I have more than ten years of experience working at a comms service provider with more than 10,000 employees.
With bandwidth prices getting cheaper, is a WAN optimization solution still relevant and worth the investment?
Thanks! I appreciate the help.
I think proper capacity planning to meet the future WAN throughput and customers requirements, mixed with good service optimisation should work well.
Most times is a matter of financial planning and return of investment ratio. Your IT analysts should be able to provide data which will be useful for your management team.
Your financial director(s) should check the running costs in detail, collaborating with consultants until proper solution.
This is broad business specific topic and universal answer will not help much, I am afraid.
A WAN optimization solution will always be relevant, just as web browser proxies will always be relevant, despite chatter in the early 2000s that broadband made them obsolete. They make both the WAN and the LAN more efficient as more complex website and applications require more prodigious and redundant bits and pieces to operate smoothly. One cannot expect your software solutions provider to extensively tweak to your WAN topology.
Like any technology, WAN optimizations are getting cheaper and more efficient. Free linux WAN optimizers can run on lower-end hardware in surplus in many offices. At the very least, they may be used for prototyping. Then, budget permitting, scaling up the ladder to commercial solutions may be considered, many by hte same network hardware vendors you're already fmailier with.