Users Rally Round Remote Solutions

The global market for WAN optimization products is gaining steam, as remote sites generate fresh loads of data requiring safe and compliant storage.

Cases in point:

All this news points to ongoing interest in technologies that reduce network bandwidth requirements for companies of all kinds, while improving the quality of access and backup via wide-area file services (WAFS). (See No Easy Fix for Branch Office Blues.)

The market for tools in this space is growing. According to Infonetics Research, the WAN optimization appliance market increased 49 percent worldwide in 2005 to $236 million this year, and unit shipments increased 39 percent year-over-year. Infonetics forecasts double-digit annual growth at least through 2009, with annual unit shipments almost tripling and revenue more than doubling. (See WAN Market Tops $236M.)

So, back to what's new: LG Electronics, which is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, opted to deploy Riverbed's WAN optimization devices when it realized that with a growing number of applications running across its infrastructure, its network was being stretched to capacity. At least one application, the vendor's purchase/sales/inventory program, was inaccessible to at least one remote site.In an effort to solve this problem, the manufacturing firm has deployed over 100 Riverbed Steelhead devices, including a high-end Riverbed Steelhead 5010 appliance at headquarters in Seoul and a slew of Riverbed Steelhead 1010, 2010, and 3010 boxes at branch offices worldwide.

Riverbed's Steelhead appliances tweak TCP to reduce protocol "chattiness" caused by repetitious packet exchanges. The technology also offers application-specific algorithms to reduce the overhead caused by Windows, HTTP, and MAPI traffic.

"The initial purpose was to reduce international bandwidth and we saved 40 percent bandwidth after we deployed the Steelhead appliances," said LG Electronics spokesman Lee Chang Hoon. He says the devices also helped reduce response times for the vendor's intranet applications such as Lotus Notes. Typically, response times were cut in half, although some applications were 10 times faster when run across the Steelhead appliances, according to Hoon.

LG Electronics's first pilot sites for the Steelheads were in Mexico and India, and the firm spent a total of three months testing the technology, finally starting to roll out the devices in late 2004. Although this was not a "rip and replace" deployment, according to Hoon, the manufacturing firm also evaluated products from Expand Networks and Peribit.

In the final analysis, Hoon said that Riverbed was up against one other company, though he would not reveal which of the two rival contenders made the finals. Riverbed won due to terms of performance, ease of deployment, and ease of management, Hoon states. He won't reveal the value of the deal.Riverbed has been racking up customers at a clip lately. As well as the LG Electronics deal, Riverbed has also won contracts with the U.K.'s Royal Navy and consulting firm Avanade (See Royal Navy Selects Riverbed, Consultant Firm Picks Riverhead, and Financial Companies Pick Riverbed.) According to documents filed recently with the SEC, Riverbed now has more than 1000 customers, up from the 500-mark at the start of this year. (See Riverbed Acquires 500th Customer.)

The company filed for an IPO earlier this year, becoming one of just a handful of technology vendors to make the move in the last few years. (See Riverbed Makes It Official and Sources: Riverbed Reaches for IPO.)

Meanwhile, New Zealand firm Sublime, which manages documents for law firms, the medical sector, and the financial sector, announced today that it has deployed Juniper WXC appliances to boost the WAN links between its Auckland headquarters and its data center in Fiji.

Another player in the WAFS and WAN optimization space is Packeteer, which recently stumped up $78 million in cash for WAFS specialist Tacit Networks. This week, Packeteer made its first Tacit-related technology announcement, unveiling the latest version of Tacit's Mobiliti software for file backup on laptops and remote desktops. (See Packeteer Intros 6.0.)

The new version, according to Packeteer, offers network administrators a greater degree of control by enabling them to create access profiles based on either individual or group profiles.This could be used to prevent certain users from accessing specific file servers or folders outside of work hours. Other new features include the ability to mirror data held in multiple locations and a new backup feature for commonly used Microsoft Outlook PST files, which could help to recover deleted emails.

James Rogers, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch