Cisco Unveils its Application Velocity System to Boost WAN Application Performance

Cisco Systems introduced a new Application Velocity System (AVS) and Wide-area Application Engine (WAE) designed to deliver LAN-like application response times over the WAN. The new products, which includes AVS appliances for deployment in data centers and WAE appliances for deployment at branch offices, accelerate, monitor and secure web-based application delivery to all remote users across the extended enterprise without requiring changes to clients or servers.


Deployed in the data center, Cisco AVS accelerates and optimizes any HTML or XML-based application over HTTP or HTTPS. Cisco cited response time improvements of as much as 500%, bandwidth requirement decreases of as much as 80% and reduction of server processing cycles by as much as 80%.


The Cisco AVS 3120 allows remote users accessing web-based application and portals such as Oracle, Siebel, and SAP across the WAN to get LAN-like application response times. It does this by offloading specific server processes and minimizing the communication overhead required to render pages in these applications.


Cisco said that unlike other acceleration solutions, its platform can minimize application chattiness by managing user sessions and optimizing data transfers in the background. Cisco AVS features an advanced application security firewall to maximize the ability to quickly identify and prevent application layer threats and data theft.


The Cisco AVS 3180 also features end-to-end monitoring and reporting for application response time network-wide. By reporting on response times individually specific to the network, servers and desktops, Cisco AVS 3180 helps identify problem areas and present service-level data for ongoing management.


The Cisco Wide-area Application Engine (WAE) multi-service branch office platform, allows organizations to consolidate their distributed servers and storage into centrally managed data centers while maintaining LAN-like performance and access to applications and content for users in remote branch offices. It offers application acceleration and wide-area network optimization while maintaining full traffic visibility and complying with packet network policies such as traffic prioritization, QoS and security settings. It also includes caching and application protocol optimization to overcome the bandwidth and latency limitations associated with TCP/IP and client-server protocols.


This initial release features the Cisco Wide Area File Services (WAFS) and Cisco Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) running on a family of appliances that include the Cisco WAE-511, WAE-611, and WAE-7326. Cisco WAE is also offered as a network module for the Cisco integrated services routers. http://www.cisco.com