With companies increasingly relying on the web to run
their businesses, there is growing pressure on the server
infrastructures that they use, with performance degradation
becoming a wider problem. An average company in the top 100 is
probably using about 1,000 unique applications and, since most
applications are expected to be considered for web-based working at
some time, performance is an issue that has to be
addressed.
For the Computer Weekly/Redline Networks Survey, 500 senior IT
staff - including managers, directors and project leaders - were
questioned as to what progress their organisation had made in its
drive to web-enable the business. Of the companies polled 70%
employed more than 1,500 people.
When asked when their firms planned to make business
applications available through the web to employees, almost 50%
said they already did so, and 20% said they would do so by the end
of 2005.
But although the adoption of web-based applications is clearly
becoming popular, almost 25% of firms said they had no plans to use
them.
Of those that were keen on the idea, 31% said they would make
applications available to workers through an intranet, 54% would
use the internet, and 24% would provide access through an
extranet.
When asked why companies use web applications, 73% said it was
because it made their organisations more flexible and 54% because
it made the management of legacy systems easier. In addition, 50%
of respondents said it helped them to cut computing costs, 44% said
it made them more responsive to customers, and 43% said it boosted
employee productivity.
When asked which applications should be made available through
the web, companies listed databases (78%), customer relationship
management (53%), and enterprise resource planning(36%). Security
factors topped the list of deterrents to using web application
services at 27% and 19% of respondents cited management culture and
current practices.
Integration difficulties were seen as a deterrent by 13%, and
12% said the lack of available bandwidth was a factor. Cost of
implementation and maintenance was cited by 10%.
When firms had to list the strategies they could adopt to
improve the performance of web applications, 71% said increased
network bandwidth was the answer, while 53% said more storage
capacity would help.
About 41% said they needed faster processors and 29% wanted
storage management software.
When staff connect to the company network via wireless
technology for business applications, 86% of firms said they
expected users to do so in order to access e-mail and 64% said
access to the web was a main reason. Also, when using wireless, 55%
said access to a database was common, and 25% said CRM was too,
with 17% connecting for access to ERP services.
On the security of web-based applications, 45% said they were
"very concerned", and 44% were "fairly concerned". Only 9% said
they were "not very concerned".
The key considerations for firms using web-based technologies
for accessing business applications over the next 12 months were
security (58%), speed and performance (16%), ease of use (11%), and
reliability (10%).
About 80% of firms said they managed their network applications
internally, and only 16% had outsourced them.
One increasingly popular solution to the challenge posed by
web-enabling the enterprise is web acceleration technology, which
can be used to improve the performance of web servers for online
customers and/or to make business-critical applications available
to employees.
Steve Broadhead, a director at Broadband Testing, which analyses
network infrastructure systems, confirms the importance of web
acceleration systems.
"There are banks, for instance, with many of thousands of
employees, which are suffering from 30-second response times when
it comes to accessing applications such as an Oracle database," he
says. "As a result, they are spending millions on extra hardware
and software to speed up the process."
Paul Gracie, European sales director of Redline Networks, which
sells web acceleration products, says, "The survey reflects what we
are seeing in the market. And while the majority of our clients
have some browser/ web-based applications deployed, within the next
two or three years they anticipate they will have more than 75% of
their applications accessed via a browser front-end."
Gracie said, "Many firms are looking at the traditional response
to adding new feature-rich web applications by negotiating with
their bandwidth provider for more bandwidth, which can prove
expensive.
"A major challenge for companies in the web acceleration market
is to educate customers about the alternatives to bandwidth
provision, such as using intelligent caching, HTTP compression and
TCP connection management."
Peter Christy, an analyst at NetsEdge Research Group, says, "As
the internet increases in importance, the value of web acceleration
grows.
"It is increasingly clear that neither simple over-provisioning
of server capacity nor dependence on brute force delivery [through
more bandwidth] is the smart way of addressing the issues,
especially considering the compounding complexity and operational
burden when more servers or systems are added."
Mark Fabbi, an analyst at Gartner, says, "The combination of
connection management and compression significantly reduces server
processes, delivering improved performance to end-users and reduced
bandwidth use."
Fabbi said worldwide sales of web acceleration technology were
about £300m last year. There are a number of players in the market,
usually offering a combination of specialist software products
running on dedicated appliances.
As well as niche players such as F5, Redline, Radware, and
NetScaler, the likes of Cisco and Nortel are also active.
Typically, a web acceleration appliance will sit between an
enterprise’s security firewall and its applications to provide a
more efficient data processing and security platform.
F5’s main product is Big-IP, which supports data traffic
management software such as data compression, load balancing and
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security acceleration on a single
appliance.
New features in the recently launched Version 9 of the product
include "rate shaping" capabilities, which are designed to deliver
appropriate bandwidth to high priority applications.
Big-IP Version 9 runs on a range of appliances. Redline’s E/X
and T/X appliance ranges offload processing power from application
and web servers to deliver the required increased performance.
Redline’s 3G Cache software tool, which combines with other
tools, frequently offloads used data from servers to speed up
overall data processing. The 3G Cache software operates on
Redline’s E/X 3250 appliance.
A Butler Group Technology report found that, "Any organisation
that offers web-based services to customers, particularly via
standard enterprise applications such as PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel
and Lotus iNotes, could benefit significantly from web
acceleration."
Alan Rodger, Butler analyst and author, of the report, said,
"Web-based application architectures have a number of inherent
vulnerabilities, which have commonly been addressed by numerous
individual solutions.
"Web acceleration technology [providing key functions on a
single platform] can reduce the burden on web servers and security
servers, reduce bandwidth requirements, increase security, and
enhance application performance and flexibility," he said.
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John Lewis speeds up applications and cuts bandwidth
costs
John Lewis Partnership is using Redline Networks’ T/X enterprise
application processor to improve the performance and availability
of its customer service applications.
The product is being used to decrease connection times and
increase performance between the company’s shops and head office
and to reduce bandwidth costs by £30,000 a year.
John Lewis found its existing network infrastructure was having
problems coping with rising demand for its customer service
applications.
With new functionality being added, the company was looking for
a product to improve the performance of its web-based support
applications. It looked at appliance-based compression products
from Packeteer and XCache, as well as server-based software
alternatives.
John Lewis chose Redline - via its integrator Azzurri Networks -
because of its "ease of integration and unique platform".
Redline enterprise application processors were put between the
existing load-balancing and datacentre equipment, which included
Apache web servers.
Mark Denyer, network technical manager at John Lewis, said, "In
terms of implementation, this was quick and straightforward. Once
the Redline systems were turned on, we saw an immediate and
significant reduction in Wan traffic and faster response
times."
Denyer said, "Our bandwidth usage graphs show a clear reduction
in bandwidth used following the Redline implementation, and this
has resulted in savings of £30,000 a year. And as we have rolled
this out to all our branches, many users have commented on the
performance improvements."
John Lewis also says it is saving about 3Gbytes of bandwidth
data per day by using the Redline appliances.