Reaping The Benefits Of WAN Optimization Controllers

Though ensuring acceptable and standard application delivery has always been a crucial aspect, historically it was never a top priority for IT enterprises. It underwent a change many years back when the IT organizations started to focus in a dedicated manner on application delivery on a huge part of responding to the performance challenges related to supporting applications that were in turn delay sensitive and supporting huge file transfers between branch offices and headquarters. A major medium through which IT enterprises were responding to these performance challenges was by implementing WAN optimization controllers.

 

In most cases, WAN optimization controllers were deployed as a “stand-alone” hardware-based device. Owing to the mass adoption of Virtualization, IT enterprises today are witnessing a new kind of application delivery challenges. For instance, successful desktop Virtualization is a crucial factor that will compel IT enterprises to support a significant increase in delay sensitive WAN traffic. In order to aid this situation service providers specializing in RDP remote access have introduced WAN optimization controllers with multiple features, that helps in:

 

* Minimizing the remote application response times by up to 95%

* Minimizing the network bandwidth utilization by up to 95%

* Is purpose-built to bring down the impact of network congestion, latency and packet loss that combines to significantly slow end-user response times

* The Application-specific WAN optimization blueprints and specific protocol optimization helps in reducing redundant, chatty protocol traffic

* Stream-based differencing averts transmission of content already in the local data store and the compression techniques minimizes the amount of data on the wire

* Is available in hardware and virtual appliance form factors, that helps to achieve ROI within a less time frame

* Supports 50% more speeded up connections

* The virtual appliances make use of minimal system resource, can stay with other applications and scale linearly with the addition of CPU cores, memory and disks

* Helps in easier management of virtual and physical deployment, transparent addressing, statistical performance dashboard and auto discovery

* Offers centralized provisioning and management by incorporating with Virtualization management systems

 

Furthermore, advanced WAN optimization controllers make use of a combination of application acceleration, packet compression, network acceleration, protocol optimization and caching to speed up the applications and minimize the expense of delivering applications across wide area networks.

 

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Server Load Balancing

Application Delivery Controllers

Business Continuity Planning -Safety In face of Adversities

Every business irrespective of being a small and medium one or a large conglomerate is a profit oriented one. Technological innovations deployed in the business environment aids in globalized expansion of the business and leads to revenue generation and increased profits. However, any disruptions either minor or major may have serious impact on the day-to-day business operations.

Foreseeing business disruptions or the time when disaster strikes in an unknown factor and the globally bound organizations today are faced by the challenge of maintaining business continuity in face of all storm. Business continuity planning is one of the main strategies taken up by the global organization. Spread across geographical boundaries and remotely distant locations, these organizations need to be ready to face any disruptions in the business operations while ensuring that work goes on without any serious impact.

Business disruptions may result from various reasons such as epidemics, transit strikes, cyber-attacks, natural calamities etc. Under such circumstances a detailed remote access strategy and business continuity planning (BCP) will help the global enterprises to deal with emergency situations and help them to avoid loss of productivity or revenue. The remote access solution must be one that would help enterprises with:

* Secure anytime, anywhere access leading to uninterrupted business continuity
* Maximum performance, automated VPN provisioning
* Cost-effectiveness and global redundancy

A continuous delivery of critical services and products, demands that organizations need to have the facility that permits them to recover data, application and assets in a real-time access mode. As Gartner's analyst suggests that the most critical success factor to any business continuity plan is fast re-establishment of business processes. However, if the disaster recovery plans do not include Remote Desktop Access, no amount of technology can save business operations. Hence the real-time access to information will facilitate the employees to continue work from any location, allow business partners and suppliers an uninterrupted access to important information. Such actions will minimize the disruption levels of business processes and applications.

With large number of vendors offering business continuity planning solutions, enterprises need to make the most of the benefits to ensure productivity at all times. The enterprises needs to decide on appropriate ones and service types required for the business environment. The availability of applications from the corporate network and remote desktop access will help mitigate business disruptions. Application availability solutions from leading service provider’s offer load balancers and WAN optimization controllers for any fail-over for WAN links, devices and data centers.

However, the enterprises need to ensure that anytime anywhere remote access to business critical information also poses issues of data and network security. Thus service providers of business continuity planning solutions also need to ensure that the corporate network are equipped with secure access gateways that can support multiple access.


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Load Balancers And Their Role in Global Environment

A technological innovation over the period has facilitated the business enterprises with digital workspaces. The corporate offices work through highly networked environment and use large number of software applications for the day-to-day operational requirements. Further with globalization, these enterprises have also expanded globally with distantly located regions. However, real-time connectivity between all the far-off offices and remotely working project teams are maintained with the help of dedicated servers.

