The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

W H I T E P A P E R

© 2011 Aryaka Confidential and Proprietary. Do not reproduce or distribute without prior permission.

© 2011 Aryaka Confidential and Proprietary. Do not reproduce or distribute without prior permission.691 S. Milpitas Boulevard Milpitas CA 95035 1-877-7 ARYAKA www.aryaka.com

The WAN Optimization Perfect StormW H I T E P A P E R

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................3

Breaking Down the Storm Clouds ...................................................................................................4

Defining the Ideal Solution .............................................................................................................6

Aryaka Networks’ Unique Solution .................................................................................................7

Rethink the WAN ............................................................................................................................9

The WAN Optimization Perfect StormW H I T E P A P E R

Executive SummaryDrastically reduced IT budgets, growing demand for network services, connectivity and performance, and global business expansion combined with centralized IT imperatives have created a perfect storm of unmet WAN needs. Driven by the greatest recession in decades and increasing demand for bandwidth to reliably and effectively support remote offices, the need for a better-functioning, faster, cheaper, and easier to purchase, implement and use WAN solution, has never been greater.

The hardware-based Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization solutions available today address only a part of the problem by providing the fundamentals:

Application acceleration • Bandwidth conservation• Consolidation and cloud computing, and • Disaster recovery support•

What these traditional solutions do not address are the needs for ease of deployment, ease of use and operation, better economics and fit for purpose – crucial requirements of modern businesses, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses with multiple branches and constricting economic pressures.

The hardware approach to WAN optimization requires numerous costly and complex appliances resulting in geometrically multiplying hardware, operations and maintenance costs. Furthermore, the “optimization in hardware” approach results in other undesirable characteristics that include costly and often delayed upgrades, and significant staff and time commitments to provision, manage and maintain complex installations of appliances.

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Aryaka’s Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization solution delivered over a dedicated network as a service, redefines the playing field for network optimization. Aryaka’s revolutionary cloud-enabled technology offers global enterprises LAN-like performance on their WAN, along with enhanced visibility and scalability across locations and across applications.

Breaking Down the Storm CloudsWANs, once predominantly used by large enterprises, have now become an integral part of the lifeblood of small and medium enterprises as well. This shift can largely be attributed to the rapid growth of connections driven by geographic expansion, outsourcing and off-shoring, and the need for increased performance and bandwidth to support SaaS, cloud services, video, voice and mobile requirements of “virtual organizations”. An ever-increasing number of businesses are caught up in the need for a better WAN solution that delivers LAN-like performance, substantially better economics, and is easy to buy, provision and use.

The basics of WAN optimization today hinge upon several fundamental requirements. In order to improve WAN performance to acceptable levels, an optimization solution has to provide the following functionalities at a minimum:

Application Acceleration:1. Improving application performance from branch offices to their headquarters in order to boost branch office productivity.

Bandwidth Conservation: 2. Minimizing bandwidth requirements and expenses by eliminating data redundancy and minimizing network traffic requirements.

Consolidation: 3. Enabling centralization of data centers to minimize the complexity, as well as equipment and personnel costs, of distributed IT operations.

Cloud Computing:4. Enabling the use of cloud-based services and SaaS while maintaining LAN-like performance levels.

Disaster Recovery Optimization: 5. Reducing the time and bandwidth required to backup and restore critical data.

However, driven by the pressures of today’s environment, businesses desperately need better economics, maintenance, provisioning and usability. In short,

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The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

WAN OPTIMIZATION BASICS• Application

Acceleration

• Bandwidth Conservation

• Consolidation

• Cloud Computing

• Disaster Recovery Optimization

the needs of modern organizations go well beyond the basics of acceleration, bandwidth, consolidation and disaster recovery. Businesses today require a solution that also has the following attributes:

Simplicity1.

Self service provisioning and configuration: Provisioning needs to be so a. simple that the end-user should be able to “do it themselves” without help from the vendor, unlike today’s solutions that require complex installation and significant vendor involvement.

Maintenance and Service: Businesses will benefit from a single b. maintenance provider for both their network and their optimization solution to provide single source, integrated support, and avoid the multiple vendor conflicts they have to deal with today.

Rather than requiring step-wise hardware upgrades, the ideal solution c. should be seamlessly upgradable via software or by the vendor.

