WAN optimization through application performance management
Enterprises usually make IT applications available centrally across their locations via a wide area network (WAN) – and also more and more from the cloud. Yet data traffic has increased sharply – and the bandwidth of existing WANs is often no longer sufficient. Additional bandwidth is the typical response to the resultant drops in quality. The alternative is to systematically optimize existing data traffic. Among other things, that reduces duplicate transmission of data, leverages smart data compression and avoids delays due to transmission protocols that are not optimized. As a result, the WAN can be sped up 50-fold at little cost and with the same bandwidth.
Infographic
WAN acceleration & Cloud Connect
Technical specifications
WAN optimization as a managed service
Reduction in redundant data transmission
Compression of data streams
Acceleration of transmission protocols
Performance monitoring – permanent analysis of IT and telecommunications
End-to-end monitoring of applications
Overloading, weaknesses and errors are detected immediately
Reduce or avoid downtimes
Rapid recovery times
Pinpointed investments in expansion on the basis of objective measurements
Performance check – case-by-case analysis as and when required
Measurement of network and application performance
Voice over IP (VoIP), video conferences, unified communication & collaboration, cloud computing: Those are the main factors driving the sharp increase in data throughput in wide area networks (WANs). Yet traditional applications can also slow down or clog networks. Even the transport and application protocols computers use to communicate with each other and the servers in data centers are often not optimized for operation in a WAN. WAN optimization reduces this “needless” data traffic over the WAN and optimizes transfer of useful data.
Reduce latencies
Just that optimization step alone has an extremely big impact, especially for international connections. The example of a global logistics company demonstrates that. Its locations in Asia were not initially able to be supplied with business-critical applications from the data center in Europe. Thanks to application performance management, the applications between Europe and Asia now work perfectly – a separate data center in Asia was not needed.
Data compression and monitoring
A further means of reducing traffic is data compression, which is done intelligently in real time by mathematical methods and on the basis of powerful hardware.
The optional performance monitoring reveals how the applications behave when running. Monitoring is conducted at three levels: the applications, the hardware at the data center, and the clients and networks with the relevant hardware (routers, switches, etc.) themselves.
IntraSelect is a flexible, MPLS-based IP VPN solution that connects company sites, branches, mobile employees and home offices securely, with high availability, in an enterprise network (WAN).
The stability and performance of all business applications depends to a high degree not only on data center services, but also on the quality of local area networks (LANs).
Trends such as virtualization, cloud computing and big data imply that many data centers need a new network infrastructure in order to meet quality requirements.