Cisco and Akamai join forces to supercharge the branch office

Similar documents
How To Deliver Faster In-branch Applications While Offloading The Enterprise Network

Cisco Intelligent WAN with Akamai Connect

Simplifying the Branch Network

SD-WAN. Enabling the Enterprise to Overcome Barriers to Digital Transformation. An IDC InfoBrief Sponsored by Comcast

A Talari Networks White Paper. Turbo Charging WAN Optimization with WAN Virtualization. A Talari White Paper

Vendor: Cisco. Exam Code: Exam Name: Cisco Sales Expert. Version: Demo

Cisco APIC Enterprise Module Simplifies Network Operations

John Stankey. President and CEO AT&T Operations. UBS Global Media and Communications Conference Dec. 9, 2008

Survey: Global Efficiency Held Back by Infrastructure Spend in Pharmaceutical Industry

Why the Cloud is the Network

It s Time for WAN Optimization to Evolve to Meet the Needs of File Collaboration

THE FASTEST WAY TO CONNECT YOUR NETWORK. Accelerate Multiple Location Connectivity with Ethernet Private Line Solutions FIBER

Hybrid IT for SMBs. HPE addressing SMB and channel partner Hybrid IT demands ANALYST ANURAG AGRAWAL REPORT : HPE. October 2018

MASERGY S MANAGED SD-WAN

What is SD WAN and should I know or care about it? Ken LaMere Ecessa

Oracle and Tangosol Acquisition Announcement

Y O UR BUS I N E SS IS ONL Y A S S TR ON G A S YO U R CONNEC T I O N T HE I M P ORTANCE OF R ELI ABLE CO NNECTIVITY W HAT S IN SIDE:

The Top Five Reasons to Deploy Software-Defined Networks and Network Functions Virtualization

Cisco and Akamai Elevate the Customer Digital Experience

Cato Cloud. Software-defined and cloud-based secure enterprise network. Solution Brief

Cloud Connect. Gain highly secure, performance-optimized access to third-party public and private cloud providers

Hello, my name is Cara Daly, I am the Product Marketing Manager for Polycom Video Content Management Solutions and today I am going to be reviewing

Connectivity to Cloud-First Applications

Network Automation and Branch Agility The Network Helps Enable Digital Business. Rajinder Singh Product Sales Specialist June 2016

Stratus puts emphasis on software-defined availability with everrun Enterprise launch

Analysis of the Software-Defined WAN Market, An Executive Summary Extract from Frost & Sullivan Research Report BCS 11-5 (published Oct 2017)

2016 Summary Annual Report and Annual Meeting Documents

How the WAN is Driving Digital Transformation. An IDC InfoBrief, Sponsored by

Predictive Insight, Automation and Expertise Drive Added Value for Managed Services

HOW ADVANCED ANALYTICS DIFFERENTIATES CSP SD-WAN SOLUTIONS

Benefits of SD-WAN to the Distributed Enterprise

DaaS Market Report Workspace Services and Desktops-as-a-Service Global Market Trends: The Service Provider Perspective

SD-WAN: A Simplified Network for Distributed Enterprises

The Essential Guide to Preparing Your Network for the Cloud. How to meet your network requirements at every step of your cloud transformation.

Cormant hopes to mobilize its users with DCIM suite

How can we gain the insights and control we need to optimize the performance of applications running on our network?

10 Reasons your WAN is Broken

Q&As. Advanced Borderless Network Architecture Sales Exam. Pass Cisco Exam with 100% Guarantee

I D C T E C H N O L O G Y S P O T L I G H T

Optimizing your network for the cloud-first world

Transform your network and your customer experience. Introducing SD-WAN Concierge

Measuring KSA Broadband

Delivering the Wireless Software-Defined Branch

90 % of WAN decision makers cite their

Live Broadcast: Video Services from AT&T

Why Converged Infrastructure?

HPE IT Operations Management (ITOM) Thought Leadership Series

Citrix CloudBridge Product Overview

PeerApp Case Study. November University of California, Santa Barbara, Boosts Internet Video Quality and Reduces Bandwidth Costs

Why Converged Infrastructure?

