One major challenge in running a small data center is finding products that deliver breakneck speeds for applications and network throughput yet do not carry the high pricing structures of products designed for companies with thousands of employees.
Those “deep pocket” companies can easily spend six figures on WAN optimization and multi-LAN switches. Yet, it’s not just large corporations that benefit from application acceleration; small to midsized enterprises also need great performance, because the faster an application framework runs, the faster companies can meet the needs of customers, generate sales, and outclass the competition. This concept is one that application delivery expert Radware understands well and addresses with its scalable, affordable LinkProof OnDemand switch.
Right-Size Your Solution
Radware’s LinkProof OnDemand Switch (www.radware.com) has a licensing arrangement that is appealing to an SME because it lets you use a product technically suited for enterprise-class performance but at a capacity and price more in tune with an SME.
“With this on-demand switch platform, you can start from any throughput level required today . . . and scale on-demand up to 4Gb,” says Nir Ilani, Radware’s director of product marketing for application delivery. “What this means for the customer is not over-spending on their application delivery solution. If you are running an SME and you have a specific throughput capacity requirement, and you project next year or the year after you will need twice the capacity, then you [normally] have to buy up to a higher-end device to address the higher capacity. What we are offering is to pay for the capacity you normally need. You do not need to replace the device, you do not even need to restart or reboot the device—you add exactly what you need.”
Ilani says this “pay as you grow” model is entirely unique in WAN optimization appliances and multi-LAN switches, which can often be cost-prohibitive, and provide more capacity than an SME needs.
“As organizations move more and more processes and services to their networks, it makes sense to systematize WAN performance management and optimization,” says Charles King, an analyst with Pund-IT.
King advises a careful analysis of the cost and benefits but says the trend is that SMEs are relying even more heavily on networks in recent years, especially in cases where applications and services are leveraged over the Web and become critical to all business operations. King says an SME should ask some tough questions about application performance: What performance does the SME really need to be competitive? How does current performance compare to the new WAN-optimized performance, and what will be the clear benefits? Does the SME have a roadmap for future application services?
Ilani says the strategic planning issue is an interesting one for an SME. It is a definite need, but a larger enterprise often has an entire team of strategic planners who carefully determine the network performance requirements for future growth. In an SME, sometimes the staff members are so over-taxed that the primary concerns of network backups and storage allocations are all-consuming.
“Pay as you grow [scalability] enables an SME to overcome capacity planning challenges,” says Ilani. “They do not need to plan several years ahead and [have] one side of the company pay more for what they need or a solution that sooner or later does not have the capacity; instead, they get exactly what they need. For smaller companies, the value they are getting is greater because for a smaller business they do not have capacity planning and strategic planning teams. They do not need to plan ahead as much.”
SME Benefits, Enterprise Performance
Ilani says another major benefit for an SME has to do with transactions per second. Often, smaller companies find that they do business online more than expected, and the OnDemand Switch provides not only fast processing for a large number of transactions but processes the transactions that do occur much faster. For example, a company that sells many products online through e-commerce may find that the transactions for the Web processing occur faster and do not slow the customer experience.
“The amount of transactions can get heavy quickly,” says Ilani. “Response time to this factor directly translates to the bottom-line quality of the experience. When the SME accesses a business service or application, they expect it to be highly available but also to perform very well.”
Ilani equated this concept to buying a Ferrari engine—you know the performance is there, and the OnDemand Switch can accommodate fast transactions based on the licensing level you set.
One last major benefit to an SME that Ilani mentions is that the product has a long shelf life, and the company is committed to the OnDemand Switch as a go-to device for an SME. In an IT industry where products appear overnight from small companies and then disappear as quickly as they emerged, Ilani says customers can rely on the OnDemand Switch for years to come.
Extra Features & Functions
Ilani says the OnDemand Switch includes Radware’s AppDirector software, a tool that is often sold as a separate utility and a major benefit for those that need a view into network performance.
“AppDirector provides the full feature set of advanced application delivery controllers [and] provides local load balancing, which includes self monitoring for standard protocols and for specific application protocols, modifications, and traffic redirection,” says Ilani. “The ability to load balance is great for customers with two or more data centers [that] need high availability and quality of experience for apps deployed in different locations. Global load balancing provides transaction completion for all users for all applications at all times, for DNS resolution and non-DNS resolution and legacy applications.”
Ilani also mentions multilayered security benefits, such as intrusion detection, protection against denial-of-service attacks, and behavioral protection that uses signatures and watches for unusual transactions.