In a recent newsletter we declared that 2010 will be a breakout year for the deployment of network and application optimization.
In a previous newsletter we discussed virtualized application delivery appliances such as WAN optimization controllers (WOC) and application delivery controllers (ADC). We will use this newsletter to outline one of the reasons why we think virtual application delivery appliances are important and use the next one to discuss a recent announcement about a virtualized appliance and talk about what you can expect to see happen over the next 12 to 18 months.
One of the reasons that we are so interested in virtual appliances stems from a hypothetical, but realistic conversation between an IT director and his boss. The IT director says, “Boss, good news, bad news.” The boss says, “What’s the good news?” To which the IT director says, “Well, I implemented virtualized servers and I also implemented VMotion. As a result, I can now move a virtual machine (VM) between data centers in well under a second.” The boss is impressed and says “That’s great. What’s the bad news?”. The IT director says “Unfortunately it takes me a week and half to reconfigure the rest of the infrastructure.”
Desktop virtualization cheat sheet
The reality is that compute resources are becoming dynamic but the rest of the infrastructure is static. Until the rest of the infrastructure becomes dynamic, the benefit of dynamically provisioning VMs and moving VMs between physical servers will be marginal. We are not saying that the virtualization of application delivery appliances solves this problem, nor are we saying that it is a panacea. It is, however, one way to make progress at making part of the infrastructure more dynamic.
If you are going to be at Interop in Vegas next month, Jim is moderating 10 panels – one of which is entitled “The Emergence of Virtualized Application Delivery Appliances”. The panel is April 27 at 11:30 a.m. The panelists are from Blue Coat, A10, Citrix, Certeon and F5. The panel is designed to give the attendees deep insight into the wide range of virtual application delivery appliances that are currently available.
