Datasheet
4
Web-Enabling Business Operations
Similar resource proliferation is occurring in the data center, though for different reasons.
• As the Internet became a strategic corporate productivity tool, IT execs added a “Web
tier” that initially consisted of Web servers in front of their centralized application
servers to support Web-based versions of their business applications. These Web-
based applications not only provided universal access to all employees, they also
reduced costs by centralizing operations and eliminating the need to install and support
client software on individual user desktops.
• As dependence on these Web-enabled applications grew, however, the Web tier
expanded to include server load balancers (SLBs), SSL accelerators, cache appliances,
authentication servers, and other equipment to keep the applications running smoothly
for the swelling ranks of users.
• With each successive Web application deployment, complexity grew, driving up costs
and impacting performance. Management became difficult, and the initial benefits of
Web-based applications—universal access, centralized maintenance, and support—
were compromised.
Data Center Consolidation and Application Acceleration
On the heels of these changes, IT is now being tasked with a number of new initiatives to
curb costs and regain control over the ever-expanding enterprise.
To satisfy this objective, many organizations are eliminating their distributed branch office
data centers and centralizing servers in one or two locations. This centralization saves
considerable cost by reducing the number of servers required to support the workforce,
eliminating the need for local IT personnel, and simplifying system management.
Unfortunately, these solutions also subject the distributed enterprise to even greater
stress by forcing application sessions to run over notoriously slow wide area links. The
result is poor application performance and response times for remote, mobile, and branch
office users – the very problem the distributed data centers were designed to avoid.
In short, data center consolidation and server centralization has presented IT managers
with a whole new set of challenges, including:
• WAN Capacity: WAN links offer limited bandwidth, and this is a considerable handicap
as users attempt to send more rich content across the distributed enterprise. Web-
enabling conventional applications exacerbates the problem by consuming at least
10 times more bandwidth than traditional client/server applications. New application
rollouts—inevitable in any large organization—consume even more. With the pressure on
to constrain costs, IT managers can’t expect to buy their way out of this problem with
additional bandwidth.
• Latency: Latency is the silent killer of applications. Chatty protocols such as TCP,
HTTP, and HTTPS, as well as delay-sensitive solutions such as VoIP and the protocols
used by applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft file services, are
significantly impacted by even modest latency on wide area links. The result is poor
response times for users.
• Availability: Without a connection to the data center and the rest of the enterprise, work
simply stops. Creating an application-fluent infrastructure that understands the content
and transactions at Layers 4 through 7 is an absolute necessity to delivering transaction
completeness. Equally necessary in the always-on workplace are multiple paths connecting
branch oce and remote users to ensure business processes continue uninterrupted.