accelerating end-to-end application delivery | esg white paper

White Paper Accelerating End-to-End Application Delivery

By Bob Laliberte, Senior Analyst

June 2014

This ESG White Paper was commissioned by Instart Logic and is distributed under license from ESG.

© 2014 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

White Paper: Accelerating End-to-end Application Delivery 2


Contents

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................... 3

Challenges ..................................................................................................................................................... 4

The Need for a Smarter End-to-End Solution ............................................................................................... 6

Instart Logic’s Innovative Approach ............................................................................................................. 6

The Bigger Truth ........................................................................................................................................... 8

All trademark names are property of their respective companies. Information contained in this publication has been obtained by sources The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) considers to be reliable but is not warranted by ESG. This publication may contain opinions of ESG, which are subject to change from time to time. This publication is copyrighted by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. Any reproduction or redistribution of this publication, in whole or in part, whether in hard-copy format, electronically, or otherwise to persons not authorized to receive it, without the express consent of The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc., is in violation of U.S. copyright law and will be subject to an action for civil damages and, if applicable, criminal prosecution. Should you have any questions, please contact ESG Client Relations at 508.482.0188.



Overview

Web applications and content play an increasingly important role in modern business. In order to retain and grow the business, these applications are becoming more interactive, more personalized, and more visual. This creates the need to generate compelling content that leverages high-definition imagery and video for customers, partners, and employees. Many organizations are taking steps to create a more compelling online experience, but it is becoming more difficult to deliver a differentiated experience in an increasingly crowded and ever-evolving space.

Consider the dynamics currently impacting businesses and consumers: Organizations have to recognize and understand the major transitions that are occurring and respond to them accordingly. As e-commerce platforms become more pervasive and more product research is done online, organizations should consider:

The massive volume of information online. It is estimated that about one billion websites are currently in service today, and that number continues to grow daily.1 The new reality is that with this volume of web-based applications and content online, it will be increasingly difficult for businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors. The difference between success and failure as a company may very well hinge on your company’s ability to become a “favorite” site instead of just one in the crowd

Rapidly proliferating mobile devices. It is also important to note that the way this online content is being accessed is changing dramatically. To provide some context, it is estimated that about two million smartphones and about four hundred thousand tablets are sold daily, and those numbers are only increasing.2 This doesn’t include the proliferation of web-enabled devices like smart TVs, gaming consoles, and wearable devices like Google Glass. As a result, organizations now need to ensure that web applications and content can be accessed with mobile devices with the same performance as wired desktop devices.

The increasing need to provide personalization. In an effort to provide a differentiated experience, organizations are providing increasing levels of personalization for users visiting a site. You have probably already experienced this when you log on to an online video site like Netflix and can browse a list of recommended movies or when you are provided with suggested purchases on Amazon. This level of interaction requires the ability to dynamically load content based on your selections and previous behaviors as opposed to just simple static content. Again, this is done in an effort to retain and expand customers.

The consumer’s very low tolerance for slow sites. As a society, we have grown more impatient. This is especially true when researching data, gaming, or making purchases online. Most of which is done while on the move, so tasks need to be completed quickly (before the light turns green). If customers have to wait even just a few seconds for content to load, they may abandon that site and find another. Given that it is far more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than try to attract a new one, it is imperative that e-commerce sites and online content perform at the highest levels at all times, and not just when you are sitting in front of a wired PC.

Ultimately, this is all about the customer’s online experience. The better the experience, the more likely she is to return and to recommend the site to others. Organizations need to provide highly compelling and immersive online experiences that can be accessed on any device. In this digital age, organizations that can provide a compelling experience will flourish. That is to say, a high-performance web app is a “must have” because it will directly correlate to increased customer satisfaction, retention, and revenues. Therefore, organizations need to employ technologies that will enable them to provide a superior online experience through the use of detailed product imagery or HD videos. The focus of this paper will be to take a closer look at those technologies aimed at accelerating the delivery of those web applications and content.

1 Source: www.internetlivestats.com 2 Source: Ibid



Challenges

The concept of delivering a quality user experience sounds simple enough—yet it is not that easy, because a number of challenges need to be addressed. Many of the dynamics mentioned bring new challenges to web application and content delivery. Organizations now need to:

Move beyond the status quo. For over a decade, if organizations wanted to improve the delivery of their online applications and content, they turned to traditional content distribution networks (CDNs) (see Figure 1). CDNs were designed to help organizations overcome latency issues created when the content being accessed was geographically separated from those accessing the data. CDNs overcame that latency problem by distributing and caching data at the edge of the Internet, closer to those accessing it. In this scenario, the larger the hardware footprint, the better the performance. This worked well for wired line connections and PCs, but access methods are rapidly changing and organizations need to think beyond traditional CDNs and find innovative, next-generation technology.

Figure 1. Overcoming Distance Challenges

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2014.

