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A Modern Guide to Accelerating Web-based Application Delivery

A Modern Guide to Accelerating Web-based Application Delivery | 2 �Back to Table of Contents

Table of ConTenTs

ExEcutivE SuMMAry ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

This Ebook Describes: AccElErAtinG trEnDS ............................................................................................................................................................... 4

chAptEr 1 two Accelerating trends: Why Application Delivery Requirements are Changing ................................................................................................... 5

chAptEr 2 How Globalization and the Consumerization of IT Create New Application Delivery Challenges ...........................................................................................................................14

chAptEr 3 Why Existing Hardware and Virtual Appliance-Based Application Delivery Solutions are Unsuitable for Delivering Applications Over the Internet ............................................................................................................................................................ 20

chAptEr 4 What to Look for in an Internet-based Application Delivery Solution ................................................................. 24

chAptEr 5 Benefits of a Modern Application Delivery Solution Designed for Internet and Cloud-based Applications ............................................................................................................................... 35

chAptEr 6 Best Practices .................................................................................................................................................................................................... 38

concluSion ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 42


IT organizations increasingly rely on Internet and cloud-based technologies to support their distributed operations. This has spawned a host of new application delivery challenges that, hand-in-hand with the industry trends of globalization, growing cloud adoption, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), mean that IT often has little to no control of either end user devices, network connections, or the applications they access while remaining responsible for application delivery quality. To make matters more complex, existing hardware or appliance-based application delivery solutions, designed for networks owned and managed in-house, are often insufficient to address the unique challenges posed by Internet and mobile delivery.

Delivering enterprise applications that operate with high availability, excellent performance, and strong security to customers, employees, partners, and suppliers in a distributed environment has always been challenging.

IT organizations managing Wide Area Networks (WANs) have had to overcome network latency, bandwidth constraints, packet loss, chatty protocols and applications, and more. These challenges were traditionally addressed using technologies such as WAN Optimization Controllers (WOCs) and Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs), which evolved from earlier load balancing solutions. Unfortunately, these traditional solutions aren’t equipped to sufficiently handle the modern methods of application delivery. Your business needs a solution that’s purpose-built to bring the performance, availability, security, and visibility of WAN-based application delivery solutions to Internet and cloud-based applications and a guide to what it should look like.

ExEcutivE SuMMAry


aCCeleraTing Trends: Why application delivery requirements are changing

How globalization and the consumerization of iT create new application delivery challenges

Why existing Wan-based solutions are typically unable to address application delivery over the internet

What to look for in an application delivery solution for the internet

benefits of a cloud-based application delivery platform

application delivery and optimization best practices

1

This ebook describes ACCELERATING TRENDS:

2

3

4

5

6


Enterprise Application Delivery:Why Application Delivery Requirements are Changing

Years ago, as more enterprise employees began working in a variety of facilities, such as branch, regional, and home offices connected via WAN links, IT organizations began to focus on ensuring their private network was able to support acceptable application delivery to those users. After all, if the applications and the networks that support a business

process don’t run with high performance and availability, the business process will grind to a halt. With variations in global connectivity speeds, large enterprises have always been sub-ject to variations in WAN performance. For this reason, WANs have long included solutions that improve WAN performance and reliability.

ChApTer1


NOT AT ALL SLIGHTLy MODERATELy VERy ExTREMELy

Optimizing the performance of a key set of applications that are critical to the success of the business

1.2% 4.3% 11.2% 45.3% 37.9%

Ensuring acceptable performance for VoIP traffic 3.1% 5.7% 15.1% 42.8% 33.3%

Optimizing the performance of TCP 3.7% 8.1% 33.5% 33.5% 21.1%

Improving the performance of applications used by mobile workers

5.6% 10.6% 28.8% 33.1% 21.9%

Optimizing the performance of protocols other than TCP; e.g., HTTP and MAPI

4.4% 13.8% 33.8% 31.3% 16.9%

Optimizing the transfer of storage between different data centers

7.3% 11.3% 23.2% 36.4% 21.9%

The Importance of KEy OPTIMIzATION TASKS


Why Application Acceleration is necessary for WAn-Based ApplicationsMost IT departments currently employ Application Delivery

Controllers (ADCs) and WAN Optimization Controllers (WOCs)

(described in more detail later in this eBook) to address WAN

performance challenges that include:

• Network latency — The time it takes for data to go from

the sender to the receiver and back. WAN latency is directly

proportional to the distance between the sender and receiver.

• Bandwidth constraints — WAN users incur monthly recurring

charges for bandwidth provisioned. Because high costs mean few

companies provision their private WAN to support peak loads,

most WANs have bandwidth constraints that lead to packet loss.

• Packet loss — This occurs when packets traveling over the WAN

fail to reach their destination.

• Chatty protocols and applications — A chatty protocol is

an application or routing protocol that requires a client or server

to wait for an acknowledgement before it can transmit again.

When the acknowledgements must travel long distances, which

is often the case with a WAN, latency can be high. Extended

wait times degrade the quality of service dramatically.

two trends changing Application Delivery requirementsToday, two rapidly growing trends have meant that, while

organizations continue to rely on WANs to communicate within their

branch office users, the Internet is playing a far greater role in delivering

enterprise applications. These trends are globalization and the

consumerization of IT.

Globalization

Globalization in the business arena has been expanding

for decades as organizations attempt to:

• Reach new customers worldwide.

• Leverage low cost suppliers regardless of location through offshoring.

• Take advantage of the best resources regardless of location.

• Accommodate a global workforce.


An increasingly Global Workforce

Organizations worldwide are suffering from a lack of available

skilled talent. Globally, 34 percent of companies had difficulty filling

jobs in 2012. With skills shortages, global mobility of talent and

knowledge is critical to driving growth and innovation. This has led

to a dramatic increase in virtual working arrangements. In 2012,

the overall market for online work was more than US$1 billion and

the top companies in the space (oDesk, Elance, and Freelancer.com)

grew at 60-100 percent per year. Not only does a virtual workforce

give organizations access to necessary talent, it also significantly

reduces costs, improves workforce flexibility, and enables them to

operate 24/7.

