Aryaka pushes WAN optimization into cloud

In a virtual business world, where branch offices are on the opposite sides of the globe and a remote worker can mean a developer working on a laptop form his patio or someone in sales logging an invoice from a smartphone in the back of a cab.

In such a business world, you also hear a lot about online collaboration, the sharing of presentations, documents and images while communicating via voice and/or video. To make those networks operate more efficiently, reducing the redundancy of transporting those data packets across the network, companies have turned to WAN optimization appliances, physical machines that attached to the network.

Today, Silicon Valley based Aryaka is announcing what it calls a breakthrough in WAN optimization by bringing the process into the cloud, eliminating the need for a physical device - and capital expenditure.

And by lowering the costs of entry for the technology, Aryaka is also making it accessible to smaller enterprises that could benefit from network optimization but couldn't afford the expense of the hardware.

This summer, Riverbed Technologies, maker of the Steelhead WAN optimization appliance, announced a virtual appliance to link headquarters to mobile workers more efficiently. But that system still relied on an appliance connected to the network.

Also see: TechRepublic’s WAN optimization resources

Aryaka says it offers "advantages of a Private Cloud combined with the economics of a Public Cloud." It uses a pay-as-you-go model that's based on "the link size connecting to the network and the associated geography."

In addition, it offers real-time monitoring and management of the network traffic and performance over a portal dashboard. In a statement, Aryaka founder and CEO Ajit Gupta said:

We saw existing WAN optimization solutions did not adequately address the needs of most enterprises. Organizations were deluged with appliances and burdened by their inherent cost and complexity. We are offering a fundamental architecture and business model shift to how Application Acceleration and WAN optimization should be delivered. We bring the headquarters closer to their branches. Our goal is to enhance enterprise collaboration and delight our customers, one branch at a time. We want the world to think beyond the box.