Blue Coat Research Report Sample

The key question is not if you should implement an acceleration solution but whose acceleration solution to use. The acceleration and optimization market has matured over the last few years with clear market leaders emerging. Just as vendors have matured, the key issues in selecting a vendor have also changed. The focus has generally been on which vendor could optimize Microsoft's CIFS protocol and HTTP/Web applications.

Acceleration focused first on solving the branch office problem but not all workers are in the branch office. Mobile workers or telecommuters have an even greater need for acceleration since they are often connected by lower bandwidth links. Vendors are increasingly providing acceleration solutions for Windows PC. Like any solution for a PC the solution needs to address how it fits into the existing support, maintenance and security schemes.

Consolidating servers from the branch office to the data center makes economic sense. Some of the administrative functions provided by the local server are still best kept local such as local print, DHCP, Active Directory and DNS.