Riverbed Acquisitions Broaden Customer Options for Acceleration and ADC

Transcription

1 Research Publication Date: 29 September 2011 ID Number: G Riverbed Acquisitions Broaden Customer Options for Acceleration and ADC Joe Skorupa, Mark Fabbi This research discusses the impact of Riverbed's acquisitions of the application delivery controller (ADC) providers Aptimize and Zeus, and offers recommendations for customers or prospective customers of these vendors. Key Findings Impact 1: Riverbed broadens its asymmetric acceleration capabilities. Impact 2: Riverbed will now compete with the ADC market leaders. Impact 3: Riverbed likely will integrate Aptimize's WAX capabilities With Its Zxtm and Steelhead offerings to provide further TCP/HTTP optimization Recommendations Consider the newly available options, including symmetric and asymmetric deployment, for application delivery and optimization. Evaluate Riverbed's price and performance against other established players, such as F5, Citrix and Radware. Consider Zeus when upgrading older server load balancer infrastructure from vendors such as Brocade and Cisco, as well as when expanding or upgrading ADC implementations. If you plan to incorporate virtual appliances for cloud or enterprise deployment, then evaluate how Riverbed's new WAX solution is deployed across hardware appliances, virtual software solutions and software residing on other platforms Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Gartner is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. or its affiliates. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without Gartner's prior written permission. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information and shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in such information. This publication consists of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. Although Gartner research may include a discussion of related legal issues, Gartner does not provide legal advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner is a public company, and its shareholders may include firms and funds that have financial interests in entities covered in Gartner research. Gartner's Board of Directors may include senior managers of these firms or funds. Gartner research is produced independently by its research organization without input or influence from these firms, funds or their managers. For further information on the independence and integrity of Gartner research, see "Guiding Principles on Independence and Objectivity" on its website,

2 ANALYSIS On 19 July 2011, the WAN optimization provider Riverbed Technology announced its acquisition of two ADC companies, Zeus Technology and Aptimize. Both privately owned vendors provide asymmetric acceleration options and compete in or complement the ADC market. Figure 1 summarizes the major impacts of this deal on these vendors' customers and prospects, and it offers recommendations for further action. Figure 1. Impacts and Top Recommendations for Riverbed Clients Source: Gartner (September 2011) Zeus and Aptimize both bring strengths to Riverbed: Zeus has had excellent performance and price/performance running on off-the-shelf hardware. It has a clear and compelling vision for the advanced platform (AP) ADC market, a vision backed by solid products. Zeus demonstrates an understanding of the links between ADCs, application development and deployment in a virtualized world (see Note 1). Aptimize's main focus is on improving the performance of poorly coded, dynamic, browser-based applications. Fortunately for the company, many in-house-developed and commercially available applications fit that description, such as Microsoft's SharePoint (see Note 2). Impact 1: Riverbed Broadens Its Asymmetric Acceleration Capabilities With the acquisition of Zeus and Aptimize, Riverbed broadens its capabilities in asymmetric acceleration of applications over the WAN. Combining Riverbed solutions with those of Zeus and Aptimize will allow customers to accommodate remote users and other clients that are outside an organization's direct control. Both acquisitions will expand Riverbed's existing opportunities with its partners (Akamai and HP) and will broaden its solution set for enterprises and service providers. Publication Date: 29 September 2011/ID Number: G Page 2 of 5

