Web sites falter as holiday season opens

12/04/08

The big test of retailers' Web sites occurred in the days following Thanksgiving, and a number of top retailers at times couldn't keep up with the heavy loads, according to Web monitoring firms.

Speedy net for financial services firms gets bigger

12/02/08

In the financial services industry, expectations for network speed and reliability are among the highest anywhere. Telecommunications providers cater to those expectations, tailoring network services that offer extremely low latency and high resiliency. The latest provider to expand its offerings for financial services customers is BT, which recently extended its Radianz Ultra Access solution into Chicago.

Are retailers' sites ready for an onslaught?

11/25/08

With Thanksgiving just two days away, retailers are about to find out how their Web sites will fare during the industry's high shopping season. A poor economy puts even more pressure on retailers to make sure Web visitors have an easy, speedy shopping experience.

Fayetteville State University troubleshoots with NAC

11/25/08

Since it has implemented ConSentry NAC gear, Fayetteville State University in North Carolina finds that it gives the school better visibility into network traffic that results in using the gear as a troubleshooting tool.

Anagran appoints new CEO

11/20/08

The month of November is flying by, but before it closes I wanted to catch up on some news in the world of network optimization. For starters, network traffic management start-up Anagran has a new president and CEO: John Peters, who most recently served as CEO of data loss prevention vendor Reconnex (acquired by McAfee in September).

OPNET, Riverbed share a box

11/18/08

As businesses become more distributed and the number of branch offices climbs, enterprise IT teams are becoming keen on reducing the number of appliances they have to deploy in each remote environment.

Blue Coat plugs into PacketShaper

11/13/08

Blue Coat Systems this week announced a tool designed to open the lines of communication between its home-grown ProxySG appliances and the PacketShaper gear gained in its $268 million acquisition of Packeteer earlier this year.

Akamai puts configuration control in users' hands

11/11/08

Akamai Technologies unveiled a tool this week that aims to take away some of the pain associated with configuring application-specific acceleration parameters. The new Configuration Manager tool lets users configure and add new applications to be delivered via Akamai's Web Application Accelerator managed service. “We’re essentially putting the ability to control the cloud http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2008/100108-dzubeck.html into networkers’ hands,” says Neil Cohen, director of product marketing for Akamai. “In the past, our professional services organization would integrate and tune and provide a variety of services to integrate customers’ applications into the environment. Now we’re giving customers the API, the interface through our portal, so they have the option to do self-service and optimize the cloud on their own.”

How smart spending can bolster WAN application delivery

11/06/08

It might surprise readers to learn the companies most successful at WAN application delivery don't necessarily spend a whole lot more money than those that struggle to optimize application delivery.

Best practices for speeding WAN application delivery

11/04/08

The message is sinking in: Adding bandwidth isn't a cure-all for application performance problems. 

ROI potential keeps WAN optimization projects on the table

10/30/08

In the last newsletter I wrote about quarterly results reported by F5 Networks, Citrix Systems and Riverbed Technology. But quarterly results don't tell the whole story - particularly when the economy has changed so dramatically in the few weeks following the close of the last calendar-year quarter on Sept. 30.

F5, Citrix and Riverbed report quarterly results

10/28/08

F5 Networks, Citrix Systems and Riverbed Technology last week reported financial results for the three months ended Sept. 30. F5 announced an impressive jump in fourth-quarter profit, tempered by a supply issue that left it unable to keep up with demand for its entry-level Big-IP devices. Citrix and Riverbed each saw sales rise and profit take a hit compared to their respective year-ago numbers.

Radware, ICT bolster WAN acceleration wares

10/23/08

It has been a busy few weeks for WAN optimization and application acceleration vendors. Among the highlights is Afore Solutions' introduction of a network acceleration appliance designed to optimize data-center-to-data-center applications, such as storage backups and live migrations of virtual machines. Intelligent Compression Technologies, meanwhile, upgraded its software-based WAN optimization product, and Radware added to its lineup of upgradeable application acceleration appliances.

What's to like about IT rollouts

10/21/08

With the flood of disheartening economy-related stories dominating the news, it's nice to read something positive for a change. I had an opportunity to ask a handful of enterprise IT pros what they like best about today's data center technologies. Their answers varied widely, from server and storage virtualization technology to power-management software and load balancing appliances.

Sprint, Verizon unveil managed WAN optimization services

10/16/08

Industry watchers have been predicting U.S. companies will start paying more attention to managed WAN optimization services, which so far have been deployed most widely in Europe and other parts of the globe.

Musictoday keeps ticket sales humming

10/14/08

Outfits that sell tickets online know all about traffic spikes. Thousands of fans and ticket brokers wait to pounce the minute that tickets go on sale for their favorite music, sports and entertainment events. If a Web site can't handle the load, revenue (not to mention customer service) takes a hit.

Are WAN plans changing?

10/09/08

It's impossible not to think about the economy these days, and its impact on business. Recent reports have shown IT buyers are rethinking their spending plans - and scaling back.

F5 speeds up Siebel CRM apps

10/07/08

When vendors do some upfront integration legwork, customers can benefit from smoother deployments and more optimal acceleration results. F5 Networks' latest focus is on improving the performance of Oracle's Siebel CRM software.

Mortgage lender speeds processing with WAN optimization

10/02/08

The question of where, physically, to locate WAN-optimization features isn't easy to answer.

BlueCoat's WAN optimization software targets teleworkers

09/30/08

Many vendors in the WAN optimization and application acceleration markets got their start as specialists, focused on specific tasks such as load balancing, compression or traffic classification. But as the market has matured, IT buyers' expectations have changed. Use of specialty optimization devices is giving way to more all-in-one appliances as enterprises look to satisfy the goal of end-to-end application acceleration.

WAN optimization vendors plot corporate growth

09/25/08

No one can accuse the WAN optimization market of standing still. Vendors continue to jockey for bigger shares of the market, as IT buyers tune in to the advantages of application acceleration and WAN performance-enhancing gear. Today I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on some corporate news in the WAN optimization world, including executive changes, global expansion and vendor consolidation.

Radware looks to optimize virtual environments

09/23/08

The buzz around virtualization grew to a roar over the last few weeks in anticipation of VMware's annual conference, which wrapped up last Thursday in Las Vegas. Application acceleration vendors weren't absent from the frenzy. In particular, Radware unveiled a new product designed to optimize the performance of applications running in virtualized server environments.

What's going on at the desktop?

09/18/08

It's not easy to know how well a public-facing Web application is performing for end users. There are just too many blind spots along Internet pathways. At the same time, it's critical for businesses to ensure customers are experiencing acceptable application response times. If a site is too slow, it won't be long before customers defect to a competitor.

Stampede, Ipanema bolster WAN options

09/16/08

Interop is underway in New York this week, and WAN optimization vendors are among the newsmakers.

Riverbed taps VMware for services platform

09/11/08

Earlier this year I wrote about Riverbed Technology's efforts to help its customers de-clutter their branch offices by hosting local services, such as print servers, on their Steelhead acceleration devices. This week Riverbed announced it's now using VMware's virtualization technology as the platform that lets customers consolidate such services on their Riverbed appliances.

More

Ann Bednarz is associate news editor at Network World.