NetScaler Makes Acceleration of 'Any Application to Anyone, Anywhere' a Reality for Enterprise Customers

Market Wire, April, 2005

NetScaler, the global leader in accelerated application delivery systems, today announced an important new product enhancement that will make it easier for Global 2000 customers to accelerate the performance of all critical business applications, regardless of protocol, client type or user location. The new technology will enable enterprises to boost the performance of both web and non-web applications, without requiring network administrators to have knowledge of either the applications or the users connecting to them. Unlike products that accelerate only simple web applications or are limited to users in certain offices, NetScaler is the only solution on the market that can accelerate the performance of "any application, to any user, anywhere" by up to 5x or more(1).

Trends such as data center consolidation and the geographical dispersion of users have negatively impacted application performance, leading to a spike in demand for products that speed the secure delivery of critical applications to users around the world. While numerous products have appeared on the market to address this problem, most focus on accelerating only simple web applications or enhancing the speed of selected users in a controlled WAN environment. This ignores the reality that complex modern enterprise applications, even those with web front ends, use a variety of behind-the-scenes protocols, and are accessed from a wide range of locations. Competing products do not ease the delays caused by overloaded middleware and database systems, which are often a substantial contributor to slow application performance.

NetScaler was the first solution on the market to break this barrier by combining traditional load balancing with state-of-the-art application acceleration in a single, tightly-integrated networking device. With today's announcement, NetScaler raises the bar for application delivery once again with a powerful new technology called AppTune. Using AppTune, network administrators can quickly fine-tune the configuration of their NetScaler systems to match the unique attributes of each application they support. This additional tuning ensures the fastest possible delivery of all applications, regardless of protocol, client type or user location.

Product Highlights

The new NetScaler AppTune technology makes it easier for enterprises to break through application performance barriers by leveraging NetScaler's industry-leading acceleration and security capabilities and intelligently applying them to specific application traffic types. Key product highlights include:

--  Broad Range of Supported Applications.  Accessed through a GUI-based
    console, administrators will be able to select from a large inventory of
    today's most popular and widely deployed enterprise applications,
    including: ERP, CRM, SFA, e-mail, office productivity, file processing,
    terminal services and portals, as well as selected vertical industry
    applications.

--  Automatic Performance Tuning Recommendations.  For each selected
    application, AppTune will automatically generate recommended settings
    designed to further accelerate performance for that particular application.
    Administrators may view the recommended configuration additions before
    applying them, to make any desired changes. This capability will be
    especially useful for network administrators who understand network-layer
    traffic, but may be unfamiliar with the application-specific configurations
    required to fully optimize the performance of any given application.

--  Support for All Clients and All User Locations.  In addition to
    accelerating traffic to standard browsers running on a PC, NetScaler's
    unique acceleration benefits apply to virtually all application client
    types. Unlike competing solutions, NetScaler can accelerate performance for
    users accessing applications via full rich clients (like Microsoft
    Outlook), non-web thin clients (such as those launched by popular
    enterprise applications like Oracle, SAP and Siebel) and even mobile
    clients (such as the Pocket PC). NetScaler's acceleration benefits apply to
    all users, regardless of whether they are located on a local network (LAN),
    a wide area network (WAN) or a remote location not controlled by their
    employer.
    

"Traditional network devices have been 'application aware' at best. To ensure the optimal performance, security and predictability of new application deployments, enterprises must invest in next-generation solutions that enable a far more 'application fluent' network architecture," said Mark Fabbi, vice president of enterprise communications, Gartner. "Application delivery solutions that understand how to intelligently apply policies to specific application types will be more quickly adopted by enterprises and will be in the best position to gain market share in this important and rapidly growing market."

"Enterprises spent the last decade or so building out their infrastructure with basic components to interconnect networks," said B.V. Jagadeesh, president and CEO of NetScaler. "Today, these same businesses are making purchase decisions on the next wave of core infrastructure solutions based on the behaviors of the applications traveling across those networks. Technology designed from the ground up to deliver on the vision of these forward-thinking global enterprises will be best positioned to be the next dominant leader in networking."