Cisco WAAS is a powerful application-acceleration and solution for branch offices that helps optimize the performance of any TCP-based application operating in a wide-area network (WAN) environment. This allows information technology (IT) organizations to consolidate costly distributed servers and storage into centrally managed data centers and to deploy new applications centrally, while still offering LAN-like application performance for remote users.
"WAN optimization is no longer a luxury; it's a requirement. Increasingly, IT decision-makers want the option to integrate WAN optimization and application acceleration into a single branch-office device," says Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research. "Already, 17% of organizations are using all-in-one devices, and 55% are using WAN optimization. Moving forward, they want devices to provide switching/routing, security, voice over IP, optimization, and WAFS. Vendors who can provide these capabilities independently- and as part of an integrated solution-will end up on the short lists of enterprises assessing the market."
Cisco WAAS has experienced a rapid market adoption rate across multiple industry sectors, including finance, healthcare and manufacturing, while addressing multiple IT initiatives. The technology has been proven in large-scale enterprises, with key customers deploying Cisco WAAS at 100+ sites. Cisco is the only vendor to offer a variety of hardware form factors for its solution, including stand-alone appliances as well as modules that can be integrated into the widely deployed Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) series.