Worldwide WAN Optimization 2004-2008 Forecast Update: December 2004

This IDC Forecast Update presents an updated five-year forecast for the worldwide WAN optimization market. It updates the previous forecast for this market from May 2004 (see Worldwide WAN Optimization Management 2004?2008 Forecast and Analysis, IDC #31237, May 2004). Updated vendor shares will be published in a later document during 2005. This document updates the forecast and suggests new market models and actionable advice to vendors in the WAN optimization market based on feedback from end users and equipment manufacturers.

IDC defines the WAN optimization market as hardware or software products that compress data streams, monitor traffic flows, prioritize traffic via QoS policies, and/or manage applications from a protocol perspective. These tools analyze application traffic from an external WAN perspective that is generally delineated from the edge router out across the WAN to the user. The technologies include features such as compression, QoS, bandwidth management, caching, and traffic monitoring and are increasingly application centric.

Note: All numbers in this document may not be exact due to rounding.