* Guidelines on purchasing the right application acceleration wares for your network
Network Lab Alliance partner David Newman has finally come up for air after seven grueling months in the lab testing application acceleration wares from Blue Coat, Cisco, Riverbed and SilverPeak. You can read all about it in the detailed review article.
However, in this newsletter I’d like to note that from the embers of the burning questions addressed by those test results, also comes a wealth of information about this class of products that we just found too worthwhile to leave on the cutting room floor.
Newman used his in-depth, hands-on experience with these products to come up with several guidelines on how to go about purchasing the right one depending on your network’s requirements. Here is his list:
1. What are my goals for application acceleration?
2. What’s the difference between caching and application acceleration?
3. How do application-acceleration devices operate with the rest of my network?
4. What are the security implications for application acceleration?
5. What’s my application mix?
6. Where are my users?
You can read the rationale behind each bullet point here.
Got thoughts on the App Acceleration market? Speak up!
We’ve always pitched the Network World Buyer’s Guides as “living” beasts, meaning that vendors at any time can add new products to our listings and detail any improvements in existing entries so that our readers have access to the most up-to-date product information possible.
To that end, Network World editors must periodically update the questions we ask vendors in every category to reflect new technology trends in those markets. I’m in the process of revamping the Application Acceleration Buyer’s Guide this week, and am interested in gathering your thoughts on new questions we can ask of every vendor in this space.
Please drop me a line if you’ve got a burning question for these vendors about their products.
Thanks in advance for your help.
