WAN optimization slugfest

David Spark reporting for Riverbed at Interop '09, Las Vegas, NV.

Riverbed was definitely on this panel debating the issue of WAN optimization with its competitors. Always great to put a bunch of competitors on a panel. The heated discussion always makes for an entertaining panel.

The moderator was Jim Metzler, Vice President, Ashton, Metzler & Associates. And the panelists were:

Jim has a wide background in the IT industry. This includes being a software engineer, an engineering manager for high-speed data services for a major telco, a product manager for network hardware, a network manager at two Fortune 500 companies, and the principal of a consulting organization. In addition, Jim has created software tools for designing customer networks for a major IXC, and directed and performed market research at a major industry analyst firm.

• Apurva Dave, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Riverbed
• Kenneth Salchow, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, F5
• Mark Urban, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Blue Coat
• Mark Weiner, Director, Data Center Solutions, Cisco
• Peter Schmidt, CTO for North America, Ipanema
• Satya Vardharajan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Access and Acceleration Group, Citrix Systems, Inc.

Apurva Davé is the Senior Director of Product Marketing for Riverbed Technology. As part of the pioneering team in the WAN optimization, Apurva works closely with direct response marketing and creative services to deliver more effective, targeted lead generation through compelling content and efficient, scalable Marketing IT automation. Previously, he served as Director of Product Marketing for Fast Forward Networks and Inktomi. Areas of technology expertise include Wide-area Data Services, WAN optimization, application acceleration, content delivery, caching and streaming media. Apurva holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and an AB in Computer Science from Brown University.

Ken Salchow has been employed by F5 for the past nine years where he has served in several capacities, from field engineering, to security architect overlay, to technical marketing and evangelist. Ken has helped design and implement some of the most cutting-edge uses of F5 technology, written numerous articles and whitepapers and traveled the world in an effort to help F5 customers achieve their business goals through the use of F5 technology. Prior to F5, Ken was a principal member of the Best Buy, Inc. Internet Services Group which was responsible for the development of the retailing giant's eCommerce presence taking what was a single machine to one of the largest and most successful "clicks and mortar" implementations in the industry. In addition, he has owned and operated several small businesses including a consultancy, a boutique computer forensics shop and, with his wife, a burger and malt shop. Ken is, or has been a CNE, MSCE, CCNP, C|EH, CISSP, Network+, CCNP, holds a BS in Information Technology from the MN School of Business and is currently completing his MBA with a focus on IT management. He lives with his wife and children in Twin Cities Metro area of Minnesota.

Mark Urban is the senior director of product marketing for Blue Coat's Application Delivery Network Infrastructure business. He has more than ten years of experience working with Fortune Global 500 enterprises and carriers to successfully navigate and implement advanced networking solutions for secure, high performance application delivery. Prior to joining Blue Coat, Urban was director of product marketing at Packeteer. Earlier, he worked in the enterprise networking group at FORE Systems/Marconi. Urban began his career at M&I Capital as an investment analyst. Later, he transitioned to the role of IT manager and moved the company to a networked infrastructure. Urban holds a B.S. in finance, investments and banking from the University of Wisconsin.

Mark Weiner is Director of Market Management for Data Center Solutions at Cisco Systems, focusing on Cisco application delivery technologies. Previously, Weiner was Vice President of Marketing at NetDevices, a startup focused on next generation branch networking products, and Vice President of Marketing at NetScaler, a pioneer in application delivery products that was acquired by Citrix Systems. Earlier in his career, Weiner spent several years in the telecommunications sector, serving as Vice President of Marketing at Redback Networks and Director of Marketing at Juniper Networks. Weiner began his career in the networking market with management roles at early industry leaders Bay Networks and Ungermann-Bass. Mr. Weiner has a Masters in Business Administration Degree from Santa Clara University, where he is an advisory board member, and a Bachelors of Science Degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Here are some of the issues brought up in the discussion:

(NOTE: the opinions are a mishmash from Riverbed and its five competitors. Please understand these opinions about WAN optimization are from many Riverbed.):

• The packet delivery network is not set up to send applications efficiently.
• You want to see all the applications on the network. You want to understand the nature of the problems first before you deploy WAN optimization.
• All the vendors mentioned their differentiation. It was all over the map, but some of the issues mentioned were the need for higher levels of integration with elements like security, proven relationships, level of partnerships, speed, scalability, simplicity, manageability, delivery of virtual applications, and enforcing performance targets.
• For virtual desktop, you need to optimize all aspects. For example, you'd want to make sure screen traffic on a virtual desktop gets higher priority.
• For successful optimization of virtual desktops, be closely aligned with technology providers, such as VMware. Riverbed embeds VMware's services in its hardware.
• For desktop virtualization, a mouse movement on a terminal is very different experience to manage in WAN optimization than just moving files.
• You need to test these tools in your environment on your own applications. Examples of other's experiences only goes so far.
• Need to look at all points on the entire network to optimize traffic.
• Regarding the issue of Quality of Service (QoS) of traffic from the desktop to the app and back. You want to denote certain traffic that's more latency sensitive than other traffic that isn't traditionally latency sensitive. You allow that traffic that's normally latency sensitive to then take up space if there are problems.
• Cascade, recently acquired by Riverbed, provides netflow aggregation. Works on sites you've optimized and you haven't optimized.
• You need to guarantee the end user experience. Don't worry about traffic, worry about your users. Build a solution that connects to your SLA (service license agreement).
• How to deal with QoS: Understand the critical applications and control recreation. If you have mission critical applications, you have to define them and protect them. You need to get to levels of granularity so things like a single voice call gets enough traffic.
• Where is your QoS going to be? On the WAN or on the router? Overwhelming majority of people put QoS on the router, not on the WAN optimization device. Riverbed allows you to manage your QoS wherever you want.
• The overwhelmingly majority of the audience don't have visibility end-to-end of what's going on their network nor do they have QoS at the end of their network.
• Define Web applications through the URL. Web applications can be critical to your business.
• Lot of talk about knowing about applications and be able to manage those applications for the best end user experience.
• For SLA, use an app level monitoring tool to see where a problem lies. Is it on the server, WAN, somewhere else? 
• Consider performance not by the network or the application, but rather what performance is for an individual user session.

For more, check out all of Riverbed's Interop '09 Las Vegas coverage.

 

Comments

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I think for virtual desktop, you need to optimize all aspects. For example, you'd want to make sure screen traffic on a virtual desktop gets higher priority.