The technological enhancements further made it possible for the offshore teams, outsourced vendors and remote workforce to access the corporate network irrespective of the distance and device. Such anytime anywhere access to the various applications, files and folders from the office workstation and business critical data and information taxes the servers and the network when loaded with increasing demands. Added to this the BYOD apps available only increases the load on the servers and clogging of the network leading to reduced speed and performance. Under such circumstances, load balancers help the enterprises in easing out the situations.

Load balancers are generally used in heavy traffic laden computer networks like the Internet and corporate networks of multinational companies. Defined as a computer networking methodology load balancing helps to distribute the workload across multiple resources to achieve optimal utilization with maximum throughput, and minimum response time. , and avoid overload. Dedicated hardware, software and servers carry on these functions. The software program helps to track the front-end client’s access services and forwards requests to the back-end servers to enhance website performance as well as reduce the burden of a particular server.  

Further with most of the global enterprises having distantly located project teams working either in offshore locations or forms a part of the mobile workforce, providing them with remote desktop access and to the corporate data becomes very important. Networks of large corporate houses or small and medium enterprises or data centers with vast amount of data and application storage and transfer resort to use of load balancers.

For the new age enterprises load balancers  offers essential benefits such as:

●  Minimized load on individual systems with reduced response time
●  Maximum network utilization
●  It enhances reliability and improves user satisfaction.

However, with issues relating to web securities, the load balancers intelligently routes the hypertext transfer protocol traffic to servers which are involved in controlling access to websites. Besides these also scan the traffic for any spyware, phishing attacks and malicious components entering the network thus ensuring an efficient system of business continuity planning. 

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Server Load Balancing

SSL VPNs

Optimize Data Transfer Efficiency with WAN Optimization Controllers

WAN Optimization Controllers are appliances that optimize data-transfer efficiencies across a wide area network (WAN). It is a collection of techniques that optimize bandwidth to improve the end user's experience. WAN optimization controllers use a combination of techniques such as compression, latency optimization, forward error correction, caching / proxy, deduplication, traffic shaping, application acceleration, network acceleration equalizing, protocol spoofing, connection limits, simple rate limits to accelerate applications and reduce the cost of delivering applications over wide area networks.

Normally enterprise users experience great performance when using applications and services over a LAN. However, they face problems when accessing remotely the same applications and services over the WAN. Accessing applications across a WAN introduces network congestion, latency, and packet loss that can dramatically slow remote end user response time. Many IT organizations increase their spending by adding more network bandwidth to address these issues, only to find that poor application response time over the WAN has not changed. Moreover, with the addition of Virtualization, many enterprises are consolidating servers into corporate data centers. However, the consolidation of applications out of the branches and into the data center puts even more strain on the corporate WAN. In some cases, this degrades end user response time even further. That is where WAN or network optimization appliances come useful. The following are some of the benefits of using the best of breed WAN optimization controllers.

* Reduces remote application response times by up to 95%

* Reduces network bandwidth utilization by up to 95%

* Purpose-built to reduce the impact of network congestion, latency and packet loss which combine to dramatically slow end-user response times

* Application-specific WAN optimization blueprints and specific protocol optimization eliminates redundant, chatty protocol traffic

* Stream-based differencing avoids transmission of content already in the local data store, while compression techniques reduce the amount of data on the wire

* Window resizing, persistent connections and small packet aggregation dramatically improve overall TCP performance

* Supports 50% more accelerated connections as compared to alternative appliances

* Virtual appliances use minimal system resources, can reside with other applications and scale linearly with the addition of CPU cores, memory and disks

* Enables easier management of virtual and physical deployment, transparent addressing, statistical performance dashboard and auto discovery

* Provides centralized provisioning and management through integration with Virtualization management systems

Thus by deploying WAN optimization controllers, enterprises can ensure a premium application experience for all users and achieve rapid ROI by lowering overall bandwidth costs.

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Tablet Access

RDP

Load Balancers for the New Age Corporate Environment

The business world today makes use of every available technology to withstand the aggressive competition prevalent in the environment.  With the growth in the use of various applications, across corporate environment, the IT departments have explored the possibilities of using dedicated servers. These are computer systems which are part of the corporate network and are kept apart for specific jobs so as to fasten the access and processing time. However, with the increasing demands on the part of the customers and business, every application adds up to more loading of the servers.

As technology moved ahead to provide the globalized business world anytime anywhere access to the corporate network through BYOD options, the possibility of the servers being overloaded only increased.  Such overloading of the servers would lead to  network getting clogged leading to reduced  speed in  performing the functions with a reduced access rate to the entire systems in the network.  This calls for the need of load balancers with a specific significance for busy Internet services wherein a software program helps tracking the clients access services and forwards requests to the "back-end" servers thus enhancing the performance of the website.