Deliver Office 365 Without Compromise Ensure successful deployment and ongoing manageability of Office 365 and other SaaS apps

The Emerging Role of a CDN in Facilitating Secure Cloud Deployments

We re ready. Are you?

INTERNET OF EVERYTHING UNIVERSITAS AMIKOM YOGYAKARTA. JARINGAN KOMPUTER Program Sarjana Sistem Informasi

Q-Balancer Range FAQ The Q-Balance LB Series General Sales FAQ

Be prepared for future

5G From Fixed Wireless Today to Mobility & Transformative Improvements by 2019

Hello, my name is Cara Daly, I am the Product Marketing Manager for Polycom Video Content Management Solutions. Today we will be going over the

Innovative Solutions. Trusted Performance. Intelligently Engineered. Comparison of SD WAN Solutions. Technology Brief

INNOVATION MINDSET DRIVES THE MOVE TO REPLACE MPLS WITH INTERNET SD-WAN

How your network can take on the cloud and win. Think beyond traditional networking toward a secure digital perimeter

Hybrid WAN Operations: Extend Network Monitoring Across SD-WAN and Legacy WAN Infrastructure

2013 North American Software Defined Data Center Management Platforms New Product Innovation Award

VeloCloud Cloud-Delivered WAN Fast. Simple. Secure. KUHN CONSULTING GmbH

The Economic Benefits of a Cooperative Control Wireless LAN Architecture

State of Mobile Commerce. Q

HYBRID WAN. Proof of Value Journey. WAN Summit Michael Becerra Singapore, 12 September Global Business Services Excellence. Simply delivered.

The Potential for Edge Computing in the Commercial Building

Citrix SD-WAN for Optimal Office 365 Connectivity and Performance

Huawei Technologies

BUYING SERVER HARDWARE FOR A SCALABLE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Digital Network Architecture

Accelerate Deployment of Technology to Drive Business Results. Call for Papers

How SD-WAN will Transform the Network. And lead to innovative, profitable business outcomes

Background Brief. The need to foster the IXPs ecosystem in the Arab region

CommVault counts on snapshot management for data protection

C O M P E T E A T Y O U R P E A K

Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers: Architecture for Branch-Office Agility

Growth Leadership, Unified Threat Management (UTM) Global, 2010

Composite Software Data Virtualization The Five Most Popular Uses of Data Virtualization

Making hybrid IT simple with Capgemini and Microsoft Azure Stack

Introducing CloudGenix Clarity

Transform your network and your customer experience. Introducing SD-WAN Concierge

Cato Cloud. Global SD-WAN with Built-in Network Security. Solution Brief. Cato Cloud Solution Brief. The Future of SD-WAN. Today.

Services solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

Mobile Security Overview Rob Greer, VP Endpoint Management and Mobility Product Management Dave Cole, Sr. Director Consumer Mobile Product Management

CenturyLink IQ Networking: MPLS

What is SD-WAN? Presented by:

How to Re-evaluateYour MPLS Service Provider

The Maximum Security Marriage: Mobile File Management is Necessary and Complementary to Mobile Device Management

Solution Overview. Cisco Intelligent WAN as a Service: Provide Businesses with Intelligent WAN Services. What You Will Learn.

Lessons Learned from SD-WAN Deployments on Six Continents. 21 September 2016 Tim Sullivan Co-founder & CEO

Small Cells as a Service rethinking the mobile operator business

Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA P F

Cisco Start. IT solutions designed to propel your business

7 Things ISVs Must Know About Virtualization

Guaranteeing Video Quality

Deliver Office 365 Without Compromise

Not all SD-WANs are Created Equal: Performance Matters

Paper. Delivering Strong Security in a Hyperconverged Data Center Environment

Transcription:

