WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks

Features and benefits

Slow Internet response time negatively impacts revenue and customer satisfaction. The average impact of a one second delay in response time can equate to lost revenues, brand damage, more support calls, and increased costs.

WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks together with WebSphere DataPower offers the best-in-class Internet application delivery technologies from Akamai with best-in-class enterprise infrastructure appliances from IBM. This solution provides end-to-end optimization, acceleration, security and management from the enterprise through the Internet to the end-user and back.

Feature	Benefit
Value: Performance, availability, scale, security	Performance: When a Web application is accelerated, end-user performance can be dramatically improved, reducing the effects of latency at the browser by as much as several seconds. This performance improvement can be the difference between a satisfied customer and an abandoned transaction. Scale: Enterprises that deliver Web-based applications through the Akamai network benefit from offloaded bandwidth and processing from the servers upon which the application resides. This improves scalability and reduces infrastructure costs per user, which facilitates data center cost saving and consolidation initiatives. Availability: Connection and route optimization techniques dynamically avoid Internet problem spots and maximize throughput. Security: The Akamai network of thousands of servers in over 1,000 datacenters provides a staggering amount of capacity that can absorb otherwise withering traffic surges, intentional or otherwise. Additionally, encrypted authentication mechanisms help protect the distributed network from unauthorized traffic. Together, these deliver protection to Web sites and applications that are very difficult to independently replicate in a cost effective manner. The result for each application is superior performance, higher availability, increased scalability and an added security perimeter in the cloud. This, in turn, leads to increased usage, adoption and improved productivity.
Adaptive monitoring of data center resources results in the best possible Web experience	By monitoring the strain on data center resources, DataPower appliances add a new layer of intelligence to the acceleration capabilities of the Akamai solution. This boosts application availability and the delivery of the best possible Web experience. WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks leverages DataPowers knowledge of the application state in the backend. When enabled with the Application Optimization (AO) option, DataPower intelligently senses and reacts to application workload conditions, not only balancing traffic across a WebSphere Network Deployment infrastructure, but also dynamically modifying cache settings in the cloud to adapt and throttle traffic reaching the data center. During spikes of activity, users will still enjoy a fast response time with information fed from the Akamai cache. As the backend workload decreases, the caching duration of dynamic data is decreased. This improves application availability and responsiveness while still providing the freshest data to users.
Smarter caching brings applications closer to the user	The Internet itself is often the root cause for application delivery problems to distributed users. To overcome this problem, the IBM WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks uses Akamais global overlay network to physically bring application resources closer to the end user by caching them at the edge of the network, that is, in physical proximity to the end user. Furthermore, for those resources that cannot be cached, the Akamai networks optimizations are constantly determining the fastest path through the Internet to further improve the total response time. Users can experience dramatically improved response times, while at the same time significant processing demands are offloaded from the backend web applications.
Tighter cloud security: Defense in depth	The WebSphere DataPower appliances with WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks can provide end-to-end protection of application infrastructure. By leveraging the adaptive load optimization described above, WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks is able to provide improved protection against DDoS attacks. Since the Akamai network is built to absorb DDoS at its edge, DataPower can dynamically increase cache setting timeouts for all contentincluding that which is normally dynamic such as banking sites and blogs. The WebSphere DataPower appliances, together with WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks, provide a second layer of security protection with a security-enhanced handshake between the Akamai network and DataPower, which helps ensure that only traffic carried over the Akamai network reaches the application infrastructurethereby extending the security perimeter into the cloud and protecting the server upon which your application resides from external threats.
Improved time to value through a streamlined implementation process	In addition to the performance, availability and security benefits, WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks can also provide improved time to value through a streamlined implementation process. Many of the features can be deployed quickly, with little to no customization. An example of this is the SureRoute service provided by DataPower. The WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks provides a SureRoute service on the web application server upon which your application resides. This provides constant measurements that find the fastest and most reliable routes. Typically, this service would need to be integrated into a customers web application or web server. The Akamai Ready Starter Toolkit provides customizable templates to minimize time necessary to customize and deploy these cutting-edge capabilities. It is available at no charge from IBM.com.
IBM Services	Service professionals from IBM are available to help you identify the most promising opportunities to maximize time to value and return on investment within your environment. Contact us for more information on the standard professional services offering from IBM, which can help you get started on implementing the WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks solution.

*The WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks Toolkit has a non-warranted license and a license agreement must be accepted in order to download the toolkit.

WebSphere Application Accelerator for Public Networks

Features and benefits

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