WAN Optimization Software Increases ROI

In this case study, a global media company deployed Certeon’s aCelera™ Virtual Appliance software to reduce its application response time over the WAN and dramatically increase their ROI.

As more and more enterprises invest in virtualization and cloud computing environments, the network infrastructure for delivering these services to remote office workers becomes a critical success factor. As cost-saving consolidation efforts are being deployed in data centers and branch offices, business managers cannot depend on business as usual when it comes to underlying wide area network (WAN) performance and scalability. Enterprises require agile, cost-efficient, high performance, and scalable WAN infrastructures to support distributed virtualized and cloud computing environments, or else they won't perform or deliver the cost savings as intended.

This is what a global media company (aka Media Co) discovered when deploying a virtualized Web-based enterprise content management (ECM) application over the WAN using Microsoft® Office SharePoint Server® (MOSS) and VMware® ESX. Media Co had made a strategic decision to embrace a virtualization strategy with VMware and a significant investment in MOSS for ECM and Web-based collaboration.

It is typical for MOSS users to be geographically distributed, working remotely either in small branch offices or from home. MOSS allows remote developers to connect to distributed MOSS content and applications and to perform all operations remotely; however, WAN latency can slow application response time when operations are performed that modify and transfer files across the WAN. This can result in lost productivity and higher development costs.

Media Co turned to Certeon and its aCelera Virtual Appliance software to address WAN performance limitations and reduce its network infrastructure costs between its New York-based data center and London and Singapore branch offices. aCelera software runs on industry-standard servers and combines application acceleration with virtualization, thus leveraging the existing virtualization investment and eliminating the high cost of other proprietary, single-purpose WAN optimization hardware appliances.

Media Co's Results
Media Co's evaluation of aCelera in its own environment delivered economic benefits that were outstanding. With aCelera, Media Co could realize capital and operations savings, but more important, it was able to quantify the return on investment (ROI) from increased remote worker productivity.

Certeon's aCelera software seamlessly resided as a part of the WAN between Media Co's New York data center and the remote offices in London and Singapore. aCelera mitigated the negative effects of the WAN on file access and, as a result, increased user productivity and decreased capital and operations costs. With aCelera software, the MOSS remote file download times from New York to London were reduced on average by 96% and the New York to Singapore download times by 95%. In addition, Media Co calculated that aCelera, at the rate of performance improvement for 5,000 users, would generate an average of 77% bandwidth savings for the MOSS deployment alone over a time period of one to three years.

Figure 1. Media Co estimated a $23 million savings over three years after deploying aCelera virtual appliance software.

The ROI calculations looked at the maximum performance benefits achieved using aCelera software and showed a potential savings from reduced capital and operations costs and increased employee productivity (as a result of 16 minutes a week of saved time) of $7.7 million in the first year of production. They also estimated a savings of $23 million over three years (See Figure 1) and a breakeven of less than two months after the deployment of Certeon's aCelera software (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Media Co ROI results after deploying aCelera Virtual Appliance software.

aCelera Virtual Appliance Software
Certeon's aCelera software represents the latest technology and packaging advances in the industry. These advances, combined with value-based pricing, performance, scalability, end-to-end security, and auditability, are impossible to achieve with proprietary hardware architectures. Consequently, aCelera software is widely deployed within the U.S. government and military and Fortune 1000 companies.

aCelera software is a virtual appliance for WAN optimization and application acceleration, improving application response times and reducing network bandwidth consumption by more than 95%. aCelera also leverages the scalability benefits of virtual machine architectures. In a recent independent test performed by The Tolly Group,[1] aCelera achieved 50% more concurrent accelerated connections when compared with competitive hardware appliance offerings. Certeon's cost analysis of aCelera running on industry-standard servers against equivalent configurations of competitive hardware appliances demonstrated aCelera delivering a 68% savings over its competition when supporting equal numbers of concurrent accelerated connections. aCelera's patented Stream Based Differencing, single instance store, and Layer 7 application acceleration blueprints enable it to achieve this leading performance and scalability using a more cost-effective server footprint.

aCelera is virtual machine operating system agnostic and supports VMware® ESX/ESXi and Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V^TM. Virtualization is core to aCelera's agility, enabling it to leverage dynamic virtual machine resource allocation and sharing, storage independence, high availability, load balancing, and connection brokering. Unlike proprietary hardware appliances, aCelera can be deployed on an enterprise's existing industry-standard servers and provisioned and managed centrally without the need to ship additional boxes or technicians around the world. Certeon also offers an aCelera Sync software solution for disaster recovery environments that significantly reduces backup and replication times over the WAN.

Because aCelera software runs on existing server hardware and leverages the economies of virtualization, it can save more than 60% in networking capital and operations total cost of ownership (TCO) when compared with proprietary hardware WAN optimization offerings. These cost savings include reductions in hardware acquisition, network bandwidth, and management resources.

Summary

Certeon's aCelera software is a critical component within an enterprise's infrastructure, whether it is adopting virtualization, cloud computing, or maintaining more traditional distributed computing environments. aCelera software reduces application response time over the WAN by more than 95%. aCelera performance scales linearly as more server resources are added and supports up to 50% more concurrent accelerated connections than exist with "closed" proprietary hardware appliances. Enterprises and managed service providers can save more than 60% in network infrastructure TCO when deploying aCelera software. aCelera software accelerates application delivery, scales the number of applications available to remote users, and reduces cost, ensuring greater user productivity and increased ROI.

Quote:  Global Media Co saw an improvement in MOSS remote access performance, resulting in a $7.7 million savings in the first year and a breakeven on its investment in aCelera software after just two months.

[1] Tolly Test Report #209129, Certeon aCelera Virtual Appliance Software, The Tolly Group, October 2009.