Ensuring application performance

Bob Tarzey, Analyst and Director

Quocirca Comment December 2013

As resellers adjust to the increasing use of ondemand services by their customers they need to find places where they can still sell product, make margin and add value. One area with plenty of opportunity is the ensuring of application performance through the use of application delivery controllers (ADCs). ADCs are basically next generation load balancers and are proving to be fundamental building blocks for advanced application and network platforms, and essential to the delivery of on-demand applications. So this is where to opportunity lies; a recent Quocirca report1 shows that more and more organisations are coming to depend on the delivery of either on-demand IT and/or e-commerce services to engage with their customers (Figure 1). This is where ADCs come in. They enable the flexible scaling of resources as demand rises and/or falls and the offloading of work from application servers. They also provide a number of other services that are essential to the effective operation of on-demand applications. These include;
Network traffic compression to speed up transmission Data caching to make sure regularly requested data is readily available Network connection multiplexing making effective use of multiple network connections Network traffic shaping a way of reducing latency by prioritising the transmission of workload packets and ensuring quality of service (QoS) Application-layer security the inclusion of web application firewall (WAF) capabilities to protect on-demand applications from outside attack, for example application-level denial of service (DOS) Secure sockets layer (SSL) management acting as the landing point for encrypted traffic and managing the decryption and rules for on-going transmission Content switching routing requests to different web services depending on a range of criteria, for example the language settings of a web browser or the type of device the request is coming from Server health monitoring ensuring servers are functioning as expected and serving up data and results that are fit for transmission

Of course, in many cases, especially when it comes to e-commerce applications, the delivery platform will be provided by an infrastructureas-a-service (IaaS) provider. This means the data centre, server hardware and basic software infrastructure is already managed. But, the applications still need provisioning and their performance, resilience and security ensured. Ensuring application performance

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Most ADCs can be deployed as standalone appliances or as virtual ones, which makes them flexible and ideal for supporting in-house, cloud based or hybrid application deployments. This also means they are key to the enablement of flexibly delivery of resources through cloud bursting (the scaling out of on-premise applications to a shared cloud platform) when workload demands it. Two of the best known ADC suppliers are Citrix (whose NetScaler product is resold by Cisco) and F5; both vendors are part of Ciscos new Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) initiative, a move that further underlines the momentum in this area. Other vendors include Kemp, Riverbed, Radware (which partners with Juniper), Brocade, Barracuda, A10 and Array Networks. Selling ADC products is one thing but what about the value add? Well the good news here for resellers is that help is needed to deploy all these on-demand applications. Only 32% of organisations say they have sufficient current and up to date skills to manage advanced networks (Figure 2), 62% already look to service providers to help plug the gap (Figure 3).

Many of the ADC vendors are well positioned to help resellers get skilled up via accreditation programmes. Quocircas report shows that the value of such programmes is widely recognised by end user organisations, whether the accreditations are for their own employees or for those of their reseller partners. The importance of on-demand applications is hardly likely to diminish in the coming decade nor is the use of cloud infrastructure services. Those resellers with the product portfolio and skills to help their customers ensure the performance of on-demand application are set to prosper.

Reference: 1 In demand: the culture of online service provision, Quocirca, Oct 2013, http://www.citrix.com/news/marketresearch/oct-2013/quocirca-in-demand-theculture-of-online-service-provision.html
This article first appeared in CRN UK and on: http://www.channelweb.co.uk

Ensuring application performance

http://www.quocirca.com

2013 Quocirca Ltd

About Quocirca
Quocirca is a primary research and analysis company specialising in the business impact of information technology and communications (ITC). With world-wide, native language reach, Quocirca provides in-depth insights into the views of buyers and influencers in large, mid-sized and small organisations. Its analyst team is made up of realworld practitioners with first-hand experience of ITC delivery who continuously research and track the industry and its real usage in the markets. Through researching perceptions, Quocirca uncovers the real hurdles to technology adoption the personal and political aspects of an organisations environment and the pressures of the need for demonstrable business value in any implementation. This capability to uncover and report back on the end-user perceptions in the market enables Quocirca to advise on the realities of technology adoption, not the promises. Quocirca research is always pragmatic, business orientated and conducted in the context of the bigger picture. ITC has the ability to transform businesses and the processes that drive them, but often fails to do so. Quocircas mission is to help organisations improve their success rate in process enablement through better levels of understanding and the adoption of the correct technologies at the correct time. Quocirca has a pro-active primary research programme, regularly surveying users, purchasers and resellers of ITC products and services on emerging, evolving and maturing technologies. Over time, Quocirca has built a picture of long term investment trends, providing invaluable information for the whole of the ITC community. Quocirca works with global and local providers of ITC products and services to help them deliver on the promise that ITC holds for business. Quocircas clients include Oracle, IBM, CA, O2, T-Mobile, HP, Xerox, Ricoh and Symantec, along with other large and medium sized vendors, service providers and more specialist firms.

Full access to all of Quocircas public output (reports, articles, presentations, blogs and videos) can be made at http://www.quocirca.com

Ensuring application performance

http://www.quocirca.com

2013 Quocirca Ltd