WAN Optimizers - What's the buzz about?

Overview

Most IT Managers, IT Directors and CIOs are under the gun to do one or all of the following:

• Improve application performance over the WAN
• Make room for new applications to traverse the WAN
• Make room for more users or more offices while minimizing costs.

A WAN optimizer is deployed at both sides of a wide area network connection. In most cases behind the WAN router on the LAN side. These devices tune the application traffic destined for the WAN so that application performance across the wide area network is accelerated. The result is WAN acceleration and faster application response time. This gives end users out at the branch office and also mobile workers, LAN like access to all of the critical applications.

WAN Optimization Technology Overview Video

If you are considering upgrading your WAN, you should deploy a Riverbed WAN optimizer before making that decision. These gadgets can help you get more from your current wide area network through WAN acceleration, just as they can also help you avoid disruptive and costly WAN upgrades. A Riverbed's optimizer on your wide area network links will typically reduce your current WAN traffic by 60% to 95%.

That means that if you currently have a branch office served by a T1 (1.5 Mbps) you could deliver bandwidth equivalent to between 3 and 30 Mbps just by adding a Riverbed's optimizer to your current WAN environment. In many cases, through WAN acceleration your end users will not only have more available bandwidth; they will also experience much better throughput and application performance as well.

WAN optimization has a quick return on investment, for domestic wide area network connections as well as international connections. Many companies deploy these devices at a couple of "pain point" locations and once they see the tremendous improvements they quickly deploy the WAN optimizing devices across the entire wide area network.

The toughest part of tackling an IT consolidation project is the impact on application performance on the end users out at the branch office. Bring back all the local servers to a data center and connecting them across the WAN often results in poor application response times and data transfer rates. With these delays, business processes are impacted forcing IT consolidation efforts to be stalled.

A Riverbed's optimizer for WAN uses a new combination of patented and patent-pending mechanisms to achieve application optimization across the wide area network. These mechanisms include transaction prediction, TCP proxying and optimization, and hierarchical compression to deliver huge increases in application response time and throughput.

Because a Riverbed's optimizer for WAN systematically addresses each of the issues affecting application performance over the WAN, Riverbed helps businesses consolidate their server, storage and backup infrastructure and deliver tremendous application performance without upgrading expensive WAN bandwidth.

IT consolidation has a tremendous return on investment, as long as end user application performance is delivered like a local area network. Most companies have a wide range of branch office IT infrastructure. These include: File servers, Exchange servers, web applications, app servers, NAS, tape backup, and others. The more IT infrastructure that can be centralized or consolidated to the data center or host location, the higher the return on investment for the IT department.

Want more info about our services or WAN Optimizers?

Simply complete the form below and we will provide you with more detailed info.

First Name* Last Name* Title* Company* Email* Phone* Comments