Wikipedia defines load balancing as "a computer networking methodology that distributes workload across multiple computers or computer clusters, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid overload. This increases the performance of servers and  leads to optimal utilization while  ensuring  that no particular server is burdened. Corporate networks of global enterprises, with vast data and application storage and data transfer activity,  small and medium business enterprises  and e-commerce websites resort to  load balancers.

In an era of technological innovation with remote desktop access available to increase the mobility of the workforce,  load balancers are an important element in a network and helps in evenly disseminating service or processing requests across numerous devices within the  network. Dedicated hardware, software and servers carry on these functions.

Depending on the factors such as speed of the network and server response time, load balancers requires work distribution between two or more dedicated servers. The new age load balancing solutions offered by leading service providers helps organizations leverage on the parallel multi-core processing with cost-efficient performance. Further these appliances offer the client organization a number of advantages which include :

• Aids in global and local server load balancing with  datacenter scalability.
• Facilitates swift implementation of optimized arrangements with application specific configurations and certifications guidelines
• Provides a  high-end application compatible  traffic management while catering for optimized delivery IP services and crucial business applications
• Safeguards applications without influencing performance with the help of firewalls and proxy designs.

The new age server load balancing appliances  which are designed for the modern data center, cloud and virtual environments help to boost application performance for both small and medium enterprises as well as large service providers.

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Application Delivery Controller 

Tablet Access

Ensure Complete Secure Remote Access with SSL VPN Solutions

Quickly gaining popularity as serious contenders in the remote-access marketplace Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Virtual Private Networks are driving corporate success and increasing employee productivity and remote connectivity. As a remote access tool, it provides remote workers with a secure access to enterprise resources via the Internet by encrypting all communications between company networks and remote user machines. As VPN is the easiest place malicious attackers to get into a network, it is therefore important to have an effective VPN security policy to protect your company's critical technology assets.

Prior SSL VPN, remote desktop access needed administrators to install, configures, and maintains special software on the users’ computers. With VPNs being expensive and complicated to operate, remote access was only offered to a few corporate employees earlier. With SSL VPN all the limitations and concerns of remote access were done away. Offering security and control with unmatched safeguards for taking care of business-critical information, SSL VPN allows any computer with a Web browser to be used for remote access, with the SSL VPN technology

How it works

The next generation of VPN service, SSL VPN (Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network) is available primarily for system administrators. SSL VPN functions to a great extent like traditional VPN, but adds additional connectivity and compatibility, utilizing the same encryption technology used by web sites to protect sensitive information. SSL VPN transmits data through an encrypted tunnel to a VPN concentrator, giving the appearance that the user is on the local network, regardless of the user's actual location. With integrated compression, connection pooling and hardware-accelerated encryption, there is fast performance for each user, even under the heaviest load.

Secure Remote Access

A secure RDP remote access VPN extends the perimeter of your network to the remote endpoints. An SSL VPN has been an entry point for security threats to enter the network. The ubiquity, versatility, and clientless nature of the SSL VPN provide significant business benefits and cost savings. With VPN or virtual private networking, there is a safe way for mobile workers to connect to the company's local area network to access their essential resources.

SSL VPN provides secure, protected access to resources, and ensures that the only traffic that goes through the encrypted tunnel is traffic that is approved by system administrators. The SSL VPN technology facilitates easy migration and makes it easier to deploy remote access solution than IPSec. Its balance of flexibility and function makes it exceedingly competitive.

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BYOD 

Tablet Access 

Unplanned PTOs- Ensure Business Continuity with Remote Access Solutions

When most enterprises talk about business disruptions, they equate it to major-scale events or catastrophic disasters such as H1N1 outbreak, earthquake, volcano, hurricane, power failures, or terrorist attacks. Hence, they engage in a form of business continuity planning (BCP) to protect against interruptions that disrupt continuous business operations. Even IT system crashes, communication failures and supply chain problems are included in the list of business disruptions. However, what these enterprises fail to surmise is that even events considered as minor and mundane can result in losses. Bad traffic, seasonal snowstorms, and even employees taking the occasional unplanned PTO (paid time off) are often categorized as mundane events. However, these mundane disruptions cost businesses money – a fact that even enterprises are not aware of. Let’s look at the impact of a mundane event like unplanned PTO on an enterprise’s bottom line.

PTO or Paid time off is a bank of hours that an employee uses at his/her discretion. Employees take unplanned PTOs in order to take care of an issue at home such as a sick child or waiting for a delivery or contractor. Here employees take PTOs to deal with some personal issues. However, there are situations where employees are forced to take PTOs for no personal reasons. Take for instance, seasonal snowstorms, bad traffic, transit strikes and so on where employees have no option but to be away from the office and work. These are events that can (and do) happen on any given day and prevent employees from getting to the office.

