Big Volume today in FFIV...........Web Infrastructure Optimization Magic Quadrant for 2002
M. Fabbi
Hardware-based devices to optimize communications within the Internet data center continue to be fertile ground for innovation. Our Magic Quadrant provides a first look at the established players and a view of future developments.
During the five-year planning period, which networking equipment vendors and technologies will enterprises use to successfully build their networks?
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The market for Web optimization devices continues to be fueled by innovation. From the simple Layer 3 and Layer 4 load-balancing devices introduced in 1996, the market today represents the highest level of sophistication in the networking market. One of the challenges in this market is to adequately describe the boundaries of the various offerings. The industry at large is challenged by this, as the market has been variously called by such terms as "Internet traffic management," "Web optimization" and "content networking." In the first published Magic Quadrant in this space (see Figure 1), we use the Web optimization description, as it most closely captures the products evaluated. These products represent half of what we would consider "content networking." The larger market can be roughly broken into two categories — technologies that "move bits" (or more accurately, move content requests) in an efficient manner to content locations, and products and technologies that "store bits (or content)." As the content networking market matures during the next 18 months, we expect that the products will become increasingly integrated and a number of vendors will offer complete solutions that span both aspects of the market. Today, only F5 and Cisco Systems have reasonably complete product offerings that cover the entire content networking market. There are numerous examples of vendors that have point products directed at one aspect of the market or the other.
Source: Gartner Research
The functions required in an Internet data center can be broken down into two main feature components — availability and performance. As the market continues to mature, availability/reliability features are becoming table stakes. Innovation has clearly migrated to areas of performance enhancement. For the purposes of the Magic Quadrant, credit was given for more-complete solutions that span availability and performance features. While not a necessary element, vendors that are working toward a complete content networking solution ended up on top of the ranking.
Leaders
Two vendors have clearly moved to the lead in Web optimization products. F5 and Cisco have comprehensive solutions and have emerged as thought and market leaders in this space. Cisco re-emerged as a player in this market with its acquisitions of ArrowPoint Communications, SightPath and Netiverse during 2000. Its original product offerings (Local Director and Distributed Director) had been clearly outclassed by new entrants, but despite these shortcomings, its marketing muscle and presence allowed Cisco to maintain market share, to the detriment of the market and its customers. Combining market presence with much stronger products makes Cisco a key competitor in the load-balancing aspects of the market. However, Cisco failed to recognize the growing importance of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) acceleration to the enterprise market (likely due to ArrowPoint's focus on the service provider and business-to-consumer aspects of the market). Cisco was unable to fill this void in its portfolio before the market downturn severely limited its ability to make product acquisitions to do so. Cisco has a tactical response using original equipment manufacturer (OEM) SSL acceleration products from Sonic Wall; however, initial products are under-powered for much of Cisco's large enterprise accounts. In addition, it is clear that this is purely a tactical solution, so enterprises should not commit to this product without a 100 percent credit to Cisco's ultimate in-house solution, which is expected some time in 2H02.
F5 has a more integrated portfolio than Cisco can offer, principally because all of its Web optimization products have been developed internally. In addition, F5 has launched a technology called iControl that provides a distributed communications plane between all of its products, as well as an increasing array of third-party hardware and software platforms. This approach has been well-received and will continue to increase F5's momentum in the market. F5's newest product, the BIG-IP 5000, is a switch-based solution that integrates load balancing, global redirection, Web acceleration, SSL acceleration and data center switching into a single 2U platform that offers high-end performance and greater functional integration than its competitors. Despite being less than 1 percent of Cisco's overall size, F5 has emerged as a clear leader by being completely focused on this key emerging market.
Visionaries
Nortel Networks, through its acquisition of Alteon WebSystems, is ranked in the Visionaries quadrant. Alteon has long been a "mind share" leader in the market; however, marketing and messaging often were too far in front of product development. It appears that the Nortel acquisition infused some much-needed discipline into the Alteon development crew. While product development has stabilized, and the beginnings of a complete content networking strategy are emerging, Nortel must prove it can execute in the market. During the past year, some new enterprise opportunities were clearly missed, and despite some changes in enterprise strategy, we believe it will be difficult for Nortel to continue to maintain or increase Alteon's established mind share.
Niche Players
Radware and Foundry Networks comprise the current niche vendors in this space. Radware has been a solid, but inconsistent, performer in this market. Key development has lagged the leaders, while other areas show signs of innovation. Radware's biggest challenge has been marketing and sales. We believe that recent management changes will strengthen Radware's position in this market, but there has not yet been enough evidence to move it in the Magic Quadrant. We will closely monitor execution for signs of the expected performance improvement. Radware's portfolio is composed of a number of discrete products for server, firewall and cache load balancing. Some integration of these products has taken place, but Radware's messaging has not taken advantage of these and other performance improvements. Two further products (LinkProof and the recently announced Peer Director) provide an innovative approach to balancing traffic across two or more Internet service providers. These products represent clear differentiators for Radware in an increasingly important functional area. Foundry has penetrated a number of accounts through its activities in the Web-hosting market; however, more effort needs to be made in direct enterprise sales and marketing if it hopes to be a player in today's market.
New Entrants
A number of new entrants (see Figure 2) are driving functional integration to new levels and are moving the state of the art forward in the area of performance optimization. When looking at the many functions required for Web content delivery, there appears to be a start-up focused on integrating three or more functions into a single platform. We expect NetScaler will be the first to emerge as a viable player with its combination of connection management and server load balancing.
Figure 2
New Entrants
Source: Gartner Research
Bottom Line: Cisco and F5 have emerged as leaders in the Web optimization market. However, innovation is still key, and none of the established vendors can rest on their laurels. New entrants and clear innovation will provide solutions for Type A (leading-edge) enterprises. Mainstream adoption of many new ideas will be delayed until features are integrated into incumbent solutions. We advise Type B (moderate technology adopters) and Type C (risk-averse) enterprises to stick with the more-mainstream players identified in the Magic Quadrant. |