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SourcE: (10 Key Trends to Watch for 2014, Global Trends) http://www.globaltrends.com/monthly-briefings/60-monthly-briefings/198-10-key-trends-to-watch-for-2014-trends-1-to-5

implications of Globalization on Application Delivery

Global organizations are taking advantage of technology to

support collaboration with customers, suppliers, partners, and

remote employees. Indeed, businesses are increasingly looking to

move to all-digital, self-service interaction to give customers and

collaborators a way to work with the company on their own terms,

at their convenience. For example, customers can learn about the

company’s products by browsing the product website, place an

order via the company’s mobile phone app, or check the status of

a transaction by logging onto the company’s customer portal. These

web applications will also need to be able to work with the wide

range of mobile devices that partners, suppliers, customers, and

mobile employees use to access the web.

However, it can be expensive and logistically prohibitive for an

organization to give business partners, suppliers, customers, and

home-based employees around the world full access to their private

WANs. It’s faster, easier, and cheaper for organizations to deliver

business applications over the public Internet, and take advantage

of the ubiquity, global scale, and cost efficiencies offered. As we’ll

discuss later in this eBook, delivering applications over the Internet and

accommodating mobile devices presents application delivery challenges

above and beyond those that occur on a WAN.

http://www.globaltrends.com/monthly-briefings/60-monthly-briefings/198-10-key-trends-to-watch-for-2014-trends-1-to-5


More Distributed partners

“Twenty to thirty years ago, auto companies turned to tool designers

located in Detroit,” said Brian Apley, Strategist, Automotive and

Manufacturing Industries, Akamai. “Hundreds or thousands of tool

and die makers could be found nearby. Geography mattered. That

doesn’t exist anymore. Automakers today want the person who’s

truly the best at what they do. Any barriers that would prevent

business from going elsewhere have melted away.”

SourcE: Quote from Brian Apley

the consumerization of it

Historically, central IT organizations controlled IT usage within their

firms, choosing or approving of systems and services for employees.

But with the growth of the Internet and the rise of SaaS apps, people

began to see that consumer IT offerings based on a simple Internet

browser could be viable alternatives to traditional on-premise business

computing solutions. Over time, employees began to blur the lines

between their work and personal lives and began demanding the

flexibility to use the same technologies and applications at work that

they use on their personal time—often referred to as BYOD

With the ready availability of cloud-based applications—where a

service provider handles the installation, management, and mainte-

nance of hardware and software and makes solutions available on a

subscription basis—employees and departments are taking the idea

of the consumerization of IT to the next level. Not only are they using

their own personal devices at the office, employees and departments

are increasingly adopting enterprise applications and IT services on

their own without consulting with their company’s IT department.

Mobility and Bring your own Device (ByoD)

Employees’ desire to use their personal devices (e.g., mobile devices,

tablets, and phablets) anytime, anywhere has led to the trend of BYOD

Global Acceptance of it consumerization

• 56% of respondents to a recent survey said yes to ByOD

• The US led this innovation with 75% allowing ByOD

• In Japan 36% of companies allow ByOD

• 59% of German companies allow ByOD

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SourcE: Consumerization Survey Report: The Consumerization of IT, Trend Micro, 2012.

http://www.trendmicro.com/cloud-content/us/pdfs/rpt_consumerization-survey-report.pdf


Most Employees use Mobile Devices

to Access Business Data and ApplicationsThe vast majority (98 percent) of employees use a mobile device daily to access business-related data and applications from an external site.

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SourcE: “2013 Application & Service Delivery Handbook,” Webtorials, by Dr. Jim Metzler and Ashton Metzler & Associates.

becoming mainstream in the enterprise, where employees expect to

access corporate applications on their personal devices. In the early

stages of BYOD, organizations provided access to email and the cor-

porate directory from outside the office. Now employees expect to be

able to access all enterprise applications required to do their jobs, from

ERP to CRM to HR.

In the future, Forrester Research suggests that organizations will

develop “increasingly sophisticated mobile apps that enable contin-

uous engagement with customers and employees, data capture and

access at the point of engagement, context aware applications, and

engagement analytics that optimize processes, effectiveness, and

customer intimacy.”

The challenge of BYOD for IT organizations is that it leaves IT without

control over the devices people use to access their systems. Since

the mobile market is highly fragmented (as this eBook will describe

in more detail later), IT must ensure that enterprise applications work

seamlessly and are secure across a wide range of devices with widely

varied characteristics.

SourcE: “Rolling Out the Mobile Workplace in Europe: The Recipe for a Strategic Approach,” Forrester Research, October 18, 2013.

Mobile Adoption in EuropeCompared to Americans, Europeans feel a greater sense of urgency to deploy a mobile strategy. More than one in five respondents to a recent survey said having a strategy is critical, compared to 13 percent of their North American counterparts. This difference hints at a more rapid European mobile enterprise deployment.

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SourcE: “Rolling Out the Mobile Workplace in Europe: The Recipe for a Strategic Approach,” Forrester Research, October 18, 2013.

Mobile Adoption in Asia pacificOverall mobile traffic is expected to grow to 15.9 Exabytes per month by 2018, nearly an 11-fold increase over 2013. Asia-Pacific will show a 67 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and 13-fold growth by 2018.

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SourcE: Cisco

http://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/webtorials/2013-App-Serv-Handbook/2013_Application_and_Service_Delivery_Handbook-Complete.pdf

http://www.forrester.com/Rolling+Out+The+Mobile+Workplace+In+Europe+The+Recipe+For+A+Strategic+Approach/fulltext/-/E-RES104602

http://newsroom.cisco.com/release/1340551


cloud Adoption in the u.S. - Ninety four percent of organizations surveyed are running cloud-based applications or experimenting with infrastructure as a service, while 87 percent of organizations are using the public cloud.

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SourcE: Cloud Computing Trends: 2014 State of the Cloud Survey—Rightscale.

cloud Adoption predicted to continue to Surge in the u.S. The cloud market is predicted to surge by 25 percent in 2014, with an ever increasing share of enterprise IT moving to the cloud within the next five years.

