Peter Christy

Plays well with the other children!

Cisco and Microsoft, each a powerful competitor and market leader have also shown that they can work together when so "encouraged" by their large mutual customers. The most impressive example at least in our bailiwick is the recent announcement of the addition of Windows Server services to Cisco WAAS acceleration appliances. In addition to "WAN acceleration" many customers need basic Windows services in branch offices, and the fact of the matter is that no one does Windows like Microsoft (I guess we shouldn't be surprised). So, leveraging virtualization, Cisco is supporting a virtualized version of Windows Server 2008 running as a guest O/S on top of the Cisco WAAS solution that is built on LINUX. Once enabled, these WS2008 guests are discoverable and manageable by Microsoft's System Center. This initial implementation is pragmatic and accomplished by use of the KVM module in LINUX rather than the virtualization of the WAAS system itself so further interesting shoes may yet fall. In the same timeframe Riverbed announced the Riverbed Services platform on a similar path. In the first release the RSP is even more pragmatic enabling the protected execution of LINUX code from partners, but the second phase due at the end of the year is said to be much like what Cisco has done.

A Microsoft Corrective Briefing

Our favorite analyst encounter is when you get close enough to something important that the vendor feels a need to correct the details.  I had a chance to do that with Microsoft to get some of the specifics of the Windows communications improvements. We're going to do a report for clients on the topic (it's important enough) but here's the gist.  We had called the new TCP/IP stack "Chimney" (to be fair various Microsoft people did too in early discussions). In fact the new stack doesn't have a catchy name whereas Chimney is really an orthogonal architecture that deals with the transparent insertion of hardware assist capabilities for which TCP/IP acceleration (via Intel I/OAT or full offload) is the first big example. Aside from the terms (which, all kidding aside, it's important to get right) what's hard to really understand is that the communications improvements that Microsoft is putting in Windows: (1) is free (just shows up with some new system or O/S upgrade); and (2) in fact ubiquitous given the dominance of Windows as a desktop platform. This is very different from what other vendors sells which is for purchase acceleration of specific links. Understanding the impact of these improvements overtime is complicated by the facts that you have to make guesses on the spread of Vista and Longhorn server, and some benefit is achieved even if only one end-point is improved (e.g. Vista to WS 2003 rather than Vista to Longhorn). In our client report we're going to try and deconstruct it so the high order bits are easy to understand.  Finally, in our recent report on Cisco WAAS we said that MS used "non-standard" elements of TCP/IP which in a precise sense is also wrong.  The WAN improvements in the new (unnamed) stack are all in accordance with some IETF RFC -- they aren't non-standard, they just aren't what everyone else is using. As they used to say about the ISO Standards, all the incompatible versions were standard implementations. In this case, things aren't nearly as bad because the new TCP/IP stack will work with everything else, it's just the benefits won't accrue unless the other system has the same standard but not conventional features implemented. In practice this means another MS system, but that's not to say it's a proprietary feature, if you follow that (in my next life I think I'll work in the Vatican clarifying Catholic doctrine minutia).

WAAS Up Mr. Chambers?

Cisco introduced the latest instantiation of their file/content/application acceleration offering, now called Wide Area Application Services. The WAAS functionality is provided by software running on Cisco's X86 appliances and appliance blades, the same appliances Cisco has been using for some time.  WAAS has evolved quite a bit from the Actona WAFS offering. File access optimization is more in the Peribit or Riverbed large object cache model. Protocol optimization is added beyond the standard compression that Cisco has supported. What is quite unique and differentiating about WAAS is the degree to which Cisco has (understandably) worked to assure that WAAS optimization doesn't fight against packet network optimizations like QoS.  For a Cisco enterprise customer in the middle of or having completed a large VoIP deployment WAAS presents a compelling value proposition in the "fit in and extend" model. Cisco has also downplayed the direct competition with Microsoft Branch Office (although we bet they still think about it a lot) and now positions WAAS as an optimization later above the packet network and below IT that accelerates all applications. The biggest impact of WAAS is likely to be real heartburn for the network level competitors (we wonder if the timing wasn't just a little bit to queer the Riverbed IPO deal just for the fun of it). Ironically WAAS makes partnering with Microsoft all the more attractive.