- BlackBerry Storm vs. the iPhone
- Digg's Kevin Rose: "We have to do better"
- Blogger warns: "Nortel doesn't make it out alive"
- Financial quagmire bringing out the scammers
- Verizon plays with the wrong e-mail addresses
Newsletters | Podcasts | Chats | Opinions | RSS Feeds | This Week In Print | IT Careers | Community | Reports | Downloads | Slideshows | New Data Center
Partner Sites:Application Performance Solutions | App Performance | Networking Solution | SafeGuard Enterprise Solution Center | SOA | Test your Web Filter | Value of WDS
WAN experts Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler analyze and share best practices on WAN issues from optimization to management.
Last week, we discussed some of the factors that impact application performance and looked at the characteristics of the current generation of application acceleration products. Today, we will discuss the next-generation of application acceleration gear.
In our industry, the term "next-generation" is terribly overused. In particular, introducing some new feature into a product or service does not constitute a next-generation product or service. To be truly next-generation the change has to be more fundamental.
The way that many of the current application acceleration products work is that they require IT organizations to implement specialized appliances in each branch office. Since so many products are narrowly focused, this tends to result in vendor marketing campaigns that focus on showing that one specialized device is superior to another.
Not only is there confusion from a marketing perspective, having specialized appliances also presents some operational concerns. For example, in many cases these highly specialized appliances sit in branch offices next to numerous other appliances, each of which is performing some other highly specialized task in order to make individual applications run better over the WAN. Few companies want a deployment strategy that results in having their branch offices littered with appliances.
The current focus on specialized appliances reminds us of some of the discussions that occurred in the mid 1990s over LAN switching. At that time, a heated debate raged over the benefits of cut through switching vs. store and forward. The primary reason for the intensity of this debate was that initially some vendors only had cut through switching and some other vendors only had store and forward. The debate over which technology was superior quickly went away once next-generation products that incorporated both techniques began to hit the market.
We believe that next-generation application acceleration products are beginning to hit the market. The reason that we refer to them as being next-generation is that they are not just another appliance performing a highly specialized task. Rather, these products integrate a number of existing application optimization techniques while also typically include some powerful new technology.
Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.
Partner Content
Simplify Your Branch Infrastructure
Learn how to simplify your branch infrastructure while dramatically increasing app performance with Citrix Branch Repeater.
Download the Free Info Kit
Next-Gen Load Balancing
Free Guide: "Next Gen Load Balancing: 8 Things You Need to Handle Today's Network Traffic" shows you the functionality needed in your next load balancer.
Download the Free Guide
Accelerate Your Web Apps by up to 5x
Free Guide: "The Secret to Getting Maximum Speed from your Web Applications." Learn how you can deliver Web apps up to 5x faster.
Download the Free Guide
Comment