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SourcE: Enterprise Cloud Economy Driven by 10 Market Forces in 2014, eWeek, Chris Preimsesberger, 2/28/14 Slide 8.

Drivers for cloud Adoption - The biggest drivers for cloud adoption according to respondents of a recent survey are:

• Cost reductions and predictability — 32 percent• Accessibility to technology with less friction — 31 percent• Scalability to meet resource demands — 22 percent• Agility to meet changing requirements — 15 percent

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SourcE: “Cloud Adoption Tops List of 2014 IT trends in CompuCom Poll of IT Professionals,” March 4, 2014.

cloudConsumerization of IT goes far beyond personal technology

choices and BYOD. Ultimately, it means that workgroups, line-of-

business managers, and entire business units are making technology

decisions—often without seeking guidance or approval from IT.

These groups are able to make these technology decisions due

to the increasing prevalence of cloud services and software-as-

a-service (SaaS) applications, which are readily available and easy to

use. Users can access many of these services on a self-service basis

with the push of a button.

Cloud/SaaS apps provide business users with benefits that

typically include:

• time to value. Cloud solutions can be deployed quickly

because all necessary components are already up and running

at the cloud service provider’s site. Users needn’t install and test

software or provision servers; they simply access software over

the web—anytime, anywhere.

• lower upfront costs. For the applicable solution, businesses

no longer need to buy software or hardware, purchase expensive

maintenance contracts, or undergo costly deployment projects.

They simply pay for the services they use as they go.

http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2014-state-cloud-survey

http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-industry-insights/cloud-computing-trends-2014-state-cloud-survey

http://www.compucom.com/CLOUD-ADOPTION-TOPS-LIST-OF-2014-IT-TRENDS-IN-COMPUCOM-POLL


• Easier maintenance and administration. Cloud service

providers operate, maintain, and upgrade the software so

business users don’t need to rely on internal IT teams.

• Scalability. Cloud computing allows clients to easily scale

their IT resources up or down as necessary to support business

requirements without costly hardware purchases.

Employees and departments are using cloud-based SaaS for an

ever-widening range of business applications—from CRM to ERP

to ITSM and much more.

IT departments are also taking advantage of these cloud benefits.

They are adopting SaaS for some applications and are moving other

corporate applications, such as storage and business continuity/disas-

ter recovery, to the cloud using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offerings.

Because public cloud services are typically delivered to end users

over the Internet, the greater the rate of cloud adoption, the more

application delivery occurs on the web.

the top cloud Services - Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud storage ranked as the top two public cloud services that enterprises and small to medium sized businesses currently use, with SaaS employed by 62 percent and cloud storage by 56 percent. In addition, collaboration software is used by 42 percent of respondents, IaaS by 42 percent, and Disaster Recovery by 39 percent.

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SourcE: “Cloud computing survey reveals buyer trends for 2014,” TechTarget Feb 4, 2014.

cloud Adoption in Europe - European respondents are allocating an increasing percentage of their IT budgets to cloud computing. In 2012, 58 percent of European respondents were expecting to allocate more than 5 percent of their IT budget to cloud in the next 12 to 24 months. In 2013, the percentage had risen to 78 percent.

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SourcE: Ovum—Cloud Services Business Trends Survey 2013: European Results.

the Asia pacific cloud Market - The Asia-Pacific Cloud Computing Market Forecast is forecasted to grow by a 21.2 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2010 and 2016 with an aggregate $28.5 billion over the same period.

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SourcE: “The Future of Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Green IT – Global Technologies & Markets Outlook – 2011-2016”, Market Info Group, Jim Matthews.

http://searchcloudprovider.techtarget.com/photostory/2240213791/Cloud-computing-survey-reveals-buyer-trends-for-2014/4/SaaS-public-cloud-storage-remain-top-cloud-services#contentCompress

http://ovum.com/research/cloud-services-business-trends-survey-2013-european-results/

http://www.marketinfogroup.com/the-future-of-virtualization-cloud-computing-green-it-global-technologies-markets/


the implications of Globalization and it consumerization for the WAn Globalization and IT consumerization are not new, and have

been growing in prevalence for a number of years, but analysts

agree that these trends have reached a tipping point in terms

of the implication that these trends have on how organizations

architect their application delivery strategies. Applications must

be delivered over the Internet to meet the demands of globalization

and IT consumerization; therefore, the private WAN is no longer

the predominant network service for delivering applications to

distributed organizations. Today, the Internet is a critical piece

of every organization’s extended network fabric. Organizations must

consider and address the inherent challenges that come with using the

Internet for delivery, including performance, reliability, and security.

cloud Services Definitions

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS): IaaS offers compute and/or

storage resources combined with network resources and associated services

via the cloud, usually from a virtualized environment.

Platform-as-a-service (PaaS): PaaS provides a platform that makes

it easier to develop and run applications, which will be delivered via

the cloud, using programming languages and tools supported by

the PaaS provider.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS): SaaS combines application functionality

delivered via a web browser and open published APIs with data encryption,

transmission, access, and storage services.

Outsourced private cloud: The use of a third-party service provider such

as a systems integrator or IT outsourcer to deliver services via a cloud-computing

model either as part of an IT outsourcing contract or as a managed service.

Public cloud: The use of a standard third-party, hosted cloud service

such as Amazon Web Services or Salesforce.com.


# 1 Users accustomed to

high levels of usability and

performance from their

consumer applications have

very high expectations for

enterprise applications as well.

THIS MEANS THAT:

• Performance must be blazing fast

• Downtime is unacceptable

• User experience must be exceptional on any device or applications won’t get used

ChApTer2

how Globalization and the consumerization of it create new Application Delivery challenges

Globalization and the consumerization of IT have significant implications for IT departments

as they struggle to deliver applications. In particular, they lead to thrEE iSSuES:


Because IT doesn’t control the data center

where many of their applications are

hosted, they cannot guarantee application

reliability, security, or server performance.

SLAs associated with public cloud

computing services are often weak and

delivered on a best-effort basis. Most SLAs

for public cloud computing services don’t

contain a goal for end-to-end performance

of the service. Moreover, IT is unable to

instrument the cloud provider’s data center

in such a way as to achieve the same level

of visibility into availability and performance

that they’re accustomed to with their

on-premise applications in the past. This

means IT may be unaware of performance

and availability problems before they

impact end users.

