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Cisco Steps Up to the Plate in WAN Optimization with WAAS Solution| September 6, 2006 | Enterprise Infrastructure | Competitive Intelligence Report Analyst: Steven J. Schuchart Jr.
On September 5th Cisco announced its Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) and Wide-Area File Services (WAFS) strategy for the branch office. Cisco also introduced a network module for running WAAS software on the Cisco integrated services router (ISR). The Cisco WAAS solution includes the Cisco WAAS software and the Cisco Wide-Area Application Engine (WAE) appliance family as well as new network modules (WAE-NM) that integrate with Cisco's popular 2800, 3700, and 3800 Series Integrated Services Routers. The appliance-based branch office solution is available immediately starting at $8,500 and the network module solution will be available later this year starting at $4,000. • Current Perspective: Positive on Cisco’s introduction of its WAAS solutions portfolio for WAN optimization, because the WAAS solution addresses a significant competitive weakness in the company’s overall Application Networking Services (ANS) portfolio and provides a competitive alternative to established, competing solutions in the enterprise WAN optimization space. Cisco’s previous WAFS solution provided only a small subset of the functionality that Cisco WAAS can deliver, and Cisco was at a significant competitive disadvantage to fast-moving start-ups that have been blazing trails in this market. However, while Cisco now has a competitive solution, it still faces the challenge of keeping up with the feature functionality pace set by those same aggressive start-ups. • Vendor Importance: Very high to Cisco, because WAN optimization is a hot market segment, and Cisco, with its core focus on enterprise LAN/WAN systems, needed to have a competitive offering in this segment. This is particularly important for Cisco because of its huge installed base of branch office routing equipment, and because customers have been voicing demand for this sort of advanced functionality for some time. • Market Impact: High on the enterprise WAN optimization market, because Cisco’s large installed base and huge market presence will have a large impact on the overall market. Cisco’s WAAS offering will have a big effect on the competitive market simply through its presence and competition in the market, but will also help to drive the market through active sales and marketing efforts. Recommended Competitor Actions • Competitors need to wipe their existing competitive knowledgebase clean and prepare new collateral to compete with Cisco. Due to the comprehensive changes that came with Cisco WAAS, competitors need to ensure that salespersons and channels are clearly aware of which competitive bullets remain relevant. • It is more likely that competitors have largely ignored Cisco in this market until this point, because Cisco’s WAFS solution was only marginally threatening in the advanced application acceleration market until now. Competitors need to take immediate internal actions to form a technical competitive response to Cisco’s new WAAS solution. • Competitors need to prepare to fight a battle over transparent vs. tunneled architectures. Cisco, with its router-integrated technology, is strongly asserting to customers that a tunneled architecture compromises network visibility and limits functionality. • Competitors need to look for opportunities to embed WAN optimization technology in other branch office appliances, such as integrated firewall/VPN devices, to combat Cisco’s push to deliver WAAS as an ISR module. • Competitors with a viable asymmetric WAN optimization solution, most notably Citrix/Orbital Data, need to fast-track their efforts to deliver a “clientless” solution for the branch office. Recommended End User / Customer Actions • Customers that have overlooked Cisco WAFS in the past should revisit Cisco’s offering with the WAAS release, as Cisco has significantly improved its overall functionality. • Customers should evaluate Cisco solutions against Juniper WXC, Riverbed, Citrix (Orbital Data), Expand Networks, Silver-Peak, Packeteer, BlueCoat, and F5. Customers should closely consider performance as well as manageability, total cost of ownership, and ease of deployment in their environments. • Customers need to clearly understand the pros and cons of a transparent deployment versus a tunneled deployment. Transparent deployments offer greater flexibility in managing and making decisions about traffic after compression, but typically require more network changes than a tunneled solution.
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