Organizations are deploying MPLS and queuing for QoS, survey finds

Opinion
Apr 26, 20052 mins

* Few deploy TCP acceleration and wide area file services for optimization

In a previous newsletter, we discussed how businesses that used to view branch offices as unnecessary now view them as providing an essential customer touch point. As a result, businesses are aggressively deploying a variety of critical applications at branch offices, including CRM and enterprise resource management applications, plus VoIP and real-time video services.

However, research that we recently conducted indicates that there is a wide divergence in terms of the WAN optimization technologies that IT organizations are deploying in order to support their burgeoning branch office networks.

On a positive note, our research indicates that the majority of the 192 respondents to the survey have already made a significant deployment of technologies such as MPLS and queuing that allow organizations to ensure some level of QoS. The same research also indicates that the deployment of these technologies will increase significantly over the next year.

However, there has been notably less deployment of other WAN optimization technologies such as TCP acceleration, wide area file services, and caching. A good example of this spotty deployment is the use of compression technologies.  According to our research, only a minority of companies is currently making any use of compression technologies, and the vast majority of the companies that are using these technologies are making at most a moderate use of them.

We would like to hear from you. Which WAN optimization technologies has your company already deployed? Have those technologies provided the benefits that you thought they would? What issues have you faced in trying to justify deploying WAN optimization technologies?

Jim has a broad background in the IT industry. This includes serving as a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major network service provider, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major network service provider and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm. Jim’s current interests include both cloud networking and application and service delivery. Jim has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Boston University.

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