APAC Survey Underscores Need For Proactive App Delivery Approach

F5 Networks, a player in the Application Delivery Networking space, has 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.

Commissioned by F5, the survey found that CIOs and senior IT decision makers in Asia Pacific (APAC) recognise the importance of Web applications in driving their businesses, and that their strong recognition of the seriousness of Web-based attacks makes security a top concern. However, the survey also exposed a need for more awareness about the differences between traditional network-based vulnerabilities versus Web application attacks as there appeared to be some confusion among respondents about the capabilities of network-based firewalls versus Web application firewalls.

Also, the findings revealed a preference for utilising more bandwidth to overcome Web application performance issues. As adding bandwidth does not overcome latency issues caused by physical distances between source and destination, this potentially means that the prevalent issue of application latency remains unresolved for many enterprises.

Further, the study shows that customers see an important association between cloud computing and business agility putting an onus on aspiring cloud services providers to assure enterprise-level availability, security, and performance.

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"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 dominated by the three pillars of application delivery, availability, and security," said Nitin Bhat, Senior Vice President-ICT, Frost & Sullivan. "On the cloud computing front, the study showed that whilst perception towards cloud computing as a business enabler is encouraging, 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 the fourth quarter of 2009 across Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and South Korea, surveyed large enterprises’ attitudes on a range of topics such as application delivery, application security, application acceleration, and cloud computing.

Overall findings:

* Interest in unifying application delivery capabilities on a single platform is high

Seventy-three percent of CIOs and senior decision makers want two or more integrated features on a single platform. Top of their list are Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) and security.

* Mismatch between the perceived enterprise needs and the corresponding technologies deployed

- Bandwidth dependence and fallacies still exist. Forty-four percent believed that simply utilising more bandwidth is the best way to boost application performance levels.

- Application security is still not well understood. Sixty-one percent believe that network firewalls can prevent Web attacks, and 23 percent indicated that their existing IDS/ IPS deployments are forms of protection against Web attacks.

* Cloud computing is viewed as the next-generation application delivery channel

Enterprises believe that cloud computing will increase their agility and scalability in a cost-effective manner. However, more than half cited security issues as a key barrier to adoption of cloud computing.

Topics of interest (ranked by country):

• Unifying application delivery on a single platform: India, China, Korea, and Singapore

• Bandwidth dependence ranked highest in India, China, and Singapore

• Security is the top application delivery issue in Singapore, India, and Australia

• Having a powerful network firewall is sufficient to make up for a lack of Web application firewall according to respondents in China, India, Korea, and Singapore

• Cloud computing and SaaS are perceived as being the same thing in China, Korea, and India

• Early adopters of cloud appear to be India and Australia