audit, and assessing the number of users and types of apps across the network.

"It's not just about quality of service, which is what many vendors focus on, but about getting an in-depth understanding of how the application works," Bunt said. "Show companies the fundamental business advantage, as opposed to mere cost savings, when they relocate an app or implement WAN delivery or application technology. Apps are becoming sneakier - peer-to-peer apps, for example, are wriggling out of the network. The traditional definition of a business app is changing."

He highlighted the importance of having the right mix of security skills. "If you accelerate something, you don't want to do it blindly. SQL Slammer is an example where a denial of service attack was accelerated," he said.

Competitive advantage
Exinda Networks is also getting its ducks in order and expecting massive growth in the application acceleration market at an SMB level as well as the top end of town. It recently acquired $6 million in capital funding in the US to fuel plans.

"We've moved out of the early adopter stage," CEO and co-founder, Con Nikolouzakis, said. "Many organizations have purchased one or two units and are trialling it in their networks. They are starting to see the cost savings, and will be at a competitive disadvantage if they don't adopt it."

Under the banner of unified performance management (UPM), the vendor is pitching a mix of WAN optimisation, application acceleration, application visibility and application response time measurements for enterprise, government and service provider clients.

In addition to inefficient and slow apps being deployed across the WAN, another issue is repetitive data. "Repetitive data is being sent across the WAN, which increases total utilisation and introduces congestion," Nikolouzakis said. "There are huge pressures on the network.

How do we make apps perform, whether it's VoIP or Web-based services, pod-casting or peer-to-peer services?" IT managers are demanding effective ways to manage and optimise existing infrastructure, how it is used and accelerate application performance - and as the experts tell us, the reseller is the prime candidate to offer up these services.