WAN optimisation specialists face market compression

How long will it be before ubiquitous, high speed bandwidth and Windows branch caching make WAN optimisation technology obsolete?

We used to be told we could never ever have enough internet bandwidth, but with today's mesh of DSL, fibre optic and wireless coverage, is that maxim still true?

Lamentably, there are still pockets of the UK within which, because of low population density, it does not make economical sense for network providers to deliver any high speed links at all. But where that return on investment calculation does yield a positive result, businesses and consumers alike are often spoilt for choice in their choice of supplier, bearer technology, data rate and tariff.

Most complaints about wide area network (WAN) and internet performance these days concern lack of availability rather than speed – incidents where the whole thing goes down rather than slows to a crawl.

All of which may be a cause for alarm among WAN optimisation and application delivery companies, which include Expand Networks, Juniper Networks and Riverbed Technology to name but a few. These vendors specialise in providing compression and caching technology designed to speed up the performance of network links connecting one office to another – especially pertinent in corporate environments where remote, branch or distributed offices access applications and data stored on a central server based at another location.

When these WAN optimisation companies first appeared, the idea was simple - to make the most out of the WAN bandwidth already available by providing a pair, or multiple pairs, of easy to install appliances at each end of the link which involved less capital outlay than paying for additional bandwidth from the service provider.

Even in the days when expensive ATM based leased lines and SDSL services were only available to the few, the WAN optimisation argument for many was debatable. Now, when 100Mbit/s and gigabit Ethernet are more widely available, and telcos like BT are upgrading backbone infrastructure to handle greater volumes of data traffic between cities and continents, it can be tenuous to say the least.

Moreover, Microsoft has integrated branch caching technology into its Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 desktop, making a portion of the same technology free to own for anybody running those operating systems.

If WAN optimisation and application delivery technology can be successfully allied to private cloud computing and business continuity initiatives, it may have a chance. Otherwise, we may be looking at a once buoyant market heading into terminal decline.

By Martin Courtney