In early June, I had the pleasure of meeting with Riverbed Networks, a WAN optimization provider (www.riverbed.com). Why would Lopez Research, a mobility-oriented research company, meet with WAN optimization vendor? Simply put, WAN optimization has moved beyond accelerating applications between the headquarters and the branch office. I met with Alan Saldich, VP of marketing and the first employee of Riverbed, to discuss mobile WAN optimization. Mobile WAN optimization basically performs the same function as traditional WAN Optimization but in a mobile environment. For example, it provides better application performance to laptop users by increasing throughput and decreasing latency.

While Riverbed has been selling mobile WAN optimization for over two years, companies are just starting to realize the benefits of Mobile WAN optimization. One reason for this is that mobile usage is expanding beyond the top 10-15% of a company’s employees, which comprised road warriors and the top executive class, to a broader base of employees and partners. Companies are now mobilizing employees that occasionally work at home, traveling employees, and contractors. This expansion has raised communications costs, increased help desk support calls and has made mobile WAN optimization more interesting.

Riverbed’s mobile solution, called Steelhead Mobile, works by interacting directly with any Steelhead appliance to optimize applications. A firm needs to purchase at least one Steelhead Mobile Controller (SMC) and Steelhead Mobile licenses to use the service. The good news is that it appears seamless to the end user since no changes are required to applications and IT managers do not need to make any changes to routers, VPN infrastructure, SSL/HTTPS servers etc. The licensing structure is concurrent use, which means you don’t need to buy a license for every employee. This saves the customer money by allowing them to repurpose the licenses to those employees that are mobile.

Firms are using Mobile WAN optimization today to improve the performance of collaboration apps like Sharepoint as well as bandwidth intensive apps like CAD/CAM drawings. Dudek, an environmental consulting firm, has recently deployed Steelhead Mobile to accelerate Outlook, AutoCAD, SQL databases and file-shares for its employees that travel to remote job sites. During its evaluation, Dudek experienced a 60-80% WAN traffic data reduction, and as much as 95% for specific data types.

While I was there we discussed the numerous announcements Riverbed has made in the past 6-8 months. In January, Riverbed acquired Mazu Networks to add application performance analysis to its offerings, allowing enterprises and carriers to measure the benefits of WAN optimization. As you know, the ability to quantify your value is critical in today’s sales cycle. The company was also part of the HP ProCurve alliance that was launched in February. In addition, it also licensed Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for integration on the Riverbed Steelhead appliance through the Riverbed Services Platform (RSP). Overall, it was a busy few months for Riverbed.
LOPEZ RESEARCH’S TAKE:
Given the projected growth of bandwidth and latency intensive apps like collaboration and video, firms that are using WAN optimization should also look to extend these services to mobile laptops. Going forward, smart phones and netbooks will be performing many of the same functions as laptops. While the form factor is not the ideal size, firms are beginning to use bandwidth intensive and latency sensitive apps over smart phones. For example, firms are downloading Webex for the iPhone and video will be one of the next apps to hit mobile devices. Lopez Research believes WAN optimization vendors should extend clients to smaller form factors like smart phones and netbooks. This means companies like Riverbed will have to extend support beyond the Window’s operating system to Mac OS, Symbian and RIM platforms.