Optimisation and decentralisation

Nigel Pink reiterates the need for visibility and control across a decentralised network

Companies are spreading their business-critical applications across central and remote locations, and moving from hub-and-spoke networking to spoke-and-spoke networking. This is a market opportunity for those in the channel.

Going spoke to spoke presents particular challenges. These relate to control, business continuity and application performance. Companies no longer have a central office managing applications flowing around the network, presenting a security threat and straining the network.

Strain can lead to jitter, slow application response times and overall application failure.

VARs, of course, can provide businesses with the tools to monitor and control application traffic; for example, with WAN optimisation, allowing prioritisation of network traffic.

WAN optimisation provides visibility and control, which VARs can offer wrapped into their own professional services. Through increased intelligence and management information, VARs, I believe, can market their services at a premium rate.

The need for control and security will continue to grow as well, I believe.

Nigel Pink is vice president and general manager for the UK and Ireland at Ipanema Technologies