Future-proof: 2. Business users want solutions that help them future-proof their existing infrastructure by providing a smooth and continuous upgrade path, rather than a costly and discontinuous hardware replacement cycle or building for future scale.

Continuous Scalability: 3. Businesses need to be able to scale their Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization solutions over a continuum of capacities as needed. Current approaches dictate that these solutions can only be scaled in often costly steps that result in acquiring excess capacity or skimping until bottlenecks become serious problems.

OPEX vs. CAPEX:4. To provide the most economic and convenient solution, businesses want a pay-per-use operating expense model that can be easily and incrementally adjusted as needed, as opposed to incurring a major capital expense which can result in unused capacity.

Single-vendor solution: 5. One of the biggest complaints with today’s WAN optimization solutions is that there is no single point of responsibility for overall WAN performance. At the minimum, today’s solutions include the WAN service provider and the optimization hardware provider. Customers want a single-vendor to take overall responsibility for WAN performance.

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The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

FuTurE ENTErPrISE NEEDS• Simplicity

• Future-proof

• Continuous Scalability

• OPEX vs. CAPEX

• Single-vendor solution

Defining the Ideal SolutionSolving the problem of the perfect storm of Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization needs for today’s business and economic environment requires a whole new perspective on WAN infrastructure and optimization. The existing business model for WAN Optimization must be redefined to provide a simple yet comprehensive solution that addresses both the fundamentals and the needs of the new, post-storm era. The new solution for WAN performance and economic optimization must address the three key elements of a new product offering.

TEChNOlOgyThe current add-on, hardware-based WAN optimization technologies are simply incapable of resolving key needs for simplicity, continuous scalability, upgrade, and maintenance. Only a software-based solution embedded in the network itself can provide these benefits in a consistent, scalable and easy-to-maintain solution. The ideal example is software available on the cloud within a secure optimized network.

BuSINESS MODElThe purchase business model fails to deliver the needed continuity of scale, pay-per-use economics, ease of provisioning, and CAPEX benefits required by today’s businesses. Businesses in general, and small and medium businesses in particular, require a subscription-based model that delivers capacity as needed, over a continuous range of service levels.

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Future Proof

Improved Economics

Scalability on Demand

Simplicity & Visibility

Single Vendor Solu�on

Disaster Recovery

Cloud Compu�ng

Consolida�on

Bandwidth

Accelera�on

Disaster Recovery

Cloud Compu�ng

Consolida�on

Bandwidth

Accelera�on

FUTURE NEEDSCURRENT SOLUTIONS

Features required in the ideal solution

The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

COMPlETE SOluTIONTo provide the benefits required by post-storm Business WAN users, the solution must consist not only of the basic elements of optimization, but also must provide all the elements of economics, usability and operations, continuous scalability, periodic updates, and upgrades detailed above. Furthermore, the solution needs to fulfill the special requirements of small and medium businesses as well as those of large enterprises.

Aryaka Networks’ unique SolutionAryaka Networks redefines the playing field for network optimization by delivering an end-to-end optimized network as a service. Aryaka’s proprietary network, utility-based pricing model, and fully integrated service, maintenance, and self-service provisioning solution revolutionize the concept of a high-performance WAN for today’s businesses.

PATh-BrEAkINg TEChNOlOgyThe combination of cloud-based network architecture with the unique, proprietary optimization software embedded in Aryaka’s network makes it possible to provide high-performance and continuously upgradable WAN connectivity as a service. Aryaka’s unique software optimization algorithms deliver a new standard of highly scalable performance.

BuSINESS MODElAryaka’s new subscription pricing model allows customers to buy, provision and utilize all of the services of an optimized WAN by simply signing up for a SaaS solution. Businesses purchase services based on a pay-per-use model that delivers all of the economic benefits derived from SaaS pricing and allows them to build up capacity as required. The subscription pricing model moves network costs from CAPEX to OPEX, minimizing the financial impact of network optimization on the balance sheet and moving only the true cost of services consumed to the Profit and Loss statement.

COMPlETE SOluTIONAryaka’s complete solution includes advanced network transport, application and file transfer, and media acceleration combined with all the benefits of a

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The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

single-vendor solution and comprehensive, in-network maintenance, support and upgrade services and complete visibility across the network. Aryaka is the only vendor providing a complete end-to-end optimization solution with the intelligence embedded in the network – Cloud-enabled Application Acceleration and WAN Optimization.