Additionally, variability in mobile network

performance and a multitude of browsers

and device types add another layer of

complexity to the scenario. BYOD means

that IT is struggling to impose standards

for end user devices in a highly

fragmented market.

# 3 even as globalization and the

consumerization of iT mean higher

end user expectations and less

control, these trends increase the

technical challenges that iT must

overcome to deliver applications

with high performance,

availability, and security.

These technical challenges include issues specific to the Internet, as well as those resulting

from the consumerization of IT, as described in the following sections.

# 2 When cloud is combined

with bYod, iT no longer has

control of the data center or

the user device. Yet iT remains

responsible for the overall

end user experience.


technical challenges Due to internet Delivery The use of the Internet creates delivery challenges above and

beyond those experienced over WANs controlled by IT.

these include:

• Poor performance due to high latency. Internet latency is

typically higher than the latency in a private WAN.

• Availability challenges. Application availability can be uncertain.

The Internet is comprised of thousands of interconnected networks.

If a link or piece of equipment fails, routing protocols update the

routing tables on all the routers on its network within seconds.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) exchanges this information

between networks. After a failure, the size and complexity of the

Internet as well as BGP characteristics mean it can take several

minutes for all the routing tables to be updated. The impact

depends on the application. A brief outage may have no effect

on a static website while it can cause an application using the

UDP protocol to fail. Application availability over the Internet can

also be impacted by malicious Internet attacks (e.g., denial of

service attacks) and congestion due to peak demand.

• Packet loss. Internet users experience more packet loss than those

on a private WAN due to the way BGP makes routing decisions.

• Performance issues due to TCP. The TCP transport protocol

retransmits lost packets until the connection times out. A

misconfigured timeout parameter can cause unnecessary delays

or additional congestion. The TCP slow start algorithm can also

impact performance. Part of TCP’s congestion control strategy, this

parameter initially constrains the data transfer between devices,

and then increases the data transfer rate if no communications

problems arise. The slow start algorithm is also applied in situations

in which a packet is dropped.

• Chatty Protocols and Applications. Both WAN and Internet

performance can be impacted by chatty protocols and applications

that require a client or server to wait for an acknowledgement

before it can transmit again. But greater Internet latency makes

chatty protocols a bigger issue on the Internet.

• Visibility. Because the Internet is a network of networks, it is

difficult if not impossible for an IT organization to get detailed

visibility into the end-to-end performance and user experience

of the applications they’re delivering over the Internet.

• Security. As data travels over the public Internet, IT needs to

ensure privacy and security.


Mobile performance is SlowCompuware Gomez’s industry benchmarks show that even among top U.S. brands, many of whom have mobile-optimized sites, the end user experience is roughly four times slower on mobile versus the desktop.

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SourcE: Innovating at the Pace of Mobile

technical challenges Due to the consumerization of it While the Internet itself delivers less reliable performance and

availability for applications than a private WAN, the consumerization

of IT only adds to the challenges. Consumerization of IT means that

IT must deal with rich content, mobile/BYOD devices, mobile

networks, and lack of visibility into end user devices when

delivering applications.

Rich ContentIn an effort to drive adoption, applications delivered over the

Internet are incorporating rich, dynamic content to become more

like desktop applications delivered via a web or mobile browser.

Sophisticated graphics, sounds, images, videos, application logic,

and data sets create large payloads and complex renderings that can

negatively impact application performance. Web architectures must

incorporate solutions to speed delivery of rich content.

Mobile/ByOD DevicesAs end users look to access content using their own devices,

IT must develop a strategy that makes it possible to accommodate

the increasing prevalence of mobile networks and devices. This

requires IT to take into account the following characteristics of

mobile devices:

•15% extremely important

•38% very important

•27% moderately important

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SourcE: “2013 Application & Service Delivery Handbook,” Webtorials, by Dr. Jim Metzler and Ashton Metzler & Associates, Page 12

the importance of optimizing Mobile Applications

•71% of mobile users feel sites should be as responsive on their mobile devices as to their desktops, and

•74% refuse to wait more than 5 seconds for a mobile site to load.

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SourcE: Innovating at the Pace of Mobile

http://www.edee.gr/files/White_papers_cases_articles/Asset%201%20akamai_aqua_ion_whitepaper.pdf

http://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/webtorials/2013-App-Serv-Handbook/2013_Application_and_Service_Delivery_Handbook-Part_1.pdf

http://www.edee.gr/files/White_papers_cases_articles/Asset%201%20akamai_aqua_ion_whitepaper.pdf


• Fewer hardware resources. Mobile devices

have only a fraction of the CPU power, mem-

ory, and storage space of desktop devices. This

can affect page and application response times.

• Market fragmentation. Differences among

mobile devices that can impact the end user

experience include operating system, proces-

sor speed, screen size and resolution, browser

capabilities, and supported technologies such

as Flash and JavaScript and protocol support.

These variations make delivering high-quality

mobile experiences particularly daunting.

• Rapid advances. Mobile technology is

evolving rapidly and consumers upgrade

their devices regularly. IT has to keep pace

with these advances.

• Lack of security. Mobile devices experience

the same malware and network intrusion

attacks as PCs, but they typically lack mature

products for malware protection (anti-virus

software) and network intrusion protection

(personal firewall).

Bottlenecks in Mobile Site and Application Delivery


Mobile networksMobile networks were not designed for web traffic. Mobile users

accessing Internet applications often experience more performance

and reliability issues than those working with websites over the

standard Internet. While mobile sites and applications must overcome

the same first and middle mile bottlenecks as traditional websites for

their desktop clients, the last miles on mobile networks have much

higher latency and packet loss than broadband fixed line networks.

Latency is impacted by signal strength, cell tower capacity, network

operator, type of carrier, and users moving from one area of

coverage to another.

