The emergence of cloud computing as a viable enterprise technology has dramatically increased reliance on the network. This is particularly true for the wide area network (WAN), which provides access to resources that support cloud computing solutions. The increasing need to support mobile workers, virtual machine migrations, virtual desktops and collaboration has only added to the traffic running across the WAN.

However, unlike the local area network (LAN), which is experiencing broad fundamental change, there are no fundamental changes in store for the WAN, a technology that doesn't follow Moore's Law.

The end result is that the WAN is seeing increased traffic without gaining any substantial price/performance benefits. With the reliance on cloud computing and virtual machines only expected to continue, enterprises will need to adapt the way that they use today's WAN services or bite the bullet and significantly increase their WAN budgets to compensate for increased traffic.

This is one of the contentions made by Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) (ALU), which recently published a  white paper, The 2011 Cloud Networking Report, that explores the history of cloud computing and takes a detailed look at how the technology has forced the evolution of the data center LAN and WAN.

The most profound impact that cloud computing has had on the WAN has been cost. In fact, an ALU-sponsored survey found that around 40 percent of IT organizations will have to increase their WAN budgets in the coming year, many by more than 10 percent.

Primary WAN Services

ALU reached out to IT organizations to discover how companies are leveraging the WAN and what their plans are moving forward. The survey found that the primary WAN services used by today's organizations are MPLS and the Internet. However, cloud computing adoption will increase a company's reliance on MPLS on a greater scale than that of the Internet.

The amplified demand on MPLS has lead to a number of concerns for IT organizations, including uptime, cost and the lead time to implement new circuits. Even though the reliance on the Internet won't be a great, the dependence will increase to the point that uptime, latency and cost will become serious concerns. The following sections will identify a few technologies and alternative services that can help mitigate some of these concerns. 

Optimizing IT Resources by Going Virtual

IT organizations will need to adapt the way they use today's WAN services to overcome certain barriers like the limitations of protocols and applications. ALU details two classes of products that can help ensure acceptable application service and delivery: virtual WAN Optimization Controllers (vWOCs) and virtual Applications Delivery Controllers (vADCs).

Virtual appliances provide a number of benefits, the most obvious of which are cost and the ability to move a VM from one server to another dynamically. Another key benefit of maintaining virtualized WOCs and ADCs is the capability to deploy them at a service provider's data center – something that is not possible with a physical device.

Alternative WAN Services

Although there are no revolutionary WAN technologies on the horizon, a number of WAN service alternatives exist that can help organizations compensate for traffic demands and deliver acceptable service quality.

One of these options is an Internet overlay, which helps optimize the route performance, visibility, security and reliability of an enterprise's Web traffic by using ISP resources that are distributed over the Internet. Some Internet overlay technologies even incorporate Web application firewall functionality.

Another alternative approach to overcoming concerns like uptime and latency is to connect each enterprise site to two ISPs in a process known as policy-based routing (PBR). Sharing traffic over two connections can allow organizations to add WAN bandwidth and increase reliability and availability, says Alcatel.

Unfortunately, many IT organizations have found PBR to be too complex and difficult to manage. This concern helped lead to the evolution of a new device known as a WAN path controller, which can help simplify PBR by automatically making the selections of the best end-to-end WAN path from several different WAN service options.

Yet another recent innovation is the cloud-optimized WOC, a virtual appliance aimed at public cloud environments. The appliances provide SSL encryption and acceleration as well as automated reconfiguration and migration of virtual WOCs.

Other options discussed in the white paper include cloud balancing – which has its benefits and drawbacks – and data mobility controller enhancements.

If cloud solutions are already being introduced into your organization or are planned, understanding the impacts this will have on the WAN are key to optimizing performance. 

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Peter Bernstein