Application delivery and cloud computing need proactive approach: Frost & Sullivan

F5 Networks announced the results of a
Frost & Sullivan survey that looked at enterprise views towards
application delivery and cloud computing with respect to their
business needs as well as their understanding of the technology
drivers behind these needs. The survey underscored need for proactive
approach to application delivery and cloud computing. According to
the survey, CIOs and senior IT decision makers in Asia Pacific (APAC)
have recognized the importance of Web applications in driving their
businesses.

Moreover, the survey revealed that
Web-based attacks make security a top concern for the IT decision
makers. It also exposed a need for more awareness about the
differences between traditional network-based vulnerabilities versus
Web application attacks as respondents appeared to be confused about
the capabilities of network-based firewalls versus Web application
firewalls. Besides encouraging utilization of more bandwidth to
overcome Web application performance issues, the findings revealed
strong association between cloud computing and business agility. This
put an onus on aspiring cloud services providers to assure
enterprise-level availability, security, and performance.

As applications are the lifeline of
enterprises today, the right approach, which includes creating
strategic points of control for complete visibility, is the need of
the hour. “To achieve business objective, the solutions should be
the part of an overall Application Delivery Networking strategy that
ensures full visibility and control of end-to-end traffic between
users and application servers,” said Song Tang Yih, VP-APAC, F5
Networks.

“As technology convergence continues
unabated in the IT realm, the concept of a Server Load Balancer has
rapidly evolved into a converged Application Delivery Controller
capable of offering more capabilities on top of its base function and
it is dominated by the three pillars of application delivery;
availability, security, and performance,” said Nitin Bhat, Senior
VP-ICT, Frost & Sullivan. On the cloud computing front, the
study showed that security and access control are key challenges that
could potentially affect an enterprise's willingness to embrace cloud
computing as a viable business tool in the immediate future.

The study, conducted in Q4 of 2009
across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and South
Korea, surveyed large enterprises' attitudes on a range of topics
such application delivery, application security, application
acceleration, and cloud computing.