The problems are compounded when delivering apps or websites to

mobile browsers because each application page is typically comprised of

numerous requests. While each individual request from a mobile device

suffers from increased round trip time (RTT) compared to a desktop

machine, overall page performance degrades exponentially. Volatile

conditions found across cellular networks can also wreak havoc on

the performance of the TCP and HTTP communications protocols.

Standard TCP, for example, is designed to provide reliable transport

at the cost of performance. It’s not tuned to work well under scenarios

with high loss, high latency, or high variability—all common in

mobile networks.

visibility constraintsWhile IT has difficulty gaining visibility into the performance and

availability of applications operating over the Internet, consumerization

of IT exacerbates the issue. Most IT organizations cannot load

management agents onto BYOD devices used by company employees

nor can they host their management software at a SaaS provider’s

site. The result is a near total loss of visibility into the performance

of business-critical applications accessed over the Internet. This makes

proactive management impossible and significantly increases the time

it takes to reactively manage the network.


Why Existing hardware and virtual Appliance-Based Application Delivery Solutions are unsuitable for Delivering Applications over the internet

Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) and WAN Optimization

Controllers (WOCs) have long been a critical component of

IT architectures to optimize application delivery over the Private

IP WAN. These solutions evolved from local load balancing

solutions that balanced traffic across servers and intelligently

sent application requests to the most available server to maxi-

mize server efficiency, application availability, and performance.

ADC and WAN solutions evolved to accelerate application

performance using techniques such as compression and

caching and provided incremental security. Today, WOCs

and ADCs include the following characteristics:

3ChApTer3


Woc SolutionsWOC solutions are designed to accelerate and provide QoS for traffic over private networks. They’re deployed symmetrically, meaning that administrators install the WOC solutions “dual ended” in data centers and in branch offices in order to locate one box near the application and one near the users. The goal is to optimize the back and forth between the branch offices and the main data centers.

WOCs include capabilities that improve the performance of protocols such as TCP or CIFS. They also employ optimization techniques to mitigate application specific inefficiencies that sometimes occur when these applications communicate over a WAN. Capabilities include data reduction to mitigate insufficient bandwidth; protocol acceleration and mitigation of round trip time to address high latency; Forward Error Correction (FEC) for packet loss; and QoS for data contention.

While WOCs are effective at accelerating applica-tions on a WAN, they have characteristics that make them unsuitable for delivering web-based

applications globally.

Data Center

Core

Backup

WAn optimization at Work


• Firewall functionality to ensure data integrity and provide application-specific security

• Offloading computationally intensive tasks such as processing of SSL traffic

• Switching, accelerating, and securing XML apps and web services

• Support for server virtualization

While ADCs do a great job of load balancing local traffic and

preserving the performance of servers in the data center for end-users

located within the private network, they don’t address the increasing

amount of Internet-based end users. As applications traverse the

Internet, a new set of bottlenecks and security concerns can thwart

effective delivery to employees, business partners, suppliers, and

customers across the globe. When the organization deals with the

large number of potential users on the internet, it is prohibitively

expensive to install an ADC device at every end user endpoint.

Therefore, when delivering applications over the Internet, the

QoS benefits of WOC solutions are not able to be leveraged, and

the performance and load balancing capabilities of ADC solutions

are only able to be leveraged asymmetrically. This means that

ADc SolutionsADC solutions are designed to load balance and manage

the delivery of applications. ADCs are deployed asymmetrically.

In other words, administrators install the ADC solutions “single

ended,” on the data center side, and not on the side where the

end users are located. These ADC solutions sit inside the data

center, in front of a server farm, receive requests from clients,

and load balance the routing and delivery of end user requests

for applications to the most appropriate servers. They also offload

computationally-intensive communications processing from servers

as well as perform other tasks. When deployed in a private

network, ADCs work in concert with WOCs located in the branch

office locations to optimize application delivery symmetrically, thus

having a positive impact on application performance for those

users located within branch offices on the private work.

Specifically, ADC solutions improve the performance of applications with capabilities that include:

• Server load balancing to maximize application scalability and availability

• Layer 4-7 switching to direct application queries to the most appropriate server


Clients

ADC

WebServers

ApplicationServers

DatabaseServers

the ADC only controls one-end

of the application delivery, the end

closest to where the application is

hosted. There is nothing at the other

end where the end-user is located.

This is a flawed strategy and results in

poor performance, spotty availability,

and an increased risk profile.

Arranging your Application Delivery


4What to look for in an internet-Based Application Delivery Solution

Private Networks and Private IP WANs aren’t going away any time

soon. However, as a result of Globalization and Consumerizaton

of IT, the WAN is becoming a smaller component of the extended

enterprise network fabric. The Internet is becoming an increasingly

large and critical component of the extended network fabric. That

means WOCs and ADCs will continue to play an important role in

your IT infrastructure for the portion of the your application delivery

that is still contained within your private network environment. At

the same time, the growing importance of the Internet means you

need a strategy to extend the same enterprise-class performance,

availability, scalability, security, management, and control that

currently characterize a WAN environment to the Internet.

chapter4

What characteristics should you look for in a web-based application delivery solution?

The following are key considerations:


WAN / MPLS

Akamai Intelligent Platform

Data Center / HQ / CampusStore / Branch 1 to n

ISR-AX withAkamai Unified

Performance ASR1000-AX

A holistic solution accelerates application delivery on the WAn and extends those capabilities to the internet.


“Service providers have levels of scale, utilization,

and engineering talent that individual enterprises

cannot usually achieve. In many areas of technology,

these factors can drive down service costs by a significant

amount and the company can avoid many of the

disruptions and risks associated with both periodic

refresh cycles for on-premise equipment and the

operational perils of obsolete technologies.”

— John parkinson

Affiliate Partner, Waterstone Management Group in Chicago writing in CFO Magazine

is it a managed service?

Accelerating application performance for large numbers of

customers, suppliers, partners, and remote employees requires

many points of presence, in order to always be very close to

wherever your applications are hosted and very close to wherever

your end-users are located. Attempting to manage the deployment

of an application delivery infrastructure designed to support Internet-

based users and applications would be prohibitively complex and

costly. Not only would IT need to purchase the application delivery

devices themselves, it would also need to install, manage, and

upgrade them all over time. If your organization wanted to sign

up a new supplier or partner, you would need to work with

their IT team to install an application delivery device to improve

collaboration. By working with a managed service provider that

offers a truly globally distributed and on-demand solution, you

can eliminate the capital expense and complexity of deploying and

managing hardware and software yourself. And you can add new

application delivery services as necessary, paying only for the services

you need, when you need them.


