December 15, 2004

By Robin Gareiss, executive vice president, Nemertes Research

As IP networks become more complex with the addition of real-time traffic, predictable application performance becomes more uncertain. Avaya Inc. (NYSE: AV) is one of the first major vendors to recognize the challenge and take action with its purchase of RouteScience Technologies Inc.

Nemertes applauds this move. We have advocated tight partnerships between IP telephony and network-optimization vendors for some time. Companies that combine voice, data, and video over their IP networks need tools that route traffic along the best path, compress data, reduce latency, and provide a clear look at which applications are using bandwidth. RouteScience doesn’t do all of this, but it helps with a big chunk of it.

RouteScience was one of the first “route-optimization” vendors, which initially developed software for multi-homed networks, or those with connections to multiple Internet providers. The software directs traffic along the best-performing route at a particular moment in time. The RouteScience technology has expanded beyond multi-homed ISP traffic to include any type of enterprise network and applications such as voice over IP, streaming media, videoconferencing, ERP/CRM, and Web applications.

The complete Impact Analysis is available to Nemertes clients. For more information, please contact Chris Zimmerman at christine@nemertes.com