Today’s network provides an information and multimedia conduit handling a wide range of critical business applications to facilitate many aspects of business processes. This increased integration of business processes with networks puts extensive demands on network-based services such as WAN optimization. Such demands increase the need for WAN optimization services that can be deployed with flexibility to meet the requirements of the dynamic applications of today, with scalability to increase performance for constantly expanding enterprises and with agility and availability to meet the on-demand and resiliency requirements. In addition, certain trends in the market are demanding a new type of network services handling. One example is cloud services, for which a WAN optimization solution is needed to intelligently pool and provision resources elastically in a simplified manner with better manageability for enterprise wide deployments. Furthermore, “bring your own device†(BYOD) computing in the workplace has become an expectation for many consumers. BYOD requires more than enabling people to move place to place with a device; it also requires the capability to deliver critical applications such as email and web connection (with some devices connected through virtual desktop infrastructure [VDI]) efficiently while maintaining the expected user experience. Generally, these trends require more bandwidth in the branch office and require the capability to rapidly and transparently add data center WAN optimization at the headend to meet that demand.
