Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

All the major telcos and systems integrators are now offering wide area network (WAN) optimization managed services. Forrester's view is that in the current economic climate these services will prove attractive to firms looking to improve application performance and to minimize WAN bandwidth costs without involving either capital expenditure or the need to deploy new skilled resources. However, the approach service providers take varies widely: Some offer only one vendor's WAN optimization solution and tie the offer to their managed WAN service, while others offer a network-independent service and a wide choice of vendors. Forrester recommends that enterprises take a close look at the consulting-led, network-independent, and vendor-neutral approach offered in particular by BT Global Services, IBM, and Orange Business Services. Many service providers offer application performance service-level agreements (SLAs) as a custom feature; Orange offers them as standard to IP VPN customers who use its Network Boost service — we predict that within 12 months other service providers will follow Orange's lead.

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