Zeus Kerravala: Speaks About WDS Market Confusion

The market for wide-area data services (WDS) has been highly fragmented ever since its inception. Zeus Kerravala, SVP Enterprise Research, Yankee Group spoke to ITO about the confusion in the market.

One of the biggest problems facing the network manager responsible for the branch location is not having a full understanding all of the issues that cause WAN application performance degradation, which ultimately can cause performance problems.

Kerravala identifies many dimensions that need to be considered when choosing a potential product for the branch which will ultimately push application optimization:

• Bandwidth versus throughput
• Various technologies: WAFS, QoS, web caching, accelerations, etc.
• The applications needed for network management: File access, e-mail, SAP, Oracle, VoIP, etc.
• Application road map
• Any compliance or regulatory issues surrounding data retention and backing up of information at the branch office

Over time, the role of the enterprise network has shifted to become the backbone of the corporation. Many factors contributed to the change, however, the expansion of the extended enterprise was the most significant. As the WAN network expands to take advantage of globalization and off shoring for lower cost employees and manufacturing, it will become an even greater strategic resource for companies.

Kerravala identifies factors that will contribute to the expanded role of wide area networks:

• Doing more with less: IT executives need to find a way to maximize current resources
• The wide area network is now a key to network application performance
• The ability to deliver a consistent user experience: Applications are normally designed to run in LAN environments where users will have the optimum user experience
• Building a network that can support real-time applications
• Meeting security and compliance mandates for backup and recovery
• Local branch backups
• Backups at the headquarter location across the WAN

In summary, WAN application performance issues are now not just the problem of the application manager, but also the network manager.