Enterprise Management Associates Evaluates Application Delivery Controller, Load Balancer Market November 02, 2011 Enterprise Management Associates (EMA (News - Alert)), an IT and data management research and consulting firm, identified the top-ranked application delivery controller and load balancer solutions in its latest EMA Radar Report titled, "EMA Radar for Application Delivery Controllers and Load Balancers: Q4 2011." The report finds that more and more IT organizations are turning to network-based delivery optimization technologies due to the rise in demand for high performing applications. What started as load balancer and layer 7 switches have evolved into what are now known as application delivery controllers (ADCs). An ADC (News 
- Alert), according to the report, acts as the next generation load balancer. however, its functionality has expanded to include other features such as application acceleration, compression, caching, SSL offload, and application layer security, and more. The research has found that there are several solid ADC/LB solutions designed for the scale of high-end enterprises, but there is also a whole class of solutions designed to meet the more sensitive cost points of smaller and mid-sized organizations. Further, cloud and virtualization are also having a direct impact on ADC/LB product architectures. EMA estimates that ADC/LB market is mature with total annual product sales in the global market in excess of $1.7 billion; however, it is also very active and competitive, with new products and new features being introduced on a regular basis. Based on the criteria defined by EMA Managing Research Director Jim Frey and EMA Senior Analyst Tracy Corbo, EMA has selected leading vendors in this space. Key criteria for evaluation included Deployment and administration, Cost advantage, Architecture and integration, Functionality and Vendor strength. The research also provides a comparative study of the leading vendors including Cisco, F5 Networks, CoyotePoint, Citrix Systems, Brocade Communication, A10 Networks (News - Alert), and Radware. “the good news for customers is that there are plenty of ADC/LB choices on the market that are designed to fit a range of budgets and deployment environments,” said Tracy Corbo, EMA senior analyst, in a statement. however, Corbo added, “the bad news is that with such a range of choices and options it can be a somewhat daunting task to know where to start.” ADCs, according to a recent TMCnet report, understands application specific traffic and can optimize application server performance by offloading many of the compute-intensive tasks that would otherwise bog down CPUs that could be better utilized elsewhere. A recent white paper from Coyote Point Systems (News - Alert) titled “Advanced ADCs take Over WhereServer Load Balancers Leave Off” shows how these new generation ADCs are taking over the network traffic management from traditional load balancers and preventing any traffic jams from occurring. In addition to load balancing traffic, advanced ADCs are also displaying their ability to intelligently route users to their application and content destinations efficiently and intelligently, based on business priorities and goals, the report said.Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. to read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Carrie Schmelkin
Enterprise Management Associates Evaluates Application Delivery Controller, Load Balancer Market