Juniper Revs Up Plans For Application Acceleration

Over the next year and a half, the vendor plans to expand the lineup of applications its WX WAN Acceleration appliances support, increase the reach and scalability of its portfolio, and bulk up its management and reporting features, said Mike Banic, director of product marketing at Juniper, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Juniper’s WX line is based on technology it acquired through its purchase of Peribit Networks last July.

On the road map are plans to add Microsoft SQL support as well as more in-depth functionality for SAP and Siebel applications, Banic said. Acceleration for SSL-encrypted applications will also be added, he said.

To extend the reach of the product line downward, Juniper plans to introduce a WX agent with automated administration features that can be downloaded and installed on individual laptops and PCs, which would extend application acceleration benefits to a single-user branch office or home office, Banic said. Juniper also intends to extend its reach into larger customers by scaling the platform to OC-3 speeds, he said.

In addition, Juniper is adding multicustomer, multidepartmental management and reporting features that will aid in managing large deployments and managed service offerings.

Toward that end, Juniper Monday plans to launch an update to its WX Central Management System (CMS) that aims to reduce the time and cost of large deployments. Version 5.2, available now, enables the creation of role-based views and control access, including an option MSPs can use to extend a Web-based view of the NOC to customers that only shows data the service providers want them to see.

Juniper has also modified licensing requirements for CMS to better accommodate MSPs and large enterprises, Banic said.

Several solution providers said interest in Juniper’s application acceleration solutions is high, though sales are still ramping up.

“We’ve had more conversations than we’ve had closed business, but there have definitely been a lot of conversations,” said Tom Duffy, president of IGXglobal, Rock Hill, Conn.

Customers need to improve application performance over the WAN, which typically drives costs down, he said. “They want to translate better efficiency into cost savings, which hits two areas of competitive advantage: getting things done quickly and keeping overhead down.”