Welcome to Virtual WAN Speeds and Feeds

Where does WAN optimization and application acceleration come together with virtualization and cloud computing? Right here.

We admit it up front. We have a bias for virtual appliance solutions when it comes to WAN optimization and application acceleration. Software-based virtual appliances are now available to do the heavy lifting around WAN optimization, application acceleration and network bandwidth reduction. This introduces the question that is one of the tenets of our blog: Why would you ever consider a proprietary hardware appliance solution?

If you’re consolidating data center and branch office resources with the help of virtualization or cloud infrastructures, congratulations — you are on the right track and in the right place. Still, we have to ask: Why wouldn’t you use a more cost-efficient, agile software-based virtual appliance to improve your WAN performance and reduce bandwidth costs? No, really, please tell us. We’d love to hear what you have to say and expand that discussion to other WAN optimization followers.

So let’s start there. Our first posting will examine how virtual appliances for WAN optimization and application acceleration work. We will explain why they are the clear next-generation successor to hardware appliances for any WAN or private cloud computing environment. All your comments and experiences will be welcome.