Best Practice Deployment of Acceleration Solutions Based on ROI

We've all heard a customer service representative say something like: "I'm sorry, my computer is really slow today." Those of us who live and breathe technology know it's typically not the desktop that's hindering performance, though it's not really appropriate to delve into the issue on a support call. After all, we want the same thing the customer service representative wants - a swift resolution as soon as possible so we can get off the phone.

Data center consolidation, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing, and the webification of critical business applications like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have created more mobile and remote office users - the net result of which is the increasingly pressing challenge facing IT architects to deliver secure and optimized access to applications. To address the many variations in architecture and organization-specific needs, a flexible solution is needed to speed application delivery, secure remote access, and WAN optimization.

The ROI Equation

Return on Investment (ROI) for an acceleration solution can be calculated based on a number of factors, some "harder" than others. The most significant factor that can be specifically measured is the reduction in bandwidth utilization over WAN links, which often translates directly to financial savings based on dollars per megabit of data traversing the link on a monthly basis. By reducing the amount of data traversing a WAN link - whether deploying a solution that is asymmetric, symmetric, or a combination of both - the reduction in cost can quickly pay for the investment in an acceleration solution.

A "softer" savings calculation can be achieved through measuring the impact on productivity based on the user experience. For example, if a customer service representative is physically limited to serving only 10 customers per hour, due to the performance of an application and not their "slow computer," and is subsequently able to serve 20 customers per hour after an acceleration solution is deployed, productivity has significantly increased. The actual savings may be seen in the ability to delay additional hiring, or as an increase in customer satisfaction that translates to potentially averting the cost of attempting to win back a lost customer. Regardless of the method of measuring the savings, the impact of improving the user experience by deploying an acceleration solution should easily pay for itself over a short period of time.

Factors that should be considering when determining the ROI of any acceleration solution:

• Improving application performance across the WAN accelerates adoption of new applications and increases end-user productivity
• Decreasing variable burst costs associated with Content Delivery Network (CDN) services
• Flexibility of deployment reduces ongoing maintenance costs while maintaining higher end-user satisfaction with application performance
• Ability to accelerate SSL-encrypted application traffic improves security while increasing application performance
• Improving existing server capacity eliminates the need to expand data centers and reduces power and cooling costs
• Decrease in bandwidth utilization improves efficiency of existing capacity and may alleviate the need for expanded capacity

Both asymmetric and symmetric acceleration solutions offer a good return on investment, but in order to maximize your return on investment, it is important to examine each type of solution to align the capabilities and benefits of a particular solution with the needs of your organization.

Asymmetric Acceleration

Asymmetric acceleration used to be referred to as just "acceleration"--but that was before symmetric acceleration appeared on the scene. Asymmetric acceleration uses a single device to accelerate and reduce traffic across the network, particularly across WAN and public networks where bandwidth capacity and transfer speed cannot necessarily be controlled.

Asymmetric acceleration solutions, including web acceleration, do not require the deployment of point solutions to every small remote office. This makes it an ideal solution for improving the user experience and reducing traffic for customers and remote users of corporate applications alike.

Asymmetric acceleration solutions use a combination of protocol-level optimizations and application layer acceleration techniques such as compression and intelligent, dynamic caching to improve the overall performance of applications when delivered over WAN links and public networks. Additionally, significant advances in technology have been made that reduce or eliminate unnecessary traffic as well as compress data destined for the web browser. These advances provide the first level of relief for an organization's overbudened WAN links and can often reduce utilization enough to allow all remote locations to enjoy significantly less congestion.

Asymmetric acceleration solutions also tend to have a significant impact on the application infrastructure by increasing server capacity through offloading CPU and memory-intensive operations. By offloading SSL termination, optimizing TCP/IP connections, and implementing intelligent caching in an asymmetric acceleration solution, an organization is likely to realize an increase in the capacity of individual application servers, relieving the need to purchase hardware or deploy additional instances of the application to address performance and capacity issues.

Because an asymmetric acceleration solution can support a wide variety of application and user types as well as reduce the amount of data being exchanged--and because it offers additional benefits to the application and network infrastructure - it often provides the best return on investment for an organization.

If the majority of your users are consumers or mobile, and you are primarily concerned about the performance of applications--particularly those that are web-based) - then an asymmetric acceleration solution will afford you the greatest benefits.

Symmetric Acceleration

Symmetric application solutions are most often associated with WAN Optimization Controllers (WOC), but increasingly application and web acceleration solutions which were once asymmetric only are able to be deployed in a symmetric configuration.

In general, symmetric acceleration deployments fall into two categories of use: 1) data center-to-data center data replication and 2) backup and branch office acceleration of all protocols. Accelerating and reducing the traffic on the most important WAN links is the next best return on investment after the deployment of an asymmetric solution. One of the largest consumers of bandwidth and bottlenecks for performance for many organizations is the real-time replication and backup of data. Implementing a symmetric solution for the data centers accomplishes an excellent return on investment. While costs of deployment at these central locations are small and controllable, bandwidth reduction and acceleration of business-critical functions are significant.

The acceleration of all protocols between branch offices and corporate data centers also provides a good return on investment. Acceleration of all protocols allows for improved application performance for corporate email, collaborative applications, and file sharing. Like measuring user satisfaction and productivity, however, this capability of symmetric acceleration is more difficult to measure and involves the use of "soft" savings in ROI calculations.

If the majority of your users are remote, in larger branch offices, or your largest pain point revolves around backup and replication of corporate data to a disaster recovery site, chances are that a symmetric solution will afford you the most benefits.

Conclusion

Whether you choose an asymmetric or symmetric acceleration solution to improve application performance and decrease bandwidth utilization, there are significant financial and business benefits to be gained. When evaluating a solution, it may be useful to determine whether a single solution can support both asymmetric and symmetric deployment configurations, as these types of solutions can yield increased ROI.

Solutions supporting both asymmetric and symmetric deployment options offer greater flexibility and adapt more rapidly to the volatile environment of both corporate network architectures and public networks, and will ultimately result in the greatest ROI over time. ENS

Joe Hicks is a product manager over web acceleration at F5 Networks. During his technical career at F5, Hicks has designed, implemented and done troubleshooting hundreds of large-scale IP networks in North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia for companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, eBay, and Citigroup. He can be reached at j.hicks@f5.com.