WAN Becomes Top of Mind for CIOs

In a panel discussion about optimizing wide-area network (WAN) investments to support global operations, senior IT executives confirmed that there is growing interest from C-level executives regarding the health of the WAN today and the options for managing this important resource in the future.

The panel, recently hosted in San Jose, California by NTT America, a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT Communications Corp., and Riverbed Technology agreed that, as companies with a global footprint look to improve and expand their operations, increasing importance is placed on WAN performance and optimization. C-level executives are viewing the WAN as a strategic platform from which new business processes and strategies can be generated.

Comprised of senior executives in the high-technology, financial and manufacturing industries, the panel also discussed how key business developments, such as global collaboration and real-time transaction processing, have elevated the importance of the WAN as it both supports current operations and enables new, more innovative and cost-effective revenue-generating business practices.

“Advanced technologies and applications require a strong network to support a successful global business. WAN optimization is a critical factor in enabling speed, increased employee productivity and business continuity and agility,” said Randy Schirman, vice president of Service Provider Sales at Riverbed. “We’re hearing across the board from CIOs of global organizations that WAN optimization is being recognized as adding value at the strategic, operational, financial and technical level.”

NTT America and Riverbed have worked closely to bring WAN optimization to global organizations as a managed service. NTT America’s Managed WPA (WAN Performance Accelerator) service, based on Riverbed WAN optimization, provides multi-national and regional businesses with LAN-like access to data and applications for users in branch offices, regardless of their location. The service performance enables cost savings through reductions in both opex and capex, as enterprises are able to optimize their bandwidth usage while consolidating their IT infrastructure and reducing IT complexity and overhead. In addition, the managed service acceleration helps ensure business continuity through improved backup and replication processes, and it also improves staff productivity and real-time collaboration.

“Our customers view global networks as critical infrastructure in their corporate technology arsenal,” said Stephen Bloom, Vice President of Business Development for NTT America. “Optimizing WAN investments creates a strategic platform for our customers to support their operations in Asia Pacific and beyond, and we provide them with the network, data center, and IP backbone services they need to grow and efficiently run their business.”

Following are additional panel findings regarding the current state of WANs and the emerging best practices to maximize the return-on-investment from those networks:

Operational Impact

• Re-establishing WAN Competencies: Many organizations recognize that core competencies in managing the WAN infrastructure are critical for IT organizations, in order to better partner with managed service and outsourcing providers.
• Managing Complexity: There was intense interest in finding ways to manage WAN environments, as well as in finding ‘prime-contractor’ network service providers that can offer a single point of contact when multiple networks are involved.
• Consistency of Quality: The great variance in the quality of networks around the world – particularly in the Asia-Pacific region – has created interest in the role WAN optimization technologies can play in leveling out performance across global and regional infrastructures.

Financial Justification

• CAPEX-to-OPEX Shift: Organizations are looking for IT strategies – and particularly WAN solutions – that transfer technology assets from the CAPEX to OPEX side of the balance sheet, helping them preserve capital.
• WAN Optimization: Attendees expressed interest in how to get more out of existing WAN investments through WAN management and optimization.
• Risk-Based Investment Assessments: Organizations are justifying new investments based on the ‘negative consequences’ of ignoring or avoiding the support of existing operations or the launch of new technology initiatives.
• Business Metrics Trump Technical Measures: All investments are being held to business – rather than strictly technical – performance standards, so WAN investments need to be more closely tied to the business benefits delivered to revenue-generating activities.

Technological Areas of Interest

• New Enterprise Technologies: WAN performance plays a critical role as applications increasingly reside in a central location, far from end-users; the issue of latency is increasingly seen as a strategic technical issue that needs to be proactively addressed.
• Managed Services: The growing role of managed services from network providers will require extremely high levels of interaction between services providers and enterprises that see the WAN as a strategic resource.
• WAN Optimization: The role of WAN optimization technologies will emerge as both an investment protection tool and risk mitigation resource; there is significant interest in how advances in compression technologies can interact with application optimization technologies.