Sales Of App Acceleration Products Increasing

Sales of application-acceleration products, which help ensure the delivery of applications across local- and wide-area networks, are expected to reach $1.5 billion this year, a 33 percent increase over 2004, a market research firm said Thursday.

By 2009, the market is expected to reach $2.3 billion in end user sales, as companies seek to lower total cost of ownership by using application-acceleration appliances to enable server/data center consolidation and deployment of browser-based application interfaces, Gartner Inc. said.

The appliances comprise two market segments, application delivery controllers (ADC) and WAN optimization controllers (WOC).

"The critical nature of server/data center consolidation and deployment of browser-based application initiatives gives application acceleration vendors the opportunity to assume strategic positions in customer networks," Gartner analyst Joe Skorupa said in a statement. "Over time, the two segments of the market will merge, as successful vendors broaden their solution sets through internal development and acquisitions."

Cisco Systems was the market leader in the worldwide ADC market in the first quarter of 2005, Gartner said. The company, however, has lost market share since the fourth quarter of 2004, and was nearly eclipsed by F5 Networks.Gartner analysts attribute the decline in market share to Cisco's dependence on out of date Layer 4 through Layer 7 switches. F5 Networks continues to dominate the ADC advanced platform market segment.

In the WOC market, competition remained fierce in the first quarter. Network Appliance, Packeteer and Stratacache led, but emerging vendors continued to increase their market share.