WAN Acceleration has been a hot topic for some time. But over the past couple of years the cost of acceleration technology has dropped drastically due to its emergence as a full-blown market. Riverbed has jumped to the top of the leaders circle for a number of reasons, with Juniper, Blue Coat, Cisco, Packeteer, etc in its wake. For the most part, all WAN accelerators are going to have a few things in common. There are a pair of appliances, each with a disk that can cache files going between two points. To some degree, the purchase of accelerator appliances should be driven by the protocols to be used. For example, if you’re a purely Citrix shop then why would you bother to purchase another appliance – just don’t do it unless there is a specific option that you’re looking for.
With Riverbed, they fit nicely for environments where a specific protocol isn’t being looked for – but instead where all traffic is to be accelerated. They will compress the data more than it would be compressed over a standard connection, but will then one-up the competition by not requiring you to have a pair of devices but instead allow you to install client software so you can accelerate all clients on the edge, including those in hotels and at home. To me, this is why they get to go to the top of the Quadrant. But look out, Packeteer has announced a competing product and the rumor mill has it that Silver Peak and Juniper will shortly.