* The willingness of WAN optimization veterans to share their engineering knowledge and market experience with Microsoft is useful and refreshing, says one analyst
A funny thing happened on the way to delivering Vista, Microsoft’s newest client operating system. On multiple occasions, Microsoft engineers and technical pros from leading WAN optimization vendors got on the phone with each other to share their observations, ideas and advice.
One person privy to these meetings is Joe Skorupa, a research vice president in Gartner’s enterprise network services and infrastructure group. Skorupa helped arrange some of the meetings, in which the parties talked about how the new performance enhancements in Vista work with Windows Server 2003, the forthcoming Windows Server “Longhorn” edition, and the enormous crop of existing third-party applications.
“Companies have been getting together with Microsoft and comparing results of testing they are doing with Vista and Longhorn, and Vista and Windows 2003,” Skorupa says. “Some of the WAN optimization vendors have found things that Microsoft hadn’t found.”
A key issue these tech experts have discussed is how various third-party applications will work with some of the new features of Vista, which include a rewritten TCP/IP stack and a new Common Internet File System (CIFS) implementation based on Version 2.0 of Microsoft’s Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.
“Some stuff works a lot better. Some stuff doesn’t work better at all, it works just about the same. Much of it is dependent upon the application,” Skorupa says.
All this is old hat to the WAN optimization veterans.
“There is some really wild, bizarre behavior from some of the third-party apps that the WAN optimization vendors have already run into in the field. They’ve had to test it, they’ve had to figure out how to deal with it. But Microsoft, because it’s not in that business, hasn’t seen it.”
When they get together, the WAN optimization vendors are sharing what they’ve seen with Microsoft, and Microsoft is very excited that they’re doing it, Skorupa says.
So why the friendliness toward Microsoft, which as it enhances the network performance optimization features built into its products could pose a threat to specialized WAN optimization players? It’s simple, Skorupa says. In return, the WAN optimization players get some insight into Microsoft’s product direction.
“Microsoft isn’t going away. Microsoft will continue to improve elements of the OS, TCP stack, CIFS and their applications. If you have some idea where Microsoft is heading and what they do well and what they don’t do well, that helps you plan your own resources.”
Being able to build an open dialog with a company the size of Microsoft – and with very senior people inside Microsoft – is advantageous, Skorupa says. “The guys who are coming to the table are not lightweights, these are movers and shakers within Microsoft.”
The willingness of all parties to engage in an open dialog and share real-world experiences benefits customers, too. The more these folks uncover and share application idiosyncrasies, the better equipped the next generation of enterprise WAN optimization gear will be.
