Top 6 Reasons to choose Aryaka over Riverbed

When you need more performance from your global WAN, what should you do? You could, of course, pay for MPLS everywhere and augment it with the deployment of WAN Optimization appliances like those from Riverbed. But MPLS is very expensive, the capital costs plus ongoing maintenance costs of those Riverbed boxes are quite substantial, and it’s expensive and time consuming to manage and monitor them and the network.

To the rescue comes Aryaka’s WAN Optimization-as-a-Service solution. It combines purpose-built WAN Optimization technology with enterprise-grade connectivity – utilizing a dedicated reliable core network based on globally distributed POPs – with centralized WAN and application-layer visibility. It delivers LAN-like performance over the WAN without the high cost of MPLS or the cost and hassle of purchased WAN Optimization appliance solutions, all in a single, no CapEx monthly service.

For those with international locations across oceans, WAN Optimization as-a-Service delivers better application performance at lower cost than Riverbed appliances plus Internet-based enterprise WANs do, and far lower cost than purchasing Riverbed plus MPLS connectivity. In both cases, it offers superior accelerated access for SaaS and cloud-based services, and is far simpler to manage and faster to deploy.

1. Faster to deploy and simpler to manage

2. Private WAN as part of the package

3. Zero CapEx, lower total cost of ownership

4. End-to-end WAN and application visibility

5. High performance, reliable access to cloud services and SaaS

6. Fully managed service with 24/7 support

1) Faster to deploy and simpler to manage
Riverbed Steelhead, or any other WAN Optimization appliances, need to be purchased, shipped and deployed; that much is obvious. But then there is also the ongoing time and effort to manage the devices: patches, software upgrades, software configuration, etc. If you want network-wide visibility, that means buying and deploying still more network monitoring/visibility software and managing that as well as the hardware it runs on, and the data it stores. And between MPLS service and the appliances, provisioning additional capacity can be very expensive, time consuming or both. Sometimes upgrading bandwidth even means purchasing a bigger appliance.

With Aryaka’s WAN Optimization as-a-Service solution, we take the hassle out of deploying equipment. You can be up and running in minutes with your traffic accelerated across the Aryaka network. And as part of our service model, we’re the ones doing the maintenance of the WAN Optimization software, the network reporting, so that you don’t have to. Our multi-tenancy architecture enables our costs to be lower, and so we can pass the savings in management cost and complexity on to you.

2) Private WAN as part of the package
Riverbed and other Optimization appliance solutions have been designed for deployment across a reliable (expensive) private WAN like MPLS. They do TCP optimization and deduplication as well as application specific optimizations, but their design rests on the assumption that the underlying wide area network connectivity is reliable and predictable. Consequently, they just don’t perform well when the WAN is comprised of public Internet-based VPN connections. This is especially true for WAN connections spanning an ocean, where not only is latency higher on average, but where the Internet has many more frequent congestion issues, and where the associated high packet loss and jitter will even more severely impact application performance.

Aryaka’s WAN Optimization as-a-Service solution packages a dedicated core network with built-in diversity and redundancy based on globally distributed POPs together with our cloud-based WAN Optimization technology. So you get reliability and stable low latency across the globe, combined with the application performance benefits that Optimization delivers. Further, our multi-segment solution combining POPs located near end user locations with that low latency, stable private core between those POPs not only results in far fewer congestion problems in “the middle mile” than Internet VPN solutions offer, but also far better performance from our WAN Optimization functionality than a customer-owned WAN Optimization appliance at each location approach can deliver when congestion does occur at the first or last mile.

3) Zero CapEx, lower total cost of ownership
Buying and deploying Riverbed boxes for each enterprise location is expensive, when you consider the total cost of ownership. There’s the obvious cost of the appliances, including the very high cost of the data center appliance. There’s the cost of the annual maintenance/support. If you want enterprise wide visibility, you usually have to pay extra for that. In 3 to 4 years, there’s probably the additional cost of replacing aging hardware with newer. There’s the ongoing internal people cost of managing the devices. And finally, there is usually the very high monthly cost of the underlying MPLS WAN service needed to provide the expected network reliability and predictability.

Aryaka’s solution, which combines enterprise-grade connectivity via our dedicated reliable core network based on globally distributed POPs, with purpose-built WAN Optimization technology running within our network, and centralized WAN and application layer visibility all in a single solution, simply costs less. Less than using WAN Optimization appliances over public Internet VPNs and a lot less than the cost of WAN Optimization appliances plus MPLS. All with a single monthly bill with no CapEx costs and no extra or hidden costs for reporting/visibility, maintenance or future upgrades.

You pay only for what you need, when you need it. We offer elastic capacity with instant upgrades, so you can quickly and easily add bandwidth across our network at each location as you grow your business, with no risk of wasted upfront CapEx investment.

4) End-to-end WAN and application visibility
With the traditional approach of MPLS from a service provider combined with Riverbed or other WAN Optimization appliances, you typically need to buy additional management visibility software to get a central view of application performance, and then one or more separate third party tools to have visibility of the performance of your WAN. Getting an integrated view is either not possible, or involves a lot of extra work regularly exporting data from one system to another.

As part of providing both enterprise grade connectivity and WAN Optimization functionality as network services, the Aryaka solution also offers a SaaS-like MyAryaka portal for network-wide visibility for both network connectivity and application performance and usage of the network, with advanced traffic analysis and the ability to zoom in to a very granular view of what is happening over your WAN, all with nothing extra to purchase and no extra databases to provision or manage.

5) High performance, reliable access to cloud services and SaaS
As noted above, WAN Optimization appliances have been designed for deployment across locations connected with a reliable private WAN like MPLS. They weren’t designed for accelerating or providing predictable performance access to cloud computing services or other SaaS applications accessed over the public Internet. Congestion-based performance problems resulting in high packet loss rates and high latency happen periodically on the Internet, especially for international connections, and can make remote access to SaaS and cloud services unusable.

Aryaka’s solution combining enterprise grade connectivity, Optimization functionality and WAN and application visibility, all accessed over the Internet (or using direct L2 connections to one of our POPs), was designed from the ground up to provide accelerated, predictable performance to cloud-based services and enterprise locations alike, making it a particularly cost effective solution to enable enterprises to migrate more of their applications to cloud computing and SaaS providers without sacrificing performance or network predictability, reliability and visibility. Your traffic between your locations and your SaaS or cloud services providers rides our optimized network to get directly to, or at least very close to, the colocation facilities where the services are offered, delivering much better performance for those connections crossing an ocean, and more predictable performance all the time compared with using the unaided public Internet.

6) Fully managed service with 24/7 support
With Riverbed or other WAN Optimization appliances, even after they are first deployed, there is also the ongoing time and effort to manage the devices: implementing patches and software upgrades, software configuration, etc. With Aryaka’s WAN Optimization as-a-Service, by contrast, we do all of that management for you, providing 24/7 support for your network service solution via NOCs located on opposite sides of the world.

Better application performance at lower cost than WAN Optimization appliances for those with Internet-based enterprise WANs today, and far lower cost with superior access to cloud-based services than Optimization appliances plus MPLS connectivity, in both cases far simpler to manage and faster to deploy.

These are just some of the reasons that the Aryaka solution is superior to purchasing Riverbed or any other WAN Optimization appliances. To LEARN MORE about cloud-based WAN optimization as-a-Service solution, click here.