WAN Optimization Not A Luxury Technology

Implications: WAN optimization may not be considered a luxury when customers have no choice but to add it to their infrastructure when bandwidth options are limited and response times have eroded.  Adding more bandwidth or server power does not solve all latency and performance issues, and optimization becomes the logical pursuit. A great deal of the novelty of the technology has faded as it has become much more familiar technology to IT professionals.

Analysis: Riverbed continues to offer enhancements that outpace the competition, and I think they will continue to take more market share.  The ease of set-up and supportable performance improvement statistics continually  increase the number of successful evaluations and deal closure.  I think that competitive offerings from Juniper, Cisco and Blue Coat lag behind in their overall performance capabilities, yet many sales are not made for pure technical reasons.