Are the optimizations highly distributed to deliver a natively symmetrical solution?

To truly maximize performance of Internet-based applications,

the optimization needs to occur as close as possible to both

the data center and to the end user. Optimizations located

near applications and end users are able to fully optimize the

end-to-end delivery and minimize latency and enhance the user

experience. Look for a managed service provider that can make

available to customers a network of hundreds or thousands of

application delivery devices in every country where your users

may be located today or tomorrow to ensure that these devices

are no more than a network hop away from most users.

Does the service provider offer a single platform that provides comprehensive management for all of your externally delivered applications and services?

IT organizations need to manage performance, availability,

and security for a wide range of externally facing applications—

from web applications to various cloud-based and SaaS

applications to end user apps. They need to make these

applications available to a wide range of external users

(customers, suppliers, partners, remote employees)

look for an internet acceleration solution that has enough optimization devices that they can be close to both the data center and the end user.

• End user requests www.originserver.com (origin server) in the browser

• End user browser receives content from the optimum server


through a wide range of devices (PCs, laptops, smart-

phones, tablets, phablets, and so on). IT must deliver

these services with high performance and availability.

Complexity and cost render it impossible to meet these

demands using a plethora of point solutions. You need

a common, Internet management platform that gives

you visibility into performance and availability for all

externally facing applications delivered over the Internet

to any device anywhere and one that allows you to

proactively manage the customer’s experience.

how easy is it to integrate your applications into the solution?

An Internet application delivery solution should integrate

quickly and easily with your applications. Look for a

solution that requires no changes to the applications

themselves. A solution that uses DNS or network-based

routing to integrate applications with the service allows

you to move all your services to the acceleration platform

at the network layer without making modifications

to the enterprise.

routing your internet Application Delivery


how easy is it to port your applications to different virtualized and cloud environments?

Organizations modernizing their infrastructure may want to move

their applications from their in-house data center to a public IaaS

cloud environment. Look for a solution that allows you to easily

apply and instantly migrate configuration rules regardless of

where the application is running.

how flexible is the solution?

Different applications have different use cases and different

demands. The solution should deliver the flexibility to tie rules to

applications in ways that meet those demands. For example, the

solution might allow you to configure rules that vary the level of

image compression used in delivering content to a specific mobile

device to optimize performance.

What is the total cost of ownership?

When purchasing a solution, many systems architects look at

the price of the hardware but fail to consider the total cost of

ownership (TCO). When comparing TCO of an ADC and WOC-

based solutions to that of a managed service, be sure to

consider all of the factors involved in delivering the service.

These factors include the cost of the acceleration devices or

virtual appliances themselves—and to ensure redundancy and

availability, IT typically purchases two to four devices per location.

Expenses also include rack space, power, applications, and the IT

staff required to manage and support the service.

how does the solution optimize application performance?

The Internet is inherently slow and inefficient in transporting

data between end users and the applications they’re accessing,

regardless of whether it’s a web application or a SaaS service.

The challenge becomes even more pronounced as the end users

of a given application become farther away from the physical

location of the data center. To optimize application performance,

the solution should offer route optimization, connection opti-

mization, and a globally distributed network in order to be able

to symmetrically optimize the application delivery regardless of

where the application and user may be located.


Route optimizationAdvanced Internet routing that identifies alternative paths to those proposed by BGP will improve connection perfor-mance or provide failover if a direct path is congested or unavailable. The solution should also optimize the path between the application server and the acceleration device, based on actual response time data for users accessing applications over the Internet.

Connection optimizationThe acceleration device should be close to the end user since proximity naturally reduces latency. After it estab-lishes a connection, the device should perform optimizations such as prefetch-ing of content to reduce round trips between the user and the server or implementing rules that predict what content the end user is likely to request next and pre-loading that content close to the user.

the solution should be able to optimize the path between the origin server and the end user.


how does the solution optimize presentation to end users, particularly over mobile devices?

Many variables impact application delivery to end users over

the Internet. Many applications are now atomic services built

by small developer groups with various levels of expertise. These

developers may not know how to create high performing web-

based apps. End users access these applications with a wide array

of devices with different screen sizes, OSs, and other capabilities.

Applications are delivered over networks with widely varying

performance characteristics.

The solution should make optimizations with an awareness of

these variables and tune the page for each situation. Capabilities

that enable this tuning include:

• Adaptive image compression varies the level of compression

for .jpg images based on real-time network conditions to allow

pages to load quickly even under poor network conditions.

• Device characterization allows the platform to decipher

characteristics of the requesting device and use them to

respond intelligently to a particular request.

• Support for the SHUTR (Suppressed Headers for Uplink Traffic

Reduction) extension to the HTTP protocol can reduce the

amount of data necessary to perform a web transaction to

mitigate the challenges associated with network latency and

packet loss and improve the user experience.

• Detection and redirection capabilities allow the platform to

evaluate incoming HTTP requests to determine specific device

characteristics and then redirect devices to the appropriate site,

dramatically improving response times. For example, many

organizations create sites specifically for mobile devices.

how does the solution ensure availability?

Whenever a web or cloud-based application goes down, it is likely

to lead to lost revenue, unproductive users, and negative impact on

the brand. While problems in the data center cause some outages,

they can also occur due to Internet connection issues between the

end user and the data center. These issues include malicious Inter-

net attacks, congestion due to peak demand, network equipment

failures, and/or network outages.

A solution that delivers dynamic global load balancing and traffic

management alleviates connection issues to ensure availability

of mission critical applications. Global load balancing and traffic

management balancing can be used to manage the routing of

traffic across multiple data centers with a higher degree of control


and assurance than is possible with DNS based

global traffic management solutions. By combining

robust HTTP request management capabilities with

the ability to maintain information about a data

center’s load and availability, global load balancing

and traffic management balancing capabilities

ensure that every request goes to the best data

center and that no request is dropped or unfulfilled

when a data center is unavailable.

