This document summarizes the most critical business and technical reasons that 2200 organizations such as Siemens, American Automobile Association (AAA) and Scotts Miracle-Gro have standardized on Cisco® Wide Area Application Services (WAAS), even though its volume shipment history spans only one-third the time of alternative solutions. IT decision makers will learn why Cisco has assumed the leading vendor position by a 2-to-1 margin for enterprises seeking WAN optimization solutions1, and why Cisco WAAS has advanced faster than the entire market and achieved number 2 market share in 12 months-just 2.2 percent of market share2 away from the number 1 vendor despite its 36-month market presence.
Cisco Long Term Viability
With its track record of No.1 or No.2 in all networking solution areas including Routing/Switching (85% market share), Unified Communications (UC), Security, Mobilility and Data Center Networking, Cisco will outspend and innovate faster than other point product vendors. Organizations will receive 3 unrivaled benefits when selecting Cisco as the long term supplier for application delivery optimization:
• Industry's only system-level solution with best-in-class products working together to maximize its benefits.
Table 1. Industry's only system-level solution
Application Delivery Optimization
Cisco
Ask Point Product Vendor
Symmetric acceleration of branch users
Cisco WAAS
-
Symmetric acceleration of mobile users
Cisco WAAS
-
Video distribution
Cisco ACNS and WAAS
-
Asymmetric acceleration of web-based applications
Cisco ACE
-
SOA and XML acceleration
Cisco ACE XML Gateway
-
Global application availability
Cisco ACE and GSS
-
Application security in the branch
Cisco ISR and WAAS
-
Application security in the data center
Cisco Catalyst 6500, ACE and XML
-
Organization-wide VoIP quality
Cisco UC and WAAS
-
Optimized data center power consumptions
Cisco ACE and WAAS
-
• One-stop advisory services and support with Cisco being the only networking supplier awarded with the prestigious J.D. Power and Associates Certification.
• Strategic supplier commitment; organizations get better accountability and use from Cisco solutions because of the Cisco commitment to making application delivery work reliably with organizations' entire network assets.
Even under point product comparison with other vendors who have been around much longer, Cisco WAAS has already been ranked close No.2 within striking distance as a best-in-class standalone WAN optimization solution: (http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2007/081307-test-wan-netresults.html)
Figure 1. Cisco WAAS: Best-in-class WAN Optimization
Ease of Operation Through Network Transparency
As the only vendor offering true network transparency to protect large organizations' existing investments in networking, security and application assets, Cisco is committed to simplifying operations and management across many technology areas and enabling better collaboration among IT departments rather than having them to work in silos:
Table 2. End-to-end transparent visibility eases operation and management
Benefits of Transparent Architecture
Cisco
Ask Point Product Vendor
Customer Testimonial: "The tunnel-less Cisco WAAS design makes it very easy for us to deliver network-based services so I can remain focused on other strategic projects that contribute to the company's success." -Abraham Madha, CIO, ENGlobal
Network Operations Group:
End to end monitoring visibility
Yes
-
End to end Quality of Service (QoS) visibility
Yes
-
Auto-discovery for fast inline deployment (proof of concept)
Yes
-
Auto-discovery for resilient out of path deployment
Yes
-
Auto-discovery for hierarchical network topology
Yes
-
Centralized management of thousands of devices
2,500 WAE s
-
Proven interoperability with managed services (AT&T MPLS)
Yes
-
Application Group:
No changes to users
Yes
-
No changes to applications
Yes
-
End to end application performance SLA management
Pre-integrated with NetQoS
-
Security Operations Group: "Unlike tunnel-based alternatives, Cisco WAAS is the most transparent and easiest solution to implement as it does not require us to overhaul our security infrastructure." -Mark Drake, Health Management Associates, Inc.
No overhaul of firewall ACLs and security policy
Yes
-
End to end security monitoring visibility
Yes
-
Reliable Deployment with Enterprise Applications
Cisco WAAS offers high-performance acceleration for business applications without invasive and risky reverse engineering. The combination of joint interoperability testing, proper licensing agreements and escalation support in place among Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP and others allows networking and application groups within IT organizations to confidently accelerate applications, and minimizes the risk of difficult troubleshooting and collaboration.
Table 3. Cisco Performance and Interoperability Assurance
Reliable Deployment with Enterprise Applications
Cisco
Ask Point Product Vendor
Strategic partnership with Oracle (testing, licensing, escalation):
"As market leaders, both Cisco and Oracle have been working closely together to meet the latest application and network performance challenges to help customers successfully realize business productivity improvements."
-Vijay Tella, Vice President, Development, Oracle
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with Microsoft (testing, licensing, escalation)
"There are 7 initiatives where we are focusing our joint investments, ranging from security, where we have been cooperating on integration of Cisco's Network Admission Control and Microsoft's Network Access Protection since 2004, to network infrastructure optimization, where the two companies are working to develop a joint architectural blueprint that will help customers reduce costs by deploying solutions that combine Microsoft and Cisco products in a consistent way." -Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with SAP (testing, licensing, escalation)
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with IBM (testing, licensing, escalation)
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with VMware (testing, licensing, escalation)
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with EMC backup application
Yes
-
Strategic partnership with NetApp backup application
Yes
-
Other 3rd party software vendor partnership
Yes
-
Better VoIP Quality
Cisco WAAS is designed to be integrated with the router QoS. This integration allows the router to tag the VoIP QoS once correctly, rather than creating two sets of conflicting QoS policy. Thus, time-sensitive VoIP traffic will receive prioritization benefits from organizations' existing router QoS policy and investment and also avoid any processing delay caused by WAN optimization. The result is better VoIP quality and performance. This improvement is significant enough that a manufacturing company has switched from a non router-QoS transparent WAN optimization solution to Cisco WAAS (see customer testimonial below).
