Gartner ADC Magic Quadrant: Cloud Optimization and SDN

The business is no longer just a physical network infrastructure. As the cloud and hybrid network environments become mainstream, new use cases for traditional network devices are also emerging, such as application delivery controllers.

According to the 2012 Gartner Application Delivery Controller (ADC) Magic Quadrant Evaluation Results, the ADC market is very mature, but the virtualization, cloud and Software definition Network (SDN) and other technology trends require vendors to innovate. Businesses need new ways to deploy ADC, and they want to change the way existing applications are allocated and optimized.

Vice President of research at Stamford Gartner and application Delivery controller "although this is not a small or emerging market, there is still a lot of innovation," said Joe Skorupa, author of the Magic Quadrant. We found that some virtualization vendors have introduced more features, as well as automatic allocation and automatic management of software features and applications. ”

Gartner ADC Magic Quadrant: Cloud, Virtualization can be a winning weapon

This year's application delivery Controller Magic Quadrant shows that enterprise requirements are far beyond the simple load balancing function. "As more users migrate to the cloud environment, the cloud will certainly change the competitive landscape of ADC suppliers," said Tim Maliyil, founder and CEO of Las Vegas Data encryption and security software provider Alertboot. ”

Skorupa points out that Riverbed has won the title of this year's magical quadrant, which has updated its software-based Stingray ADC (which buys cloud network products from Zeus Marvell) and has integrated the latest acquisitions aptimize Web content Optimization products.

Alertboot was originally a customer of Zeus ADC and was involved in beta testing of riverbed Stingray Aptimizer products, which optimizes the process of delivering web content to mobile devices. Alertboot's Maliyil said: "We focus on improving mobility, and we are gaining a growing number of global customers." This technology really suits us very well. ”

Before the ADC software was deployed, the Alertboot infrastructure was located in two data centers in Denver and Boston. The company wants to replenish its infrastructure with public cloud services. Choosing the correct ADC is an important factor in creating a hybrid cloud. "We used to use F5 hardware, but in a public cloud environment we need to switch to more reliable software ADC to meet our customers ' requirements for our infrastructure," Maliyil said. Zeus (now riverbed) has achieved rapid innovation at the delivery level, as never before. ”

Gartner ADC Magic Quadrant focuses on deployment flexibility and SDN functionality

Although a mature market dominated by giants such as F5, Citrix and Radware, some of the Cloud and SDN features of ADC technology may change the competitive landscape, for example, Zeus Kerravala, founder and director analyst at the Westchester Research company in Westminster. F5 and Riverbed recently released application deliveries to support Amazon Web services.

The dominant supplier Brocade has been focusing on the service provider's ADC business, which focuses on performance and scale. It also opens up the way ADC works in the SDN, enabling suppliers to take the lead in a competitive marketplace.

Kerravala points out that leading companies, F5 and Citrix, will continue to take the lead in the Magic quadrant of application Delivery controllers because they are closely related to enterprise application vendors. F5 's irules allows it to customize application traffic resolution, detection, transfer, or transfer, as well as some of the market competitors underestimate the customization capabilities. Kerravala said: "Once users have mastered the application customization function, they are almost impossible to give up this function." He points out that the Irules for IP traffic management makes F5 occupy the lead position in the Magic Quadrant.

"From a technical and executive perspective, the leader has opened some gaps with other competitors," said Gartner's Skorupa. However, this is a rapidly changing market, tomorrow's pattern will be very variable. ”

Advantage supplier Cisco is likely to pull out of the market, as the company recently discontinued its application delivery product creator Control Engine (ACE) development. The supplier also announced a partnership with the Magic Quadrant leader Citrix to provide Cisco customers with a recommended Ace:citrix NetScaler replacement product.

In addition, while virtual ADC technology is rapidly evolving in virtualized data centers and cloud environments, customers still need hardware-based ADC technology. "It is turning to a hybrid model, and so is ADC," he said. The flexibility of the deployment method is extremely important. ”

(Responsible editor: Schpeppen)