3 Customers can combine Aptimize's WAX with Riverbed's Steelhead products to achieve best-in-class performance for popular enterprise applications such as Microsoft SharePoint. WAX can also be purchased and deployed stand-alone to optimize applications such as SharePoint. WAX will also be attractive to PaaS and SaaS providers that require optimization but that lack the ability to install software in client devices. Zeus has had growing success with cloud service providers, and Zeus products will likely complement and enhance Riverbed's joint cloud optimization solution with Akamai. Zeus will also allow Riverbed to build relationships with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, which have shown limited interest in Riverbed's symmetrical acceleration solutions. Riverbed enterprise customers can consider Zeus for departmental applications, particularly when bundled with Steelhead and WAX. Recommendations: Consider the newly available options, including symmetric and asymmetric deployment, for application delivery and optimization. Evaluate the Riverbed/Zeus solution's price and performance against other established players, such as F5, Citrix and Radware, particularly where extremely high-performance solutions are not required. Impact 2: Riverbed Will Now Compete With the ADC Market Leaders With the addition of Zeus, Riverbed enters into competition with the leading players in the ADC market, F5 and Citrix, particularly in some fast-growing subsectors of the ADC market, such as Web front-end optimizers and virtual ADCs, but not head-to-head in ADC appliances. Zeus virtual ADC (vadc) supports the full range of hypervisors, including VMware, Xen, Hyper-V, KVM and Oracle/Sun. Zeus was the first vendor to offer vadc with flexible licensing, which is suitable for cloud hosting centers, application developers and a range of enterprise solutions. Zeus ADCs are available from a number of cloud IaaS providers, including AWS, Joyent, Logicworks, Datapipe, Voxel and Rackspace. The Zeus Elastic Application Delivery (ZEAD) platform attempts a seamless architecture between the cloud and the enterprise. Several ADC vendors with similar offerings have deeper application deployment knowledge, broader product offerings and more established brands. F5 and Citrix have introduced virtual ADCs whose licensing programs are similar to that of the ZEAD platform. Recommendation: Riverbed customers should consider Zeus when upgrading their older server load balancer infrastructure from vendors such as Brocade and Cisco, as well as when expanding or upgrading ADC implementations. Publication Date: 29 September 2011/ID Number: G Page 3 of 5

4 Impact 3: Riverbed Likely Will Integrate Aptimize's WAX Capabilities With Its Zxtm And Steelhead Offerings to Provide Further TCP/HTTP Optimization No major ADC or WAN optimization controller (WOC) vendor offers a product that is comparable to Aptimize's WAX. For poorly coded, browser-based applications, WAX goes beyond TCP/HTTP optimization to perform real-time optimization, including JavaScript merge, minification and shrinking, image resampling, spriting, inlining, and CSS merge. WAX can be deployed in tandem with ADCs to deliver additional application performance and can also be installed as a service on Microsoft IIS. We expect WAX to be integrated with the Zeus Zxtm ADC to provide a comprehensive solution. We expect WAX to be integrated into Steelhead and Steelhead mobile to provide optimizations for enterprise and cloud-hosted applications. This will also bring greater value to partnerships with companies such as Akamai. Aptimize's technology has been hardened in demanding environments, including Google, Microsoft and Ingram Micro public websites. This will enable Riverbed to expand its presence into the public website space. WAX can also be deployed independently of ADCs and WOCs to optimize poorly coded browser-based applications. WAX can be customized to obtain maximum performance for critical applications. Note that WAX is generally deployed beside an existing ADC, which can make the solution an incremental expense (see Note 2). Advanced WAX customization can be tricky, and it must be well-tested before deployment as this may represent an incremental expense. Recommendation: If you are planning to incorporate virtual appliances for cloud or enterprise deployment, then evaluate how Riverbed's new WAX solution is deployed across hardware appliances, virtual software solutions and software residing on other platforms. RECOMMENDED READING Some documents may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription. "Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers" "Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers" Note 1 Zeus Technology Zeus Technology, based in Cambridge, the U.K., ranked as a Visionary in Gartner's most recent ADC Magic Quadrant. The company pioneered software-based solutions for mainstream, scalable ADC applications and is gaining traction among cloud infrastructure vendors. In that same ADC Magic Quadrant, Aptimize was ranked on the border between Niche Player and Visionary. Publication Date: 29 September 2011/ID Number: G Page 4 of 5

5 Note 2 Aptimize's WAX Aptimize's WAX is usually deployed in tandem with an AP ADC and, increasingly, with WOCs to improve the effectiveness of those solutions. Aptimize acts as an ADC adjunct when dynamic browser-based applications are accessed across high-latency links. REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS Corporate Headquarters 56 Top Gallant Road Stamford, CT U.S.A European Headquarters Tamesis The Glanty Egham Surrey, TW20 9AW UNITED KINGDOM Asia/Pacific Headquarters Gartner Australasia Pty. Ltd. Level 9, 141 Walker Street North Sydney New South Wales 2060 AUSTRALIA Japan Headquarters Gartner Japan Ltd. Aobadai Hills, 6F 7-7, Aobadai, 4-chome Meguro-ku, Tokyo JAPAN Latin America Headquarters Gartner do Brazil Av. das Nações Unidas, andar World Trade Center São Paulo SP BRAZIL Publication Date: 29 September 2011/ID Number: G Page 5 of 5