In my experience, as an engineer for a Cisco partner that is also partnered with Riverbed for WAN optimization solutions, I can say that Riverbed seems to be the best technology for WAN acceleration. In the bake offs Cisco has a very hard time winning against Riverbed. Cisco tries to sell on price because they can't win with the WAAS technology. This is the first time that I've seen Cisco trying to win deals by being the "cheaper" solution. In the past, they always sold on technology and sold for a premium. We'll see if they can ever catch Riverbed. I have a lot of comparison data on all the competitors if anyone is interested. Forrester, Gartner, etc... Just shoot me an email.

Justin Lofton
Systems Engineer

Tredent Data Systems, Inc.
WAN Optimization Information