Cisco Brings Application Acceleration to Mobile Workers and Smaller Enterprises

| Jan 24, 2008 | Enterprise Network Systems | Competitive Intelligence Report

| Analyst: Michael Brandenburg

Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Moderate
Market Impact: High

Event Summary

January 22, 2008 – Cisco announced new products and services that extend its Application Network Services (ANS) portfolio to enable end-to-end application delivery networks. The company also announced that it has validated enterprise software application performance over these networks with the support of industry-leading software vendors, including Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

Analytical Summary

• Current Perspective: Positive on Cisco’s Application Network Services (ANS) announcements, because not only do the new products extend the reach of Cisco’s application delivery strategy. This puts Cisco in the mobile client market which is currently a hot new market area for application delivery vendors.

• Vendor Importance: Moderate to Cisco, because the new offerings fill gaps in the ANS, namely the small to mid-market and the mobile client. While Cisco will face stiff competition on both fronts, the new offerings go a long way to rounding out its application delivery strategy.

• Market Impact: High on the Application Optimization market, because the new WAAS Mobile client and ACE appliance puts Cisco in a position to increase its presence in an already competitive landscape. While competitors benefited in the past from Cisco’s focus on large scale deployments, they now face the prospect of competing with the networking giant in the small and mid-sized market.

Recommended Competitor Actions

• Competitors with similar mobile clients, such as Riverbed, should attack Cisco’s need for a dedicated server for their mobile solution. They should highlight that their own solutions use their existing appliances, making management of all WAN acceleration a simple matter.

• Competing mobile client vendors, such as Citrix, should assess their own licensing schemes for their mobile clients. With Cisco and other competitors utilizing concurrent licensing, a per-user model is usually harder to manage and would be a competitive disadvantage in evaluations for large enterprises.

• Competing Web accelerator vendors need to counter Cisco’s move down market by highlighting their own experience with small and medium deployments. Competitors can point out that they have a better understanding of the needs of the mid-tier enterprise.

Recommended End User / Customer Actions

• Customers evaluating Web acceleration solutions should give a second look at Cisco’s new standalone appliance. By unbinding the product from the Catalyst 6500, the ACE 4710 is going to fall within the budgets of many cost-conscious enterprises.

• Customers looking for solutions to speed up mobile worker access should include WAAS Mobile in their evaluations. The software solution does not require a full WAAS architecture to operate, making it a cost effective standalone package.

CLIENTS ONLY

Current Perspective

Competitive Positives and Concerns

Recommended Vendor Actions

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