Does the solution scale application delivery over the internet?

Many organizations work with cloud services

providers to make it easy to scale their application

and infrastructure resources dynamically. But

working with these providers doesn’t scale appli-

cation delivery from the data center out over the

Internet to end users located all over the world.

To improve scalability of application delivery over

the Internet, a solution should provide reliable,

robust, and scalable DNS capabilities to dependably

direct end users to applications.

cloud Balancing

INTERNET


Does the solution deliver the visibility necessary to monitor and control internet-based application delivery?

Maintaining visibility across web applications and application

hosting platforms to understand the “real” user experience is

extremely difficult. IT teams want visibility into application perfor-

mance over the Internet within their existing management and

monitoring tools.

The application delivery solution should allow you to monitor

all aspects of transactions in a granular fashion as they traverse

the Internet. It should collect (and make available to your exist-

ing management tools) meta data about every transaction. For

example: Was the application served from the cache or not? What

type of device was used? Where was the end point? The solution

should track this information across all services, not just from the

data center but from third-party SaaS providers.

A solution that monitors transactions as they traverse the Internet

provides a complete picture of every transaction. This enables you

to accurately gauge the customer experience and greatly facilitates

troubleshooting if something goes wrong. For example, if the data

center isn’t responding, this data would allow you to determine

that the request came from the customer and wasn’t delivered.

how does the solution provide web security?

Protecting applications from threats and keeping data safe are

critical aspects of every organization’s IT strategy. A solution that is

globally distributed provides a natural defense against web-based

security attacks. For example, if a distributed denial of service (DDoS)

attack targets a particular server, the vast size of the network absorbs

the load and prevents the attack from overwhelming that server.

In addition, the solution should integrate access control

functionality with existing authentication solutions to control

which users can view application content. Communications with

applications should be protected with SSL. The service provider

should provide enough capacity on its infrastructure to handle

SSL content, and the infrastructure should meet robust levels of

physical, network, software, and procedural security. Application

delivery servers should be located in data centers specifically selected

for high levels of security, in locked cabinets with cameras and

other intrusion detection devices. In addition, servers should be

continuously monitored and audited.


Use 3 Services

Use 1 Service Difference

End-to-end service authorization 50% 29% 1.7 times

Integrated availability and performance management

40% 22% 1.8 times

Accelerated software development 44% 28% 1.5 times

Identity management 44% 25% 1.8 times

Single sign-in to enterprise and cloud apps

39% 24% 1.6 times

Backup and recovery 48% 34% 1.4 times

Service level management across cloud and non-cloud components

42% 19% 2.2 times

Ability to switch between different cloud service providers

44% 26% 1.7 times

Cloud migration assistance 36% 23% 1.6 times

the more cloud services organizations use, the more important management solutions become.

Capabilities They Need to ensure Cloud Success

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%1 year 2-3 years 3-4 years 4+ years

The more companies use the cloud. the more they recognize the need for greater enterprise control over the cloud.

end-to-end service automation

Service level management across cloud and non-cloud components

Ability to switch between different cloud service providers

Identity management

Management needs mature as cloud deployments mature.


Benefits of a Modern Application Delivery Solution Designed for internet and cloud-based Applications

Application delivery solutions developed specifically for the Internet provide your web and SaaS applications with high

performance, availability, security, and visibility. By obtaining these services from a managed service provider that provides

application acceleration and security over the Internet on a global scale, your organization can drive down IT costs,

reduce IT complexity, and increase end user productivity.

ChApTer5


The majority of customers using a managed application delivery solution for the Internet:

•Reduced IT infrastructure costs by 5% or more

•Improved application performance by 50% or more

linK }

SourcE: 2014 TechValidate Research of Akamai Customers

An S&P 500 consumer products company reduced the amount of time IT and R&D resources spent managing and troubleshooting Web site and application delivery by 15% to 20%.

linK }


Drive Down it costs By leveraging a service provider that delivers application delivery

acceleration and security at a global scale, your organization can greatly

reduce your need to purchase and support additional infrastructure to

host and deliver applications to globally distributed end users. You can

reduce the number of support tickets associated with poor application

performance and degraded end user experience. Your organization can

also take advantage of the service to allow more of your applications to

take advantage of the ubiquity, global scale, and cost efficiencies of the

Internet to deliver all your business applications.

reduce it complexity With a standard solution for delivering all business applications

over the Internet, your organization eliminates the need to implement

separate hardware-based point-solutions that address only certain

aspects. As a result, your organization can lower IT costs, reduce

IT complexity, and deliver a consistent level-of-service across the

entire application portfolio.

http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/akamai-performance-solutions/case-studies

http://www.techvalidate.com/product-research/akamai-performance-solutions/case-studies/6BF-FB0-029


Customers using a managed application delivery solution for the Internet improved application and website performance by 130%+.

linK }


21% of organizations using a managed application deliver solution for the Internet experienced improved end user productivity.

linK }


improved customer Experiences Employing a managed Internet application delivery solution improves

online interactions with customers and partners by furnishing better

performing web applications and sites. As more and more B2B

transactions are conducted online, you can make it frictionless

and easy to do business with your organization.

increase End user productivity Employees are your organization’s most valuable and most expensive

asset. Internet application acceleration solutions enable end users to

get more done in less time by improving the usability of the applications

they rely on every day to do their jobs. Your organization can

also optimize application delivery to mobile device users dynamically

and in real-time, so that end users can be their most productive

when working on any device, from anywhere in the world.




6ChApTer6

Best practices As your organization supports an increasingly global workforce and responds to demands for

the consumerization of IT by implementing mobile and cloud initiatives, you need to ensure the

technical and business success of these initiatives. The following best-practices can help:

For Mobile usersAs IT organizations adopt BYOD policies, they lose control of

end user devices yet they’re expected to deliver information

to those devices effectively and with good performance, despite

a dizzying array of device characteristics. IT must also ensure

secure data access despite the fact that these devices lack the

security capabilities typically found on desktop and laptop

systems. Most IT organizations have responded to the growth

in mobile devices by making a limited set of applications and

data accessible to mobile devices.

