* Cisco appears on more companies’ WAN optimization shopping lists than any other vendor, research group says
In the last newsletter I talked about Cisco’s momentum in the WAN optimization market and how it reached the 1,000-customer milestone for its Wide Area Applications Services (WAAS) suite. Just as that newsletter hit your inboxes, an independent research group released data regarding Cisco’s growing prominence as a WAN optimization provider.
According to TheInfoPro, enterprises that are planning to invest in WAN data compression and acceleration technology are considering going with Cisco gear — by a margin of nearly two to one over the next most cited vendor, Riverbed Technology. Other vendors named in the research include Packeteer, Expand Networks, Juniper, Blue Coat Systems and F5 Networks.
In addition, overall adoption of WAN data compression and acceleration technologies is rapidly increasing, TheInfoPro reports in its Wave 3 Networking Study. Within the next 12 to 15 months, more than 50% of Fortune 1,000 and midsize enterprise organizations anticipate having WAN data compression and acceleration technologies in use — a trend which could potentially double the current adoption rate, TheInfoPro says. Within those organizations that currently have WAN data compression and acceleration in use, spending on these technologies is expected to increase 39%.
“This jump in adoption is primarily due to the fact that enterprise organizations have come to realize that these solutions will continue to save them time and money month after month,” said Bill Trussell, TheInfoPro’s managing director of networking research. “Most of these organizations are looking to implement WAN data compression and acceleration technologies to solve domestic remote office WAN performance issues, as well as improve data transfer times and reduce delivery errors. In addition, a return on investment is expected within 12 months of implementation.”
The popularity of WAN acceleration among enterprises shows up in TheInfoPro’s ranking of key data infrastructure segments, based on the immediacy of user needs and planned spending for each technology. In its latest study, WAN data compression and acceleration gear came in at No. 3 (behind 10Gigabit backbone upgrades and continuing adoption of SSL VPNs), up from the No. 10 spot in its last study.
TheInfoPro Wave 3 Networking Study is based on 130 one-on-one interviews with IT buyers at large and midsize enterprises. For more details, you can check out TheInfoPro’s online presentation.
