It is fascinating to hear Ivan Seidenberg and others argue vociferously that an open, fair, and transparent Internet will somehow quash innovation, when the opposite is true. It is time to debunk this argument. Without net neutrality, the Internet risks becoming a black box within which service providers can do whatever they please to traffic without oversight or public accountability. This is the surest way we know not only to quash innovation, but to break the Internet. Read more
Once again our esteemed colleague Johna Till Johnson predicts that the Internet sky is falling -- this time she ominously foretells that net neutrality will destroy peering and make the Internet as we know it go poof. This is nonsense! Peering is a win-win arrangement created and sustained in a net neutral environment, and it will not be destroyed by the status quo. Read more
We are intrigued by a new application performance management service offered by Appnomic Systems, a startup from Bangalore. The underlying service concept is to: determine "normal" performance for key applications; keep an "automated eye' on application behavior; automatically sound the alarm when performance degrades below response time and availability thresholds; and provide information that helps zero in on performance problem causes. Read more
Today's WAN optimization customers want performance measurement integrated into their WAN optimization platform rather than buying it as a standalone solution. In NetForecast's recent survey on the future of application delivery systems, 69 percent of respondents told us they want performance measurement integrated into their WAN optimization platform. Vendors should take note and act accordingly. Read more
In our just-completed WAN optimization survey we asked enterprises what is preventing them from implementing WAN optimization. "Too expensive" tops the list of purchase impediments, followed by "too complex" and "lack of staff." So the survey indicates that if WAN optimization were cheaper and easier to implement, it would be much more ubiquitous. Read more
Back in June we predicted that WAN optimization customers will want to extend their acceleration solutions across company boundaries. We just tested our hypothesis with a survey, and validated that enterprises do indeed want their WAN optimization solution to work with those of their business partners and customers. Read more
If you have application performance problems and have looked at some of the WAN optimization products on the market, then we want you tell us about it. Click here to take our WAN optimization survey and you will be eligible to win one $200 and four $50 Amazon gift certificates. Just like any new technology there are issues and hurdles to overcome. The industry needs to know what they are so it can make the necessary improvements. Your opinion counts!
In a new video, Peter Sevcik draws on findings from NetForecast's landmark APM best practices benchmarking study of more than 600 enterprises to show how APM best practices deliver performance excellence--and he identifies critical application performance management tool features required to support those best practices. Peter also explains how recent IT infrastructure and application delivery improvements change how application performance must be managed, and describes new APM approaches that address those chan Read more
There was an ominous juxtaposition of two articles about controlling Internet use in the June 17th issue of the Wall Street Journal. One article described how the Iranian government is using deep packet inspection to spy on and limit its citizens' Internet use--and the other described how the UK is about to mandate the use of deep packet inspection to identify and crack down on piracy. We see the two news items as variants on a theme, and we see a lesson to be learned. Read more
The WAN optimization market is growing and changing, and we are investigating how. Tell us your WAN optimization needs and preferences, and we will enter your name in drawings for one $200 and four $50 Amazon gift certificates. See the survey results in upcoming blogs. Click here to take the survey. Your opinion matters! In fact, your responses can influence the direction of future products and services.
We attended this year's spring Interop show and found it sleepy--and quite frankly a bit dull. Attendance was down, which is understandable in this economy. However, the big disappointment with Interop this year and in recent years is that it has lost its mojo. But we have a proposal to wake Interop from its doldrums next year--make interoperability testing for application delivery system (i.e. WAN optimization) vendors a centerpiece of the show.
Here's the problem. A user behind a Riverbed Steelhead can't communicate with a server behind a Cisco WAAS. This is nuts! The Application Delivery System (ADS--aka WAN optimization) market is mature enough to fix this. The time has come to standardize how ADS technology works so enterprises can build multivendor solutions. We have done this with every other network technology. Why should ADS technology be different?
For the last three blogs in this series we have described the videoconferencing service offerings on the market today in generic terms. This week we provide a specific carrier-by-carrier overview of what room-based and immersive videoconferencing service the carriers we interviewed for this series--AT&T, BT Global Services, Masergy, NTT Communications, Orange Business Services, Tata Communications, Telstra, and Verizon Business--are offering.
Last week our esteemed colleague from Nemertes Research Johna Till Johnson wrote that the Internet is in deep peril because: "IP itself is nearing end-of-life, with no ready alternative." To prevent what she describes as a looming crisis, Johna champions a radical new Internet architecture. Just as the sky did not fall on Chicken Little, the Internet sky is not about to fall on us.
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It was only a matter of time before system integrators codified a set of application performance optimization services (joining the network service providers we have already profiled--see below). We've been eager to see who among the systems integrators would be first--and the winner is EDS (an HP company). Although other system integrators such as IBM Global Services provide custom solutions, to our knowledge EDS leads the pack in formalizing its application performance service offerings.
As the dreaded word "pandemic" tops this week's headlines about the swine flu virus spreading around the globe, many businesses are dusting off emergency plans for employees to work from home and schools are poised to send students home. If this turns out to be a full-fledged pandemic, not only will people fall ill, the Internet will too. Businesses think that "continuity" will be achieved with collaboration and online workflow procedures, while schools think that "education" will proceed via Edline assignments and online homework delivery. Read more
The last two postings in our Guide to Videoconferencing Services series described the types of videoconferencing services available from carriers. This week we introduce the vendors upon whose products these services are built. Polycom, Tandberg, and RADVISION are the three most well established traditional room-based video conferencing vendors. More recently LifeSize joined the group with products focused exclusively on high definition (HD) room-based conferencing. Cisco and HP are market newcomers, having both introduced telepresence systems a mere two years ago.
Just as CDN services have become ho hum, up pops Cotendo--an Israeli startup with the potential to shake up the CDN market. Although Cotendo describes itself as a CDN, don't be fooled. Its real raison d'être is something more powerful and innovative--application delivery management. It has what it calls a CDN Balancer, which allows you to serve content when you want and where you want across multiple CDNs. Why is that powerful? Because it gives you unprecedented control over how content gets delivered. Read more
Last week we gave you a snapshot of the videoconferencing service types on the market today, including top-of-the-line immersive videoconferencing, the next step down--room-based videoconferencing, and finally the poor man's alternative--desktop videoconferencing. This week we describe the types of videoconferencing services carriers currently have in their quivers. Read more
"Once the economy begins to recover, videoconferencing will see meteoric growth," BT's Videoconferencing Unit general manager Jeff Prestel told us in a recent interview. In the mean time growth is respectable, experience quality is improving, systems are easier to use, and high-end "immersive" solutions are creating a lot of buzz--although not making major inroads just yet. Collaborating with our colleague John Bartlett, we learned this and more during recent interviews with eight carriers to create this four-part "Guide to Videoconferencing Services". Read more
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