A best practice to improve support for mobile employees is to develop

a mobility strategy based on rethinking how employees will leverage

a growing set of devices to share and consume information from any-

where, at any time. Implement solutions that address mobile device

delivery holistically and that dynamically adapt to ensure end users have

a positive user experience accessing the business applications they rely on

to do their jobs, regardless of the device or connection type they may be

using today, and in the future. In addition, the mobile strategy should be

architected to accommodate the reality that devices evolve continually.


For cloud computingWhen an IT organization takes advantage of a public cloud solution,

it is neither able to guarantee data center reliability or security—nor does

it have its accustomed visibility. At the same time, the solution is subject

to the performance limitations of the Internet. Yet, IT remains responsible

for the overall user experience.

Cloud monitoring provides real-time access to granular levels of

information about all application activity and performance, across a

customer’s application portfolio, regardless of what cloud environment

a given application is hosted in. The data insights included with cloud

monitoring include metrics on complete request/response cycles as

well as origin response times. With this real-time performance

information (as well as knowledge of characteristics such as cost and

geographic location of the user), organizations can then use cloud

balancing to intelligently load balance user traffic and failover across

multiple data centers.

Cloud balancing can involve any number of public cloud and/or

corporate data centers. If it is done correctly, cloud balancing maximizes

the user experience by ensuring that the applications that users are

requesting are 100 percent available and that they are accessing the

most appropriate computing environment based on

their unique device, geographic location, and network character-

istics. Another important advantage of cloud balancing is that it

enables companies to build an infrastructure that supports the

average traffic load and use public cloud services to handle peak

loads, seamlessly and automatically.

For Application ModernizationMany organizations are modernizing their existing applications.

Their goal is to reduce costs by retiring legacy application

infrastructure and network equipment, create new business

value from existing applications, and gain the ability to deploy

applications instantly to anyone anywhere. Two of the ways

that IT organizations are modernizing their applications are by

implementing web-based user interfaces or by leveraging public

cloud services, either moving the application to an IaaS provider

or replacing the application with an equivalent from a SaaS

provider. These efforts drive more of the organization’s traffic

onto the Internet.

A best practice when modernizing applications is to do a thorough

risk/reward analysis prior to starting the project. Quantify the specific

benefits that the project will produce and identify the challenges that

the project will likely create. For example, if the project demands the


use of additional services from a public cloud provider, identify

the associated performance, reliability, and security challenges, and how to proactively address them. The analysis should also identify ways to mitigate the risk associated with the increased use of the Internet as a core component of the organization’s overall IT delivery platform.

For optimizing Application Delivery over the internetAs you begin to implement new initiatives and support emerging

business models, such as the consumerization of IT, analyze a variety of

service delivery models. Find a trusted third-party provider during the

planning stages and leverage their expertise in helping design and archi-

tect a strategy that positions your organization to leverage the Internet

and ensure the success of your IT initiatives. Continue to engage with

these experts throughout the project lifecycle. For example, rather than

follow a “set it and forget it” approach to using third-party services,

regularly using reporting functionality to make changes to the service

will maximize the benefits of the service. Once the strategy is devel-

oped, take advantage of capabilities of the service provider’s platform

to maximize performance.

Examples include:

• SlAs. Investigate and take advantage of the service provider’s

guaranteed SLA.

• route efficiently. A platform that chooses the end-to-end

path with the least delay and the least packet loss will improve

performance and availability of the Internet by circumventing

outages, peering inefficiencies, or congestion.

• Minimize round trips. Take advantage of content and object

pre-fetching. Designate the most likely next pages that users will

visit and start the process of gathering content, making web service

calls or doing database lookups and pre-fetching them close to users

before they request it to reduce delay when the requests are made.

Object pre-fetching minimizes the time it takes for a browser/client

to load and render an application. Cache non-personalized content

wherever possible or realize that some pages can be personalized on

the client side with java script based on simple cookie values.

• offload content. Offload static content out of the data center to

caches in the application delivery device and persistent, replicated in-

cloud storage facilities to reduce the time it takes to access this content.


• Differentiate dynamic vs. personal content. Application servers generate dynamic content to respond to end user requests. In some cases, the response is valid for a period of time and should be cached and reused. In contrast, personalized content can only be served to satisfy a single request.

• consolidate personalization into groups. If database access is

required for personalization, a best practice is to aggregate the

personalization into one area of the page and treat the rest of

the page as cacheable.

• optimize the front-end. Some service providers offer capabilities

that make a web page download and render faster by recognizing

the device type that the end user is employing to access the application and then making real-time optimizations to the delivery of that application for that specific device.

• timeout idle connections. Set timeouts so that idle connections do not consume resources.

• use net storage for large files. Net storage services available from some service providers offer highly scalable, highly available, geo-graphically distributed, mirrored storage regions that are optimized for performance.


Organizations will need to continue

to take advantage of WOCs and ADCs

to accelerate those applications that need

to be delivered over the Private IP WAN.

Even though the traffic load of applications

delivered over the Private IP WAN continues

to decline year-over-year, organizations

will likely continue to use those Private

Network Infrastructure deployments

for the foreseeable future.

But private ip WAns are no longer the only game in town.

With globalization and the consumerization

of IT having reached a tipping point, the

Internet is playing an increasingly important

role in delivering mission critical applications

to suppliers, customers, partners, and

remote employees. Your organization

needs a solution developed specifically to

ensure that the Internet delivers the same

performance, availability, and security that

end users experience accessing applications

over a WAN. By using a managed service

provider that specializes in delivering

applications over the Internet on a global

scale, your organization can:

• Drive down IT costs by taking advantage of the service provider’s global infrastructure

• Reduce IT complexity by eliminating the need to implement separate hardware based point solutions

• Save IT time spent on hardware maintenance and downtime

• Improve online interactions with partners and customers

• Increase end user productivity by improving the usability of applications they rely on every day

• Ensure security at the edge of the Internet

concluSion


© 2014 Akamai, All rights reserved.

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