As enterprises embrace SaaS and other forms of cloud computing, it’s important that they make the changes necessary to optimize WAN performance, he says. "It’s important for network managers to realize users' expectations have been cranked way up and they often don’t understand why it is that when I’m at home on my network my experience is great, but when I come to work my experience goes down."
Leaders in WAN optimization include Riverbed, Blue Coat Systems and Silver Peak Systems, all of which were named in the Leaders Quadrant in a Gartner January report on the WAN optimization controller (WOC) space. The Gartner rankings are based on the expertise of analysts who study each company’s product, market execution, sales execution and customer experiences, not just on sales volume.
Riverbed announced a partnership with Akamai, and Blue Coat just released PacketShaper 9, which offers content-aware visibility and control over networks and applications. Meanwhile, Silver Peak Systems last year introduced new entry-level and high-end WAN optimization appliances. The appliances are available in both physical and virtual forms.
The Dell’Oro Group research organization forecast the WOC market, based on sales, to grow almost 60% during the next five years, to $1.65 billion in 2016 from $1.05 billion in 2011.
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