Cisco and Akamai join forces to supercharge the branch office Analyst: Peter Christy 29 Apr, 2014 Cisco and Akamai have announced a joint offering based on the Cisco ISR-AX branch router with Akamai content-delivery services integrated into the product software, and the Akamai services available as a purchase option (a datacenter version is also available, but most use will be with branch devices). The joint offering integrates two different but complementary acceleration technologies network optimization (WAN acceleration) and content placement and access optimization (CDN). It is packaged and delivered into a broadly used Cisco branch router platform. The product addresses the growing importance of Wi-Fi access in public areas, and the speed and cost disparity between Internet access at home (e.g., with broadband cable service) and the bandwidth available in commercial branch locations such as retail stores (historically provided by MPLS services). The disparity is increasingly glaring in light of the adoption by many retailers of an 'omni channel' marketing strategy, and the growing number of other valuable corporate-branch and partner-ecology applications. When CDN services are used effectively, the in-store performance of a customer-facing website can be largely independent of the connectivity to a store, enabling a high-bandwidth, omni-channel experience long before adequate connectivity is available to all the branches of a distributed enterprise. The partnership is adventurous for both companies. Akamai has experimented with various 'behind the firewall' extensions to its CDN system in the past, but never built on another vendor's product (Akamai had a similar partnership with Riverbed to provide optimized access to specific SaaS providers, but it didn't include integration with the CDN system). Partnering with Cisco seems like an excellent way of assuring that the required hardware is attractive to the target market and delivered by a vendor with worldwide logistics and support capabilities. It would be more typical of Cisco to provide the CDN service by itself (it certainly has the cloud-platform assets to do so). We see this as an intelligent partnering of complementary industry leaders (from both a technology and Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 1

market perspective), and hope they can sort out the predicable issues around 'who gets the credit (and money)' which often makes this kind of partnership challenging. Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 2

The 451 Take The Cisco Intelligent WAN with Akamai Connect is an important next step in the ongoing effort to make broadband wireless access widely available. The solution provides performance improvement that varies widely depending on the bandwidth economically available at the accelerated site and the specific use or content there is ultimately no substitute for last-mile bandwidth. But in important specific uses such as immersive, multichannel retailing, the solution can provide intuitively unexpected performance improvements. Context The important elements of context that surround this offering are (1) the remarkable conversion to the use of smartphones and tablets; (2) the growing disparity between consumer bandwidth and commercial bandwidth; (3) the challenges of optimizing Internet performance; and (4) the increasing number of retailers that are incorporating a broadband Web or app experience as a key pillar in their marketing strategy, as well as the trend to adapt consumer-facing Web applications for branch point of sale. Use of the Internet changed abruptly with the introduction and rapid uptake of the iphone and ipad (and the other smartphones and tablets that quickly followed). The suitability of these devices for viewing high-resolution graphics and video drove the accelerated buildout of 3G and 4G cellular networks, and high-bandwidth, reasonably priced cable and fiber-based home broadband service. In the US, average peak broadband bandwidth (the best metric for estimating the performance of the large file transfers that characterize these applications) has increased by roughly 30% YoY for many years, according to Akamai's State of the Internet reports, and exceeded 40Mbps by the end of 2013. As important, the percentage of US broadband connections that were in what Akamai calls the 'high category' exceeded 50% by the end of 2013. High-bandwidth home connectivity and the high-bandwidth applications it enables are clearly consumer-infrastructure reality in 2014. Branch-access connectivity hasn't kept up with home connectivity for several reasons, including the cost of increasing the capacity of an MPLS connection (a very different cost improvement curve from consumer bandwidth), the legacy of backhauling Internet access to HQ, and the unavailability of consumer broadband options in many commercial locations. Ten years ago, home Internet DSL access was usually better than what was available at work; today, the disparity is even larger if you add a least-common-denominator requirement that applications be designed to the worst branch bandwidth so they work reasonably in all branches. Mobile devices, broadband access and the shift of television viewing to these devices has prompted many consumer-facing businesses to rethink advertising and marketing strategies, and to increasingly leverage these new devices and usage modalities. Concurrently, many of those businesses are moving to omni-channel marketing strategies, where the consumer sees a coordinated set of experiences whether on the Web, using an app or in the store. In light of all of this, the growing disparity between home and retail bandwidth is increasingly a problem. Finally, improving performance across the Internet is difficult, even with high last-mile bandwidth. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the nature of the protocols used (e.g., TCP/IP performance goes down with connection latency and packet loss) to the largely unmanageable BGP routing across the Internet, compounded by network operators' desire to optimize profitability (which leads to routing strangeness like 'hot potato' routing). There are no simple solutions available. Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 3

