WAN Optimization Market Expected to Cross $4.4 B

The advent of Information Technology (IT) has caused a paradigm shift in the way businesses operate and majorly IT-based business goals are set. Internet or Wide Area Networking (WAN) has transformed the enterprise market with diverse technologies that enable quick and secure data transmissions over the network. Enterprises are now focusing much on using WAN optimization technologies in order to maintain their network infrastructures and to derive maximal benefits from them in terms of network acceleration, bandwidth optimization, scalability, and increased throughput.

The pervasive optimizing wide area network technology has opened up new avenues for conducting effective business operations over the Wide Area Network. With continued advancements, the WAN optimization industry has the potential to expand beyond remote branch locations and include mobile users, home offices, and contractors. In the beginning stages of optimizing wide area network technology, the focus was just on accelerating devices and application across the network to counter the lapses in enterprise application response time in remote branch office locations and file access. The current Wide Area Network optimization market is one where Enterprises require transparency of WANs, the capability to accelerate business application that are mission critical, and the technology to manage every aspect of communication over the network with optimal performance. Furthermore, optimizing wide area network in the futuristic and emerging market is looked upon by network service providers as a managed service. There is a significant potential for growth in this sector as evident by the increased technology offerings of the Wide Area Network optimization industry.

In 2012, IDC expects growth in spending for WAN optimization and network intelligence tools to outpace that for network equipment as a whole, with revenues climbing to $1.3 billion by year-end. Infonetics Research reports affirm the steady rise of WAN optimization technologies and appliances in the market. This positive trend in the WAN optimization market is expected to continue with predictions of reaching revenues of $1.2 billion in 2010. Also, according to the Research study conducted by Infonetics, the $1 billion mark was crossed in 2008, which was a 29% increase when compared to 2007. A majority of the market share is held by leading vendors of the WAN optimization industry – Cisco, Blue Coat Systems, FatPipe Networks, and Riverbed Technology – that have developed advanced wide area network optimization technologies to address the requirements of a large and diverse clientele.

The application delivery strategy followed by the vendors differs among one another. The technologies also have distinct features. However, they may all include the much-demanded customer requisites such as bandwidth optimization, protocol optimization, compression, caching, Quality of Service (QoS), data protocol streamlining, data prioritization, and other features. The WAN optimization industry majorly has its focus on the component techniques of the technology, which includes deduplication, bandwidth management, Web caching, CIFS proxy, Wide Area File Services (WAFS), Hypertext Transfer Protocol over SSL (HTTPS) Proxy, multicasting, and Forward Error Correction (FEC). The other key features of this technology include data center consolidation, backup infrastructure, maximizing of regulatory compliance, transparency of application data flow, and data security.

Optimizating Wide Area Network is a relatively new technology and hence poses certain barriers for full-fledged adoption. However, with most vendors offering uniquely designed suite of solutions pertaining to requirements, the market is expected to catch up quickly. Increasing number of IT-based organizations are deploying network optimization solutions in their infrastructure for ensuring optimal performance across the wide area networks. The WAN optimization market is widely received among businesses of all sizes as optimization technologies – apart from key features such as compression, optimization, caching, etc. – are capable of handling real-time applications including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), streamlining of video, pre-population of on-demand video and other distinct features substantially reduce network demands. Hence, the WAN optimization market boom is and will be advantageous for network-dependent businesses globally.

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