Blue Coat shares 2010 WAN optimization predictions

Happy New Year, readers, and thanks for staying with me as I delve into the issues shaping WAN optimization and application acceleration in 2010. Today I’ll begin sharing some of your predictions for the coming year, starting with a handful of observations from Blue Coat Systems.

In a nutshell, Blue Coat’s predictions are focused on the continued expansion beyond CIFS file acceleration and storage; WAN optimization challenges associated with the growth of software-as-a-service adoption; and the need to manage and optimize live and on-demand video. But I’ll let the Blue Coat team tell you in their own words:

One of the biggest shifts we have all witnessed is the burgeoning interest in cloud-based applications over the past year. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been around for years, but new business realities have made it better than sliced bread. With the “cloudy” application forecast, we anticipate a re-thinking of WAN optimization requirements. If critical applications are hosted in the cloud, across an Internet connection rather than in a private data center, companies need a way of optimizing their delivery and distinguishing them from other Web content and applications. This has several implications:

One is around application visibility. If the application comes into the organization as HTTP traffic, the company must be able to distinguish it from unimportant and even malicious content. The ability to classify and understand URLs and stay current with the ever-changing web world will be critical, otherwise a porn site or shopping site gets the same priority as business-critical SaaS application. Once Web traffic can be differentiated, applying acceleration technologies for Web content becomes important. At the same time, the ability to stop malicious or regulate unimportant content and applications is also important.

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Happy New Year, readers, and thanks for staying with me as I delve into the issues shaping WAN optimization and application acceleration in 2010. Today I’ll begin sharing some of your predictions for the coming year, starting with a handful of observations from Blue Coat Systems.

In a nutshell, Blue Coat’s predictions are focused on the continued expansion beyond CIFS file acceleration and storage; WAN optimization challenges associated with the growth of software-as-a-service adoption; and the need to manage and optimize live and on-demand video. But I’ll let the Blue Coat team tell you in their own words:

One of the biggest shifts we have all witnessed is the burgeoning interest in cloud-based applications over the past year. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been around for years, but new business realities have made it better than sliced bread. With the “cloudy” application forecast, we anticipate a re-thinking of WAN optimization requirements. If critical applications are hosted in the cloud, across an Internet connection rather than in a private data center, companies need a way of optimizing their delivery and distinguishing them from other Web content and applications. This has several implications:

One is around application visibility. If the application comes into the organization as HTTP traffic, the company must be able to distinguish it from unimportant and even malicious content. The ability to classify and understand URLs and stay current with the ever-changing web world will be critical, otherwise a porn site or shopping site gets the same priority as business-critical SaaS application. Once Web traffic can be differentiated, applying acceleration technologies for Web content becomes important. At the same time, the ability to stop malicious or regulate unimportant content and applications is also important.

Another major implication involves network architecture. Today’s enterprise backhauls Internet traffic to and from its branch offices through a primary Internet gateway in a data center or headquarters. If an increasing number of business applications are cloud-based, the backhaul model becomes problematic. Why backhaul application traffic and introduce the extra latency and expense, when it really ought to go out straight to the Internet? In the most ideal case, the branch office WAN optimization solution will be able to optimize and secure SaaS application traffic across direct Internet access while, at the same time, accelerate sessions to internally hosted applications and data. Application visibility is a key component to this new infrastructure.

2010 will also see the continued growth and challenge of video impacting branch offices. WAN optimization solutions should be able to help manage and optimize video traffic as a part of the overall application mix. Branch offices need to deal with video from internal sources and also video from the external Web. The first requirement is to have understanding of the video traffic—is it important or unimportant? Next is the ability to regulate video or mitigate its voracious appetite for bandwidth. Mitigation can come through object caching and other technologies. Regulation can come from policy-based bandwidth management.