Optimising your business

CXO speaks to Nigel Hawthorn of Blue Coat Systems about the tangible benefits of WAN optimisation.

“WAN optimisation brings together multiple technologies with two aims - to deliver content faster between servers and users and to reduce the overall WAN bandwidth required for that data transfer”
-Nigel Hawthorn

CXO. How can WAN optimisation enable organisations to improve productivity and reduce bandwidth costs?
Nigel Hawthorn. WAN optimisation brings together multiple technologies with two aims - to deliver content faster between servers and users and to reduce the overall WAN bandwidth required for that data transfer. Users who receive faster response are more productive, new applications and communication techniques can be implemented, centralisation and virtualisation of storage and services can be achieved without degrading access for remote users and even travelling users can have access to the same applications as those in the headquarters.

And how can it help to control unauthorised network traffic and improve security?
Security and performance are two sides of the same coin. Ensuring users are effective at work, they provide two parts of application delivery networking (AND). As both techniques are usually implemented at the LAN/WAN gateway, customers are increasingly demanding that they be offered together. Any unauthorised traffic removed from the network makes bandwidth available for business critical traffic, and the knowledge that web security systems have about users and content type can be used by WAN optimisation appliances to ensure prioritisation based on multiple parameters. The days of simple, first-generation WAN optimisation devices that accelerate everything, providing faster spam and faster malware, seem to be coming to an end.

What has driven the need for better WAN optimisation in business today?
There are some IT mega-trends that demand WAN optimisation to be implemented. Users are increasingly working from outside head offices, from small remote offices when travelling and from home. At the same time, applications and storage are being centralised. Thirdly, organisations are outsourcing applications to SaaS vendors where the application is hosted somewhere across the internet. These three trends are moving the user and data farther apart, WAN optimisation, in effect, brings them back together by reducing the latency/distance, improving protocols and caching data or data strings closer to the user.

What future trends do you predict for this increasingly important business function?
Vendors need to continue to strengthen their offering for the smallest office - a single user with their laptop and agents need to be considered for every smaller platforms such as the iPhone. In addition, security and WAN optimisation need to be seen together as one solution by both vendors and the end users - this may mean getting networking and security people in the IT department to cooperate closely together. Vendors need to provide ever-richer visibility into the real data across the network and those vendors who are yet to deliver functionality to optimize rich-media streams and SaaS need to include that in product plans.

Nigel Hawthorn, VP of Marketing for EMEA at Blue Coat Systems, has over 25 years experience in computers, security and networking technologies. He writes articles, has presented at security, e-commerce and networking forums in over 50 countries and contributed to a number of computing books on protocols and security. He has worked for Blue Coat Systems for over 10 years.