Hot WAFS Market

Implications: Wide Area File Services (WAFS) products have now been shipping for about two years.The main benefit to be derived from WAFS is the ability to improve data delivery to workers at remote sites, while saving money compared to alternative configurations and solutions.

Analysis: The acronym WAFS refers to a category of appliance-type products that deliver LAN-like fileaccess across a WAN. Usually WAFS products are deployed in pairs, one at the remote site’s LAN edge and the other at the datacenter’s LAN edge.Not only do WAFS improve performance across the WAN, they also help simplify and reduce the cost of the IT infrastructure. WAFS eliminate the need for distributed file servers and related equipment at the remote site(s), which, in turn, saves remote staffing costs and supports centralized data and network management.

The innovations of the four original WAFS players — Tacit Networks, Actona (now part ofCisco), DiskSites (now part of Expand Networks) and Riverbed Technology — have been recognized by the WAN optimization and other performance enhancing appliance makers, as well as by the mainstream server and network equipment providers. Consequently, WAFS features are appearing on additional platforms and among the feature sets of additional devices.

Although mainstream enterprises are still evaluating or investigating WAFS, many larger enterprises have put WAFS into production, at least for their most critical sites. The financial services industry is at the forefront, but we also have seen installations in health care, manufacturing, technology and other verticals. The results are extremely encouraging. Many of these companies have completely eliminated file servers and NAS boxes from the affected remote locations and are starting to enjoy the benefits of consolidation.

The next three years will see this technology cut across all industries and become pervasive.We believe WAFS technology applies to any enterprise, large or small, that has five or more branches and has a need to share files. The branch offices can be as small as 5 people to as large as a 500-person subsidiary or more.