* Citrix's updated take on WAN optimization
Earlier this month, Citrix Systems added to the number of technologies it has in-house to help customers optimize WAN traffic and accelerate applications to remote workers. The buy could provide the vendor with more capabilities in one box, but the industry remains skeptical if an all-in-one provider will win out in the long run.
In its fourth major acquisition in the past year, Citrix announced it would pick up Orbital Data for about $50 million in a deal scheduled to close later this year. The technology will give Citrix tools to improve how data travels over WAN connections. Citrix, which acquired application acceleration vendor NetScaler last year, could ideally use the technology to set up symmetrical optimization – with an appliance in the data center and remote location – or in an asymmetrical scenario in which a data center appliance communicates with software running on client machines. Citrix also picked up Teros for application firewalls and Reflectent, a maker of client-side application performance management software.
Industry watchers have been noting consolidation in the marketplace – with other buys such as Packeteer’s acquisition of Tacit Networks and Juniper Networks’ purchase of Peribit and Redline last year – that is helping to reduce the number of vendors promising to speed applications, but isn’t necessarily lessening confusion for end users and customers.
“Vendors are feverishly battling to organically and inorganically add new acceleration functionality. To avoid applying just a Band-Aid to your performance issues, make sure you challenge your vendors’ road maps,” advises Robert Whiteley, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, in a recent report on application delivery optimization. “This means making sure that you know your own architectural road map and the performance challenges that may exist.”
For example, Whiteley notes that Cisco will integrate acceleration into existing routing and switching – “ideal for networking staff, but not as helpful if your application folks are running the daily ops.” Or take Juniper, he says in the report, whose security expertise could provide a “road map that will combine acceleration technologies with SSL VPNs, firewalls, and intrusion prevention technologies.”
Then Whiteley explains, Citrix, which provides asymmetric solutions, could offer customers something truly more valuable by “integrating its NetScaler products with its popular Presentation Server.”
