The application landscape of today’s enterprise space is changing. The proliferation of mobile devices, BYOD initiatives, voice, video and rich media content at the branch locations adds to the already constrained WAN bandwidth. Now along with delivering the typical enterprise applications, such as email, file, and web access, the network teams have to also deliver new rich media content, which puts extra strain on the WAN. Cisco WAAS and Akamai Connect are Cisco’s WAN optimization and application acceleration solution and part of Cisco Intelligent WAN (Cisco IWAN). Akamai Connect optimizes web and mobile applications by extending the Akamai Intelligent Platform directly into the branch enhancing the way users access applications.
Recently, Miercom did an independent evaluation of Cisco WAAS with Akamai Connect and comparable WAN-optimization product, Steelhead enabled with Web Proxy from Riverbed Technology. Cisco is proud to announce that Cisco solution is now ‘Miercom Performance Verified’. The key findings of the report showcase the Cisco’s superior acceleration capabilities including:
Clearly Cisco WAAS enabled with Akamai Connect comes on top in the WAN optimization space. With Akamai Connect we have extended Akamai’s intelligent caching to the branch office where most business face severe bandwidth constraints and enhanced the end user experience. This is represented in Miercom’s report when compared with Riverbed’s Steelhead solution. Riverbed’s Web Proxy feature falls short in terms of the optimization and features it can provide the HTTP traffic. One of the use cases where Cisco did exceptionally well was Apple OSx download. Riverbed’s Web Proxy cannot cache files greater than 2Gb in size.
The graph shows that Cisco was able to reduce the amount of time it takes to download the Apple OSx by 97% where as Riverbed was not able to optimize the file download at all. Cisco solution empowers the customers to provide real benefits of HTTP caching without the constraint of file size. This gives our customers the flexibility and peace of mind that their networks will not get choked when Apple releases a new update.
Read the full Miercom report here and for more information go to Cisco WAAS.
