Gregg Chottiner is truly in the trenches of the application-aware networking fight. As CIO of the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), he must make sure that students and professors accessing the largest public distance-learning university in the world can do their coursework 24/7, from anywhere.

The Adelphi, Md., university runs two critical Web-enabled applications: PeopleSoft, for human resources and finance administration, and WebTycho, a proprietary learning-management system. As the university grew, controlling performance of these applications became difficult, he recalls.

"We were continually having to buy new networking hardware just to keep things static," Chottiner says, noting that his core network is composed of Cisco gear. "And we kept buying more network bandwidth, but we realized we weren't solving the problem that way - we were just spending more money."

The answer came in a pair of Juniper Networks' DX3250 application-acceleration appliances. Based on technology Juniper acquired in April from Redline Networks, the gear not only improves performance of critical Web applications, but also handles security via an integrated intrusion-prevention system.

"Anybody who has a Web app [for] customers or clients needs to look at [application-aware networking], because people don't have much patience anymore," Chottiner says. "If it's an underperforming Web site, or it's difficult to navigate, they don't come back."

UMUC's case is becoming the norm, especially as more organizations consolidate and centralize their servers and applications for better security and accountability, analysts say. The bulk of these newly centralized applications weren't designed to run across the wide area. They use protocols, such as MAPI, designed for an environment in which the client is no more than 100 meters from the server. "The protocols are very chatty, and with applications being hosted in Chicago and serving people in Bangalore and China, performance gets bad fast," says Joe Skorupa, a research director at Gartner.

Application performance will get worse as organizations begin moving to Web services and service-oriented architectures (SOA), he says, adding that with the expected upturn in SOA applications, the market for application acceleration and application-aware networking is poised to reach $1.5 billion this year.