The Next Stage of WAN Optimization: Days are Numbered for Standalone Optimizers

WAN optimization appliances constitute a growing market now, but the writing is on the wall: Seven years from now, "WAN Optimization Controller" may barely exist as a separate category of solution. Migration of many WAN optimization and application acceleration functions into carrier/cloud services (optimization as a service), virtualization of optimization appliances, and integration of key optimization features such as traffic shaping and compression within routing, switching, and security appliances and even in operating systems make the prolonged existence of standalone WAN optimization appliances far from a sure thing