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.
Our survey results show that by far the biggest impediment to WAN optimization is the cost. A majority (58 percent) of those surveyed say that WAN optimization is too expensive -- and in a related vein another 33 percent tell us they are held back because they can't prove the value of WAN optimization. A quarter of those surveyed told us that complexity is a purchase impediment, and a quarter also told us that lack staff also keeps them from purchasing WAN optimization solutions.
Here's some advice to you WAN optimization vendors out there. If you want to take the market by storm tamp down your prices, show value through independent tests using realistic customer scenarios, and make your solutions dead simple.
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good post - need more visibilty and less FUD marketing
good post guys - right to to the point. There is a lot of confusion/complexity around selecting the right vendor and its made worse by the never ending FUD from the larger vendors. Some of the vendor statements out there are outrageous and outright stupid. I agree with you and on most points but
its difficult (but not impossible)to get independent tests to reflect real customer scenarios but lets not start that discussion.
What also needs to be considered in the cost is the expensive POC process for these devices
For better adoption the WOC market needs is less FUD, products that don't just accelerate (that's just temporary pain relief), more application awareness and visibility(key to long term value), tools to prove the value these technologies offer, better prices & a low touch deployment - all this is one box off course. It needs to be easier for customers to choose the right product.
The survey respondents
The survey respondents obviously have not heard of HyperIP WAN optimization software from NetEx.
Their WAN optimization software runs on VMware ESX/EXSi/vSphere platforms and is priced competitively versus the hardware based WAN optimizers.
Entrance pricing for a T1 version of HyperIP for VMware is less than $2,000 per software license instance.
The software scales from 1.5 Mb/s to 800 Mb/s, and the solution can scale upward as customer performance requirements increase.
Having the software run on VMware negates the requirements of having specialized hardware appliances in the network for WAN optimization. This eliminates unnecessary cost for customers. If the customer already has VMware ESX, great! All they have to do is install the HyperIP for VMware image on the local and remote VMware servers and they are ready to start optimizing their storage replication or bulk file traffic over wide area connections.
NetEx offers a 10 day FREE trial of HyperIP that is downloaded from their website. This allows resellers and prospects to properly test the HyperIP WAN optimization software so they can make an informed purchase decision regarding the value of HyperIP in their environment.
NetEx realizes there are many performance claims by WAN optimization vendors and that is why they hired DeepStorage, a 3rd party test lab to evaluate their HyperIP for VMware software. DeepStorage simulated VMware VMotion transfers with and without HyperIP acceleration and determined that NetEx was actually understating their performance by approximately 30%.
Instead of a 6X improvement, DeepStorage benchmarked a 10X improvement.
So if your readers want to optimize replication and other bulk transfers, NetEx HyperIP for VMware may be a good choice to consider.
More info here: www.netex.com
Sure it´s not cheap...
Sure, WAN optimization isn´t cheap, but in our case it was really worth it - we probably got the ROI in less then 10 month. Our demand was to transfer large, bulky traffic (CIFS) + some other HTTP traffic for internal services and a little bit of FTP over our 2 Mbit MPLS line between Germany and a "big Asian country" (you guess...). Even with the 2MBit line, CIFS traffic couldn´t fill the line because of it´s "chattiness" and the delay. So we called Cisco and Riverbed to provide us test equipment for at least 2 weeks - which both did.
After doing extensive testing in a test bed with "real" traffic and simulated line conditions (www.wanulator.de) both solutions showed pretty much the same results. After some price negotiations we decided to go with Cisco WAAS.
The implementation was pretty easy, I woudn´t say it was "plug-and-play", but it did not take more than a day to configure/test/document/ship the boxes (okay, we got some experience during the test phase - which I strongly recommend!)
Now, in real live, the results we get from those boxes is pretty amazing. Some of our HTTP traffic is reduced by 95% and the bulky traffic is about 4 times faster - must be related to the "on the fly compression" and redundant data patterns.
Bottom line: I was sceptical, but our experience shows that (in our case) the WAN accelerators speeded up applications while optimizing link efficiency. And all that for a cost less then an upgrade from our MPLS line from 2 to 4 MBit (anual fee).
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