All distributed companies face cost and bandwidth challenges when ensuring their wide area networks (WANs) work optimally in tying offices together, says Christo Briedenhann, Riverbed regional director for Africa.
According to Briedenhann, a major issue is that operations at the core of a network happen at typical local area network (LAN) speeds, whereas operations in the fringe happen at WAN speeds - 1% or less of the typical LAN bandwidth.
The answer to problems affecting WAN performance, says Briedenhann, is making the WAN behave more like a LAN.
“Solutions that deliver this broad-based improvement of WANs go by the name of wide area data services (WDS). With WDS, enterprises can implement solutions that help them empower their distributed workforce while eliminating IT capital expenditures and simplifying IT management,” he says.
According to Briedenhann, WDS are multi-protocol, multi-configuration, and multi-application, and target multiple bottlenecks simultaneously. “It is the logical combination and generalisation of a number of more narrowly-focused predecessor technologies.
“WDS allows companies to centralise distributed infrastructure without affecting remote users, share large files among colleagues on different continents, perform backup and replication over long distance WAN links, and enable the delivery of more services on existing WANs without upgrading bandwidth,” Briedenhann adds.
Investments in WDS generate a strong return on investment, says Briedenhann. In addition to significantly improving user productivity, WDS can also generate substantial hard cost savings by helping customers reduce bandwidth costs, improve network performance, consolidate infrastructure, simplify branch office infrastructure and optimise disaster recovery.
“WDS appliances are a key tool for distributed organisations looking to reduce WAN traffic, achieve high application performance, enable successful site consolidation projects and ensure effective data protection,” Briedenhann concludes.
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