Technology The Cisco Intelligent WAN with Akamai Connect is additional software for the Cisco ISR-AX Branch Router, coupled with services delivered from Akamai packaged as a one-time purchase option. The product marries two quite different but complementary Internet acceleration technologies: WAN acceleration and content delivery. WAN acceleration optimizes the performance of a network connection by inserting devices into the connection that transform the content so redundant data isn't transmitted again, but instead reinserted from a copy stored at the receiving end. Content delivery improves Internet performance by caching commonly accessed content near the user, and serving it from that cache. At first blush, these are very similar approaches. Both serve content when possible from a replica near the user, thereby eliminating the delay and cost of fetching it from the 'origin' server; instead serving it at high bandwidth essentially instantaneously from a locally cached copy. The overall performance improvement is determined by the 'hit ratio' of the cache the percentage of content requests that can be satisfied locally. A WAN acceleration cache benefits from the reuse of content, for example, when another user has fetched the content recently, but the improvement is limited by the number of concurrent users (the fewer users, the lower the chance that the content has been accessed recently), and by how the content is structured (the more personalized the content, the less likely the same content will have been accessed by another). WAN acceleration does the best it can, but is limited by the nature of the content and use. The impact of CDN can be much higher because content can be pre-positioned in the cache (avoiding the need for another user to have fetched it recently), and because the content can be transformed or rewritten to have a higher hit ratio. Akamai already works with its CDN customers to maximize the performance of Akamai-served content, and automates the process when possible. Marketing The Cisco Intelligent WAN with Akamai Connect is jointly brought to market by Cisco and Akamai. Integration with Akamai Connect services is incorporated into the Cisco WAAS software. The product is positioned as an option for the Cisco Branch Router and WAAS appliances, and is sold and supported by Cisco, which is backed in both efforts by Akamai. Competition Cisco is a strong market leader in enterprise networking, including branch routers. It competes with WAN acceleration vendors that sell WAN technology separately from networking technology, including Riverbed, Silver Peak, Blue Coat and Citrix NetScaler. Akamai has a history of buying smaller competitors when they start to introduce significant sales friction. Perhaps Akamai's most interesting competitor is CloudFlare, a DDoS protection service with caching services that is marketed bottom-up to smaller companies (with very good traction), while Akamai primarily markets top-down to larger enterprises. As virtualization penetrates branch-office architecture, there will be new solutions from systems vendors that integrate applications with communications technology, all running on commodity server platforms. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 4

Cisco is a global leader in communications equipment and has strong WAN acceleration technology; Akamai is the leader in Web-content delivery and optimized Internet connectivity. Opportunities Threats The disparity between consumer residential broadband bandwidth and the bandwidth easily attainable in retail branch stores is unlikely to diminish any time soon, creating a strong opportunity for enabling immersive multichannel marketing, which this offering uniquely provides. Although the offering is a unique and highly differentiated way of remedying branch-office connectivity limitations in support of omni-channel marketing, it may be hard to sell the approach through the networking team, since the essence of the offering (CDN) isn't really networking technology, and the primary benefit is business enablement rather than network optimization or cost reduction (providing adequate raw bandwidth in many cases is impossible or absurdly expensive). The greatest threat may come from the integration of new CDN services (like CloudFlare), paired with emerging integrated branch offerings based on virtualization technology, and delivered primarily by systems vendors, rather than as network vendors. Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 5

Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; 2014. This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: www.451research.com Copyright 2014 - The 451 Group 6