Ensure the highest levels of performance. The most common example is high-definition images. Often times, the challenge of transferring these extremely large-sized files is solved by compromising on the quality of the image to improve performance. This trade off typically occurs more often when trying to accommodate different platforms and mobile devices. When Apple launched its Retina display, it set a new standard for viewing images on mobile devices and the expectation is that mobile users can benefit from higher resolution images. This is especially true for an ecommerce site that can benefit from high-definition product graphics. So, organizations are left with a question about how to deliver HD images while maintaining adequate performance levels.



Address the influx of mobile and wireless devices. Accessing content via mobile and wireless devices puts a new twist on the traditional delivery model in two ways (see Figure 2). First, mobile devices leverage cellular (smartphones and tablets) or Wi-Fi (smartphone, tablets, laptops, gaming consoles, smart TVs, etc.) connections, which, depending on the quality of the connection, can impact latency and performance. Second, because of this diversity, the number of different mobile or wireless platforms could impact performance. Organizations need to find a way to ensure that any e-commerce site or web content will perform seamlessly on any mobile or wireless device as well. This is easier said than done considering that when writing an app for the PC, the format and browser capabilities are predictable. In a rapidly changing mobile environment, you can't write an app assuming you know which device will be used to access it.

Figure 2. Mobile and Wireless Device Challenges


Work within a limited budget. Organizations don’t have unlimited budgets and, therefore, can’t afford to keep throwing additional resources at a problem. Extending an existing CDN to cover more sites or rewriting web applications could be cost-prohibitive. Increasingly, organizations have to be able to demonstrate the return on investment for any new technology. ESG research reveals that return on investment is the most-cited consideration by surveyed professionals for justifying IT investments to the business management team.3 Therefore, organizations need to find innovative solutions that will prove their worth rather than add more cache sites or bigger pipes, or (worse) compromise on quality. Organizations also have to balance spending on new technology and maintaining existing solutions. ESG research indicates that most organizations only spend 38% of their annual IT budgets on new technology projects.

3 Source: ESG Research Report, 2014 IT Spending Intentions Survey, February 2014.

http://www.esg-global.com/research-reports/2014-it-spending-intentions-survey/



The Need for a Smarter End-to-End Solution

Given these challenges, what should organizations be looking for to improve the quality of the experience when accessing web applications or content? Because of the rapidly changing mobile device market, greater use of high-resolution images, and the trend to have a single dynamic web platform, organizations need application delivery services that:

Support an end-to-end environment. Although prior solutions end at the caching site, with today’s proliferation of mobile devices, it will be critical to optimize the delivery to the end devices over cellular or wireless connections (that have less bandwidth and are shared by more devices). In order to be useful, this will need to be able to support the widest range of potential mobile devices, OSs, and browsers (see Figure 3). This includes the ability to accelerate delivery of high-quality images to devices of multiple sizes, and to accommodate dynamic content to enable personalization.

Figure 3. End-to-End Support


Work smarter not harder. Accelerating content to mobile devices doesn’t mean add caching locations to cell towers or Wi-Fi hot spots. It shouldn’t require that you completely rewrite an e-commerce platform or your entire website. This is about the ability to leverage innovative and sophisticated technology (preferably software) to enable higher levels of performance and, ultimately, a better user experience. And while caching data at a selected remote location may always be required to work within the confines of the laws of physics, that should be the starting point, not the finish line.

Rapidly evolve. Because technology is changing so rapidly (both in the platforms that host online applications and content, and the devices that access it), organizations need to work with companies that can not only keep pace, but also innovate on a compressed timeframe. This means asking about technology release cycles and a vendor’s ability to take advantage of agile development processes. Part of this is understanding how the platform can be programmed and how new services can be injected. This is where a software-defined approach can play a big role. The ability to leverage a control plane to inject services enables new services to be added rapidly.

Instart Logic’s Innovative Approach

Seeking to differentiate itself from traditional delivery networks, Instart Logic is focused on leveraging innovative software to accelerate the delivery of applications and content not just to a caching location, but to the end device itself. The Instart Logic cloud application delivery service has been in production since 2012. Instart Logic refers to its offering as a software-defined application delivery service. While the term “software-defined” has become quite popular in IT, Instart Logic is actually using concepts derived from software-defined networking architecture by

http://instartlogic.com/



separating the control plane from the data plane and creating a family of software applications it refers to as service features to enable accelerated end-to-end service delivery (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Software-defined Application Delivery Service


The Cloud Application Delivery Service is comprised of a global network, a distributed software system, the orchestrator, and a nanovisor used to deliver a growing suite of service features that enable an end-to-end solution. Each component has a specific role to play.

The global network provides the underlying infrastructure comprised of redundant network links and globally distributed points of presence designed for scalability and high availability. The global network hosts both geo-specific content and service features.

Nanovisor is a virtualization layer based on JavaScript software that is deployed transparently in the web browsers on client-side devices. Its purpose is to host the client-side service feature to enable end-to-end optimization.

