An Overview of Web Application Acceleration

Organizations are increasingly taking advantage of Web applications. After all, today's workforce is constantly on the go and being able to access applications remotely helps workers remain productive no matter where they are. In addition to facilitating a mobile workforce, Web applications are used to support customers, consumers, and partners. While the ability to access and use Web applications over the Internet has its merits, the Internet is not the most efficient transport medium for Web application delivery. Plus, it's impossible for IT to control. If you want your end-users to avoid downtime, sluggishness, and availability issues, Web application acceleration is a must.

What is Web Application Acceleration?

Web application acceleration involves private, optimized networks that use various techniques such as compression, caching, proxy servers, dynamic mapping, protocol optimization, intelligent routing, and redundancy removal to improve the speed, performance, and reliability of Web applications.

How Web Application Acceleration Works

Though specific processes vary from one Web application acceleration provider to the next, Web application acceleration typically involves the creation of a large, private network. This network exists solely for the purpose of improving the delivery, performance, reliability, availability, and speed of Web applications. The Web application acceleration network is optimized to be as efficient as possible. As a result, the performance and speed of Web applications delivered over an accelerated network improve dramatically.

For example, with a private core network, various TCP optimization techniques, and point of presence (POP) servers located close to end-users, performance can increase by up to ten times. Object caching and compression also contribute to increased performance. Web application acceleration improvements are particularly notable for users located far from the origin server. For these users, speed improvements of five to seven times greater than Internet connectivity are common. When congestion typically slows long distance users, those using a Web application accelerator often see speed improvements of ten to one hundred times greater than their Internet-connected counterparts.

Benefits of Web Application Acceleration

While it's hard to deny the appeal of faster performance, Web application acceleration delivers numerous benefits beyond performance and speed though many of these benefits are directly related to those performance boosts.

For example, have you ever abandoned a website because it was slow to load? Slow loading Web applications have the same affect on end-users. By increasing performance, you also increase user satisfaction and keep more users on the page. This can increase conversions, improve adoption rates, improve worker productivity, and even improve employee morale. For mobile users, Web application acceleration can greatly improve the mobile user experience.

Web application acceleration also reduces the demands on your servers because fewer TCP connections are required. This allows existing hardware to support more users. By choosing Web application acceleration as a service, you can experience the benefits of Web application acceleration without having to invest in IT infrastructure. Doing so is an excellent option for those mission critical Web applications that absolutely need to perform.