Trend: Application Delivery Systems Plunge into Performance Management

Taking advantage of the measurement they must do to improve application performance, increasing numbers of application Delivery System (ADS) vendors are adding performance management to their bag of tricks. This new trend will find them butting up against the likes of NetScout, NetQoS, Compuware, OPNET and Quest Software. In some cases this could save the trouble and money of buying and managing multiple solutions.

Application Delivery Systems (ADSs) modify traffic flows by controlling which packets get to move (traffic shaping, QoS, etc.) or accelerating the application above the packet layer (compression, caching, etc.). Most ADS products control and accelerate traffic - and the third leg of the ADS stool is traffic measurement.

ADS vendors measure and report on performance as an essential function. The devices must track performance to discover opportunities to control or accelerate - so real-time measurement and tracking runs in the devices at all times. Some of that data is sent to the ADS element manager, which often gives you better visibility into applications operating over the network than router statistics. Furthermore, you can use this console to set control and/or acceleration policies - and the management system supplies good information on how well the control and/or acceleration worked. After all, it is important for the ADS vendor to show you the buyer that you are getting value from your investment.

The current trend among ADS vendors is to leverage the management portion of ADS into a performance management platform. This shift is characterized by extending the data and reporting beyond the ADS devices in the network. Some ADS vendors recognize that they are also a remote probe in the network that sees many more things than it previously reported on.

This trend started when Ipanema and Exinda enhanced performance reporting to support meaningful SLAs - and Packeteer strengthened the trend when it recently launched its Intelligence Center product. Packeteer is opening its management system so other vendors can supply data to or receive data from it. Packeteer has defined what it calls a Flow Detail Record that provides all the information normally delivered by NetFlow plus additional details such as precise application identification, MOS results for VoIP, and specific latency data. And Packeteer is working with several yet unannounced partners that will use this information in their products.

This trend toward expanding ADS solutions to include performance management has benefits. First, many organizations don't have an enterprise management system because they are expensive and complex. Second, it is handy to have both management and execution (changing control and/or acceleration policy) in the same system.

The ADS vendors adding this to their bag of tricks are integrating management up from the essential point of control, which is simpler and more efficient than a centralized approach. The typical place to discover a performance problem is at the performance dashboard of some big management vendor. Then you have to drill down to figure out a fix. At some point you swing your chair over to the ADS element management screen to implement the fix.

Integrated end-to-end management and control is simpler, less expensive and more effective. Let's see if other ADS vendors follow the lead of Ipanema, Exinda, Packeteer, and Radware, which has an Application Performance Monitoring module scheduled for release this year.

• Network Management
• application performance