The distributed software system handles the processing of the cloud portion of the service feature. Again, this is to enable the end-to-end application delivery service.

Orchestrator can be thought of as the brain or control plane responsible for configuration, policy, and service feature provisioning. It is also critical for enabling new service features to be rapidly injected into the environment.

Service Features This is the advanced functionality that enables Instart Logic to provide end-to-end optimization. Service features include: SmartVision technology; image re-sizing; image transcoding; InstantLoad to accelerate delivery to mobile/wireless devices; image streaming; HTML streaming; Flash streaming to overcome challenges from cellular/wireless networks; global network accelerator and distributed caching for the physical network; and security services for DDOS and PCI level 1 compliance.

By starting with a software-defined architecture, Instart Logic has been able to take advantage of:

End-to-end service delivery. Appliance- and hardware-based solutions become cost-prohibitive for most environments and are virtually impossible for mobile devices. The software architecture enables both client- and cloud-side software to accelerate applications over those difficult last (cellular and wireless)



miles. This enables Instart Logic customers to take advantage of the latest capabilities like HTML5 on an endpoint device.

Rapid development and expansion of services. New services aren’t contingent on the latest ASIC design or processor. Using agile software development practices, Instart Logic can continue to develop and evolve its feature set to meet an ever-changing market, without forklift upgrades. By adding an open API, Instart Logic could also open up this service feature set to include third-party developers and applications.

Clear and compelling differentiators from traditional solutions. While most providers emphasize the breadth and depth of the underlying physical network and points of presence, Instart Logic is focused on using software to provide end-to-end performance with a focus on the rapidly growing cellular and wireless device market. For example, SmartVision technology is an advanced computer vision technology that allows the system to gain a unique understanding of each image and work in concert with service features to deliver faster and higher quality web experiences.

To validate what Instart Logic has been delivering to date, ESG spoke with several Instart Logic customers to better understand the value of Instart Logic and why these customers chose to use its service. The customers included a high-end luxury online retailer, a large scale media company and a global knowledge sharing platform. Several themes emerged from the conversations. Notably, the Instart Logic customers reported:

Use of mobile devices is rapidly increasing. The knowledge platform site reported rapid growth of mobile device usage with access spiking from 25% to 30% in just one year. And the luxury online retailer already has about 40% of its traffic from mobile devices, and over 99% of those are Retina display-quality iOS devices. The media company reported mobile devices grew from 30% to almost 40% this year and also reported a majority of those are iOS based devices.

Poor performance is not an option. All the organizations recognize the value of having a site that loads quickly and the ability to enable a customer to interact with the site as quickly as possible. For the retail site, high-quality images are mandatory—it isn’t even an option to trade off lower quality images for faster performance. For the media company, initial tests demonstrated that Instart Logic could deliver multi-media heavy pages approximately 30-40% faster and even non-image intensive pages felt faster.

The ability to evolve technology quickly is a true differentiator. One the organizations has been working with Instart Logic for almost two years and has been impressed with its ability to innovate and deliver new technology. In fact, this company believes that Instart Logic’s current and future technology really helps to differentiate it from traditional suppliers. This sentiment was echoed from another that reported its end-to-end technology with application logic provided a more coherent optimization solution. In fact, having the “next generation” Instart Logic solution deployed was a key factor for shifting from separate mobile sites to a single responsive web site.

Instart Logic has been extremely responsive to their requests. Highly responsive customer support and agile development have helped Instart Logic transform its customers into loyal supporters. All the customers highlighted the ease of working with Instart Logic and the speed with which any issues are resolved. One customer commented that it wasn’t so much a vendor/client relationship, but rather a strategic partnership.

The Bigger Truth

Ensuring a quality online experience for users is important for most businesses; however, for online-only services like retail, SaaS, or media, it is absolutely imperative. These organizations need solutions that can help provide a differentiated and positive experience regardless of the device used for access. Given the rapid transition to exploring websites and applications from mobile or wireless devices, organizations need to ensure these users will have the same or better experience as a wired PC.

Cellular and wireless connections to mobile or other devices require a new approach—one that can help to optimize application delivery to the end device. A solution fit for this increasingly wireless IT environment also



needs to able to adapt rapidly—history has taught us that the mobile device market can make dramatic changes in a very short time. Because of this, solutions need to be able to quickly and efficiently inject new services to accommodate a changing environment. This is where software-defined solutions can play a major role and enable organizations to respond more quickly via their own or even third-party solutions.

Instart Logic has created a unique approach to delivering web-based applications and content. It is understood that geographically dispersed points of presence are just a starting point and that the ability to deliver an end-to-end service for mobile or wireless devices is where the market is heading. By taking a software-defined approach to application delivery, Instart Logic is able to rapidly inject services and leverage innovative technology to ensure optimization from end to end. The question that needs to be asked is what is your organization doing to transform and enable high performance for the large variety of mobile devices today and in the future?

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