Table 4. Better VoIP Quality
Benefits of Using System-level UC, Router QoS and WAAS
According to the market research firm Infonetics, the top IT trend in recent years has been the integration of security technologies such as firewalls, VPNs, and intrusion detection systems (IDSs) into routers. This assessment is validated by the rapid adoption of embedded security into more than 3 million Cisco integrated services routers shipped. Taneja Group confirmed this through its May 2007 Branch Office survey, in which 250 IT directors mandated that WAN optimization preserves their integrated branch security investment. Their top IT priority for a remote-office solution is data security, with WAN optimization the next priority. Cisco WAAS allows organizations to protect their branch security investments by offering these capabilities:
"Providing both acceleration and stateful protection are critical WAN optimization requirements for our loan and retail application data." -Barth Bailey, VP network infrastructure and security, Fulton Financial
Protection of accelerated data at rest:
• 256-bit AES disk encryption based on FIPS level 2 specs
• Centralized key management including automated backup and recovery, and robust failover support
• No key left On disks
• Role-based Access Control interoperable with Microsoft Active Directory, RADIUS, and TACACS+
Yes
-
Protection of accelerated data in transit:
• Secure WAN acceleration-Stateful protection of accelerated traffic using Cisco firewall and IPS devices
• PCI 1.1 compliance
• Ongoing common criteria evaluation
Yes
-
Other critical security features:
• No additional static ports open
• Compliant with Cisco IOS Firewall, Cisco PIX Firewall, Cisco Firewall Services Module and with Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances (ASA)
• Interoperate with Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS)
• Inline Virus Scanning
• Out of Path Virus Scanning
Yes
-
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
While having the flexibility of both appliance-based and router-integrated solutions, organizations prove that there is economic benefit to integrating WAN optimization within the router. In a brief 9-month period of shipping the Cisco ISR with embedded WAN optimization, Cisco has helped more than 2,200 organizations of all sizes to achieve additional OpEx savings beyond traditional WAN optimization benefits. In fact, more than 60% of all organizations' branch devices were WAAS modules for the Cisco ISR. In addition, Cisco WAAS offers enterprise-class scalability and unique data center file server offload technologies to reduce costs of delivering applications.
Table 6. Lower Total Cost of Ownership
Total Cost of Ownership
Cisco
Ask Point Product Vendor
Router integration
"Cisco WAAS has proven to be an essential component for the success of our server centralization initiative. Our OpEx and data integrity have appreciably improved." -Bill Waszak, CIO, Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
"With Cisco WAE in the ISR we now have WAN performance levels equal to the LAN at construction sites and distribution centers." -Georg Pessler, Delivery Portfolio Manager, Siemens
"Cisco WAAS accelerates our mission-critical applications by an average of 5 times including IBM Filenet Document Management System, PeopleSoft HR and Finance module, Fair Issac Blazer Advisor Sales and Service Portal and Payment Processing System. Our insurance and sales agents are much more productive helping customers and we have been adding WAAS to 6 to 7 sites per week without production outrage. Cisco WAAS is the most cost effective solution to our branch IT consolidation initiative. -Justin Skelton, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, AAA, Auto Club Group
Lower costs to scale:
"We urge you to focus on optimization, scalability, security, and mobility criteria to determine the most appropriate solution." -Robert Whiteley, Forrester Research
"We found Cisco's WAAS architecture to provide the full suite of optimization techniques as well as the most advanced all-in-one branch office appliance available today. Companies that have already standardized on Cisco's ISR for branch routing can easily add WAN optimization modules, and we recommend making this a staple of a full-service branch." -Robert Whiteley, Forrester Research
"WAAS performed well, and Cisco has packed a ton of features into its offering for a relatively low price, earning it our Best Value designation." -Mike Fratto, Network Computing, May 2007
Simplicity: 50,000 optimized sessions, with 1Gbps optimized WAN throughput, without the need for load balancing
Yes
-
Reliability: 6 million optimized sessions, with 32Gbps optimized WAN throughput using your existing LAN switch WCCP for load balancing and with no single point of failure, without the need to buy an external load balancer
Yes
-
Performance: 16 million sessions, 64Gbps optimized WAN throughput using an external load balancer such as Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE)
Yes
-
Data center file server offload
Yes
-
Conclusion
Cisco's vision of using the network platform to minimize branch IT and application delivery costs is clear and highly differentiated versus other vendors. By partnering with Cisco, organizations can focus on creating strategic advantage rather then on solving the issues that arise when information technology systems don't work together well.
1Source: TheInfoPro Wave 3 Networking Study, July 2007
2Source: Gartner Q2FY07 and Q1FY07 market share report
