Foundry, Cisco, Juniper, Citrix challenged to a face-off, Part 2

Wide Area Networking This newsletter is sponsored by Meru Networks Get Up to Speed on the Latest in WLANs Easily stay on top of the latest developments and issues in WLAN technology, standards, security, telephony, management and more with Network World's latest Executive Guide, "Keeping Up With the Wireless Whirlwind." Click here to download! Network World's Wide Area Networking Newsletter, 08/16/07 Foundry, Cisco, Juniper, Citrix challenged to a face-off, Part 2 By Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler As mentioned in the prior newsletter, Layland Consulting and Webtorials have produced the 2007 Application Delivery Challenge, featuring products from Foundry, Cisco, Juniper and Citrix. As a part of the challenge, it is assumed that there are certain “table stakes” capabilities that must be delivered. In particular, one assumes that, as mentioned in the introduction of the challenge: * “The application owners want high availability. When one of their servers goes down they want the application switch to seamlessly move the traffic to the other servers.” Get Up to Speed on the Latest in WLANs Easily stay on top of the latest developments and issues in WLAN technology, standards, security, telephony, management and more with Network World's latest Executive Guide, "Keeping Up With the Wireless Whirlwind." Click here to download! * “The end users just want the application switch to make their application appear as if it is always there. When their server goes down, they don’t want to know about it, they expect the application switch to quickly and seamlessly move them to another one.” * “Security people want to know that no one, except themselves and maybe a select few, can access and configure the application switch. Since it plays a critical role in directing application traffic, any solution needs to be hardened against hackers.” * “The people who maintain the building would for once like something that does not turn the building into a sauna.” * And, needless to say, there’s an even longer wish list from the networking crowd. As a part of delivering on this set of needs, the resulting products each have, as a minimum, according to Robin Layland, “server and appliance load balancing, server and appliance awareness, server off-loading, security, and application acceleration.” Of course, the level of acceleration is somewhat limited because, as mentioned in the prior newsletter, these appliances are asymmetrical products that are placed in the data center as opposed to symmetrical products designed primarily for acceleration. As Robin points out, the focus here is on what makes each product “better” as opposed to a generic “application delivery appliances are good” marketing pitch. He states: “I did not ask [the vendors] to spend time talking about common features. If they don’t spend time on a capability or feature that I mentioned above that doesn’t mean they don’t have it. Rather, it just means that they do not think it is the capability that differentiates them from the others in the challenge.” The written portion of the challenge is available now at Webtorials. This will be followed in a few weeks by a series of on-demand Webtorials in which Robin interviews each of the participating vendors.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

TODAY'S MOST-READ STORIES: 1. Verizon vs. the Needham Fire Department 2. Microsoft's super bundle of security patches 3. 10 claims that scare security pros 4. Citrix acquires XenSource in a $500M deal 5. Nude publisher Perfect 10 sues Microsoft 6. Cool chips promise more powerful computers 7. Facebook users easy identity theft targets 8. SCO claim to Unix dead in the water 9. VMware IPO flies out of the gate 10. Rove quits to spend more time with iPhone MOST-READ REVIEW: WAN acceleration offers huge payoff

Contact the author: Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. For more detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter, connect to Webtorials, the premier site for Web-based educational presentations, white papers, and market research. Taylor can be reached at taylor@webtorials.com Jim Metzler is the Vice President of Ashton, Metzler & Associates, a consulting organization that focuses on leveraging technology for business success. Jim assists vendors to refine product strategies, service providers to deploy technologies and services, and enterprises evolve their network infrastructure. He can be reached via e-mail. This newsletter is sponsored by Meru Networks Get Up to Speed on the Latest in WLANs Easily stay on top of the latest developments and issues in WLAN technology, standards, security, telephony, management and more with Network World's latest Executive Guide, "Keeping Up With the Wireless Whirlwind." Click here to download! ARCHIVE Archive of the Wide Area Networking Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007