BuSINESS BENEFITS

The Optimized Network as a Service model is the first solution to deliver the three key features and benefits required by businesses today:

rOBuST OPTIMIZATION PErFOrMANCE

• Higher performance than equipment-based WAN Optimization Controller (WOC) Solutions:

• Mid-Mile TCP Network Optimization, not just endpoint optimization • Branch-to-cloud traffic acceleration• Endpoint Results: Dramatically improved productivity and customer

satisfaction as a result of optimized network application, data and media performance that significantly exceeds current add-on hardware optimization solutions

• Dependability that ensures uninterrupted service built on an architecture that has no single point of failure

gENuINE AFFOrDABIlITy

• Substantial cost advantage over Managed WOC and WOC appliance solutions:

• No equipment costs: Software optimization intelligence within the network

• No MPLS costs: Aryaka proprietary overlay network • No operations costs: Aryaka handles all network operations• Positive financial impact: Changes in the balance sheet and profit and loss

statements lead to significant improvements in ROI• Optimized Cost Structure: Significant reductions in bandwidth requirements

and optimization costs with a pay-as-you-go pricing model

SIMPlICITy AND EASE OF uSE

• No Hardware: WAN Optimization via network architecture, Network Operations System and tightly integrated software

• Self-Service Provisioning:

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The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

• No complex installation and configuration required - grow one branch at a time • Sign up and manage network capacity and performance as easily as with SaaS• Simple comprehensive visibility and monitoring of the entire network’s

performance through the Network Operations System and a browser-based monitor

• Single vendor solution: Single point of contact and responsibility with strict adherence to performance SLA’s; Aryaka controls every part of the solution

rethink the WANThe solution to today’s needs for WAN Optimization should focus on streamlining the WAN itself to meet crucial performance, economic and usability goals, as well as developing an architecture, business model and complete solution that can evolve and scale to meet future requirements.

Aryaka is the industry’s first solution to completely rethink the WAN and provide a comprehensive solution on the cloud – exactly what is demanded by the business environment today.

Aryaka – Cloud-enabled Application Acceleration and WAN OptimizationWith the Aryaka Network, you can start with a network of any size and configuration and grow economically, into as complete an Aryaka solution as you require. With Aryaka’s service model, you only pay for what you use and our self-service provisioning is as easy as signing up for any SaaS application. With your first Aryaka interaction, you will experience the true performance, convenience, and visibility of an optimized network service for business.

Contact Aryaka today to provide the connection to your next branch office, to provide redundancy for a mission critical Headquarters-Branch connection, or to increase capacity as you use our network for any current connection. There’s no need to replace your current infrastructure or optimization solution; Aryaka can coexist with your current topology!

Once you experience the Aryaka difference, you will wonder why you have been settling for less!

Reach us at 1-877-7 ARYAKA or email us at sales@aryaka.com today.

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The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

kEy ADvANTAgES OF AryAkA:• Significant cost

savings

• Reduction in complexity

• Increased visibility and control

• Enterprise-grade security

• Scalability

• Guaranteed performance

The WAN Optimization Perfect Storm

ABOuT AryAkA, INC:Aryaka is the world’s first cloud-based WAN optimization company solving application and network performance issues faced by the distributed enterprise. Aryaka has been named “Cool Vendor” by a leading analyst firm and to the GigaOm Structure 50 list for companies that will shape the future of cloud computing. Aryaka eliminates the need for expensive and complex appliances as well as long-haul connectivity, and enhances collaboration across locations. It offers significant cost, ease-of-use and performance advantages, helping global companies achieve dramatic productivity gains and increased visibility into their WAN applications, locations and performance, while providing 24/7 world-class support. To learn more, visit www.aryaka.com. Follow us at twitter.com/aryakanetworks, facebook.com/aryakanetworks, and on linkedin.com/company/aryaka-networks.

Aryaka Networks, Inc. 691 S. Milpitas Blvd. Milpitas, CA 95035Tel: 1-877-7 ARYAKAwww.aryaka.com

© 2011 Aryaka Confidential and Proprietary. Do not reproduce or distribute without prior permission.