When WAN optimization was getting its legs under it as a niche in the broader networking industry it got a little boost from the fact that remote/branch office connectivity was the big focus of data centers and C-level execs in the enterprise. Latency and congested WAN links between corporate data centers and remote offices around the globe were the source of lost productivity. The obvious solution – get thee a fatter pipe – was at the time far too expensive a proposition and, in some cases, not a feasible option. We’d had bandwidth management and other asymmetric solutions in the past and while they worked well enough for web-based content the problem now was fat files and the transfer of “big data” across the WAN.
We needed something else.
TOO MUCH DATA? JUST MAKE LESS of IT
The problem, it was posited, was simply that there was too much data to traverse the constrained network links tying organizations to remote offices and thus the answer, logically, was to do away with trying to juggle it all in some sort of priority order and simply make less data. A sound proposition, one that was nearly simultaneously gaining traction on the consumer side of the equation in the form of real-time web application data compression.
Here we are, many years later, and the proposition is still sound: if the problem is limited bandwidth in the face of applications and their ever growing data girth, then it behooves the infrastructure to reduce the size of that data as much as possible. This solution – whether implemented through traditional compression techniques or data deduplication or optimizing of transport and application protocols – is effective. It produces faster response times and thus the appearance, at least, of more responsive applications. As the specter of intercloud and cloud computing and the need to transport ginormous data sets (“big data”) in the form of data and virtual machine images continues to loom large on the horizon of most organizations it makes sense that folks would turn to solutions that by definition are focused on the reduction of data as a means to improve performance and success in transfer across increasingly constrained networks.
No argument there.
The argument begins when we start looking at the changes in connectivity between then and now. The “internet” is the primary connectivity between users and applications today, even when they’re working from a “remote office.” Cloud computing changes the equation from which the solution of WAN optimization was derived and renders it a less than optimal solution on its own because it does not fit the connectivity paradigm upon which cloud computing is based - one that is increasingly unmanageable on both ends of the pipe. Luckily, decreasing data size is just one of many other methods that can be used to improve application performance and should be used in conjunction with those other methods based on context.
INCREASINGLY IRRELEVANT to APPLICATION CONSUMERS
Because of the way in which WAN optimization solutions work (in pairs) they are generally the last hop in the corporate network and the first hop into the remote network. This is a static implementation, one that leaves little flexibility. It also assumes the existence of a matching WAN optimization solution – whether hardware or software deployed – on the other end of the pipe. This is not a practical implementation for the most constrained and growing environments – mobile devices – because as an organization you have very little control over the endpoint (device) in the first place (consider the consumerization of IT) and absolutely no control over the network on which it operates.
A traditional WAN optimization solution may be able to help specific classes of mobile devices if the user has installed the appropriate “soft client” that allows the WAN optimization solution to do its data deduplication trick. That’s feasible for corporate users over which you have control. What about the millions of end-users out there on iPhones, BlackBerries, and tablets over whom you do not have control. They are just as important and it is performance on which your organization/offering/solution will be judged by them. They’re an impatient lot, according to both Amazon and Google, and there are no studies to indicate that their conclusions are wrong, and have garnered enough mindshare to be awarded the right to run even the most stolid of enterprise applications:
Senior IT executives plan to make CRM, ERP and proprietary apps available to mobile devices
Ellen Messmer, Network World
Roughly 75% of senior IT executives plan to make internal applications available to employees on a variety ofsmartphones and mobile devices, according to new research from McAfee's Trust Digital unit.
In particular, 57% of respondents said they intend to mobilize beyond e-mail and make CRM, ERP and proprietary in-house applications available to mobile devices. In addition, 45% are planning to support the iPhone and Android smartphones due to employee demand, even though many of these organizations already support BlackBerry devices.
Even if the end-user is not using a mobile device, it’s likely that their connection to the Internet exhibits very different characteristics than those experienced by corporate end-users. While download “speeds” have been increasing in the consumer market, we know there’s a difference between throughput and bandwidth, and that there is a relationship between ability of the servers to serve and consumers to consume. That relationship is often impeded by congestion, packet loss, endpoint resource constraints, and the shared nature of broadband networks. It is simply no longer the case that we can assume ownership of any kind over the endpoint and certainly not over the network on which it resides.
And then you’ve got cloud. Cloud, oh cloud, wherefore art thou cloud? If you can deploy WAN optimization as a virtual network appliance then you have to be careful to choose a cloud that supports whatever virtualization platform the vendor currently supports. If you’ve already invested time and effort in a cloud provider and only later determined you need WAN optimization to improve the increased traffic between you and the provider (over the open, unmanaged Internet) you may be in for an unpleasant surprise.
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/1647557
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