Enterprises Caught in Web Application Delivery Quagmire

Ninety-two Percent of eWEEK Survey Respondents Facing New Challenges, Unanticipated Expenses, and Disappointing Results with Web Application Delivery Projects

Campbell, CA, October 26, 2004 — Redline Networks, Inc., a company that designs and manufactures network appliances that maximize the performance, flexibility, and scalability of Web applications, today announced the results of a recent survey of eWEEK readers involved in the deployment of Web applications. Ninety-two percent of survey respondents reported serious challenges with their Web application delivery projects. Respondents cited multiple challenges related to performance, security, availability, and unanticipated cost overruns. With few exceptions, the challenges reported are consistent by size of company and across multiple applications.

Survey results indicate that companies spending the most on the implementation of Web applications and further along in the implementation cycle of Web applications face similar challenges to companies in earlier stages of migration from client/server to Web applications. Results also indicate that concentrated spending on additional servers, server load balancers, and network upgrades have not alleviated the performance, security, and availability challenges of Web applications. Furthermore, Web application delivery expenses have doubled initial expense forecasts.

"This survey of eWEEK readers managing Web applications is further proof that more servers and bigger networks are not an effective solution for the delivery of Web applications," said Craig Stouffer, vice president marketing at Redline Networks. "Deploying application front end devices, like those offered by Redline Networks, allows companies to avoid the high spend server upgrade quagmire and address the multiple challenges outlined by survey respondents."

"We were stuck in a Web-tier quagmire like the companies in the survey until we found Redline," commented Henry Svendblad, vice president of Information Technology and Systems at ChartOne, Inc. "Our Web applications were overloading our servers, and we were looking at over $200,000 in additional server and network hardware in an attempt to ease the pain prior to finding the Redline solution. The problems were solved at a fraction of the cost compared to what we would have spent on servers, upgrades, and SLBs."

"While researching many AFE purchases, we were somewhat surprised that they were in response to a production problem," commented R. "Lynn" Nye Jr., founder and president, APM Advisors. "However, that is changing as the AFE is being architected into the application architecture which is beginning to alter how the 'Web tier' looks."

Survey respondents were from small, medium, and large companies predominantly in the education, finance, and healthcare sectors. Slightly over half of respondents had greater than 5000 employees. Further, nearly all respondents have deployed Web-enabled applications in some form. Respondents indicated using a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf products from vendors including Lotus/Domino, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, and others. The data was collected, tabulated and reported by The Strategy Group on behalf of eWEEK and Redline Networks during September 2004.

To obtain a copy of the complete survey results, please visit www.redlinenetworks.com/infocenter.

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About Redline Networks

Redline Networks designs and manufactures network appliances that maximize the performance, flexibility, and scalability of Web-enabled enterprise data centers. The company's family of E|X enterprise application processors, deployed at corporate data centers, and T|X Web I/O processors, used by Web sites, enable users to control and customize any HTTP-based environment while reducing infrastructure cost and complexity. Redline is a privately-held company based in Campbell, Calif. For more information on Redline and its products, visit http://www.RedlineNetworks.com.