In the last newsletter I wrote about quarterly results reported by F5 Networks, Citrix Systems and Riverbed Technology. But quarterly results don't tell the whole story - particularly when the economy has changed so dramatically in the few weeks following the close of the last calendar-year quarter on Sept. 30.

To learn more about how WAN optimization and application acceleration projects are faring in today's economic environment, I asked readers to share their opinions on which IT projects take priority in a budget-constrained environment. A handful of IT suppliers responded with their take on customers’ spending plans, as well as the attributes of WAN optimization technologies that are helping to insulate vendors from spending slowdowns. Here are some of the comments I received:

"Despite the economy, organizations still need to keep pace with the changing technology landscape, and that means adopting solutions like business video and online collaboration applications that enhance communication and increase productivity. As adoption increases, organizations will find that these new technologies increase stress on their networks, and they'll look for the best and most cost-efficient ways to ensure their networks continue to perform at the highest levels possible,” says Gunnar Peters, product manager for network services at Virtela. “We're seeing more best-in-class organizations turn to WAN optimization solutions to improve the delivery of business-critical applications, and they're increasing these investments at a significantly higher rate than their overall IT spend.”

Similarly, Gareth Taube, vice president of marketing at Certeon, expects application acceleration projects to remain a priority for enterprises.

“There’s no doubt; the current economic crisis will result in added scrutiny on every line item of the IT budget. Any IT project considered not to be mission-critical will be slashed,” Taube says. “But the reality is IT managers have been consolidating data centers at a rapid pace, catapulting application acceleration to the top of the list for mission-critical IT projects.”

Certeon’s software-based product, which can be deployed as a virtual appliance on industry-standard servers, has the advantage of not requiring buyers to deploy proprietary hardware at every branch office, according to Taube. “With every line item on the budget under scrutiny, hardware appliances will become a thing of the past and IT managers will look to virtual appliances for application acceleration to fill the void,” Taube predicts.

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.