Unlike planned PTOs informed in advance and accounted for in the budget, unplanned PTOs affect an enterprise badly. These unplanned PTOs result in losses, which are greater than most would imagine. This is because employees take PTO without prior notice and therefore it may not be possible to adequately back fill their role. This results in neglected tasks and delayed critical business processes. Hence, what enterprises must do is not only develop business plans for critical as well as minor events but also deploy RDP remote desktop access solutions to ensure business continuity. Such a move would help save revenue by allowing employees to get to work, even when they cannot get to the office.

In the absence of remote desktop access solutions, the so-called ‘mundane’ events are not so mundane at all.

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BYOD

Mobilize All Applications with Advanced Desktop Solutions for BYOD

In this technology driven environment, many workers want tablet access to business applications, often from personal devices. Apps have become quite important in the last few years, making our work and life much simpler and easier. Enterprises may have numerous applications, but the security and cost implications of mobilizing every application can get daunting.

Many organizations are exposed to problems such as security gaps, compliance issues and rising IT complexity without proper solutions in place. To enable tablet remote access to personal iPad or Android devices, enterprises need a RDP solution that can be installed in the corporate network and integrates with Active Directory or similar to establish user credentials for secure access.

With a good appliance solution you can have Remote Desktop access that will make you more productive and generative, allowing an employee to work from anywhere and at any time. Deploying such a solution will enable tablet remote access for employees, and also allow enterprises to get a cost-effective solution that is fully secure and fully under IT control and at the same time provides full application availability, supports a bring your own device strategy and is simple to deploy, manage and use.

The BYOD phenomenon can make a tremendous difference and along with a good appliance solution that facilitates Remote Desktop access, employees can be more productive. These bring your own device solutions provide an efficient, cost-effective means to support tablets in the enterprise while preventing data leakage and providing full application availability. 

The appliance-based solution that you invest in must be enterprise owned and operated and not open the corporate network to third party networks. It must allow Tablet remote desktop connectivity to the end-user iPad and Android devices using SSL. A conventional PC work environment must be allowed to all employees unlike server-based computing. All employees enterprise-wide must be provided with complete application availability without any need for new hardware or software, licenses or application environments.

As tablets and remote devices are “off-network”, security and compliance policies on office PCs must be extended and maintained. This way data never leaves the network, never mixes with personal data and never exists on remote devices. It must leverage the existing desktop, application and security infrastructure. Look for a solution that is cost-effective and can be set up in as little a few hours and is capable of achieving ROI in the time it takes to set up alternate solutions.

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Server Load Balancing

Business continuity through remote desktop access solutions

Our modern day business world is evolving and is becoming much more advanced and globalized, with multiple teams working across various time zones. As a result of which, the traditional 9am to 5pm job set up is becoming or rather has become obsolete. That is not all. The customary meeting taking place in boardrooms or conference room too are being replaced by online collaborations and conversations that today is an easy task with the help of remote access solutions and SSL VPN tools. Remote access through VPN solutions helps business persons to manage their business anytime from anywhere.

Business continuity is an essential element of every corporate set up. As business continuity planning today is a crucial aspect of every business, it is imperative that companies invest in enterprise class remote desktop solutions that assist in leveraging technologies that are secure and scalable. Compliance too is an important factor as to why government agencies mandate sensible BCP Government mandates. Also the regulatory compliance needs several organizations to have auditable, secure admission to critical data even when there are unforeseen events taking place.

Unplanned PTO is one of the many kinds of business hindrances. There are a few employees who opt in for PTO when there is no other choice to be away from the office and yet continue their work. The other reason that can be listed that, employees are required to handle some household issues as well. Hence, an employer might as well consider that opting in for a PTO day is the best possible solution to keep the work on. On the other hand, unplanned PTO might also impact on a company’s bottom line.

Therefore, when employees take an unplanned PTO it practically might not be possible to cover up an entire day’s work responsibilities. The outcome could be in the form of accumulated tasks that are neglected for an entire day and might also delay in critical business processes. Planned PTO is accountable for the budget, whereas unplanned PTO impacts the company revenues. It is estimated based on the yearly productivity, total employee count and the average count of the PTO’s taken by each employee per year.

Today leading solution providers have come up with business continuity through remote desktop access solutions. Regardless of the type of solution that you might choose, you need to ensure that it results in increasing the overall productivity and helps in file access. Advanced remote desktop solutions help to resolve business bottlenecks and helps in business continuity planning with its secure remote access to office desktops and computing devices. It provides a secure and simple access to the desktop platform and has a simple-to-use architecture. The solution is perfect for workers who need to attend their personal and professional tasks without neglecting either of them.

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Application Delivery Controller