Carriers Add Value By Optimizing Application Performance

HEADNOTE

Enterprises that are reluctant to do it themselves may have another choice for improving application traffic across the WAN.

Not long ago, most carriers couldn't identify, much less improve, the performance of networked applications-except to

prescribe more bandwidth as a performance panacea. This is changing as distributed application delivery system (ADS) technologies mature and carriers and value-added network service providers respond to global enterprises' need for applications to perform well for all users, no matter where they are.

Products to optimize application performance over a wide area network (WAN) are fast becoming mainstream. Global enterprises are now familiar with distributed ADS solutions from the likes of Cisco, Riverbed, Juniper and Packeteer-and as their familiarity increases, so does their penchant to purchase these solutions as managed services. Service providers like AT&T, BT Global Services, Orange Business Services, Vanco, and Verizon Business are stepping up to the plate with sophisticated services to measure, control (i.e., protect from degrading under adverse network conditions), and accelerate (i.e., speed up for all users all the time) application performance.