Unity WAN Fabric Finds Quickest Paths to Office 365, Salesforce.com and Many More
August 20, 2014 – Silver Peak released the industry’s most comprehensive solution for optimizing software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Unity, the new wide-area-network (WAN) fabric from Silver Peak, enables IT to control cloud connectivity across the enterprise and accelerate applications on any network. Unlike traditional WAN optimization, Unity finds the best route to applications in the public cloud as well as on private networks. It does this using sophisticated new cloud intelligence and WAN routing technology, which correlates information about SaaS applications and Internet “weather,” then sends traffic to the cloud over the shortest or least-congested path.
“SaaS has taken business productivity to new heights, but it has also dramatically changed the dynamics of IT networking,” said Damon Ennis, SVP of products for Silver Peak. “The weather on the Internet can be congested one minute and tolerable the next, making the performance of cloud services unpredictable. Even worse, your IT staff have no way to monitor traffic to the cloud once it leaves the WAN. Silver Peak’s Unity fabric gives them capabilities they’ve never had before. It turns the Internet into your own private, high-performance network and brings SaaS under the control of IT.”
New Routing for the New WAN
The Unity network fabric is generated by Silver Peak software installed in data centers, branch offices and cloud interconnection hubs, in conjunction with Silver Peak’s new Cloud Intelligence Service. Cloud Intelligence aggregates ever-changing information about SaaS providers, including the physical locations where the providers’ data is being served, and provides minute-to-minute updates on Internet weather patterns. The Silver Peak instances use this data to measure the loss, latency and other metrics from their locations to different services in the cloud. This information is broadcasted to all other instances on the fabric, enabling Unity to calculate the optimal end-to-end path for any user on the network to any SaaS destination.
By enabling Silver Peak instances within cloud interconnection points, such as Equinix Performance Hubs, enterprises can easily extend the monitoring, control, and optimization of their WAN all the way to the doorstep of SaaS services such as Salesforce and Office 365.
“As more and more enterprises adopt cloud services, we hear more and more about the strains on network performance and a consistent quality of experience to access cloud-based services for a distributed workforce,” said Jim Poole, vice president, global service providers, Equinix. “The Silver Peak Unity solution combines Equinix Performance Hub with the convenience of seamless cloud access to the largest ecosystem of Cloud providers, MSPs and SIs, bringing users closer to business-critical data and cloud resources from anywhere in the world.”
Comprehensive, Cost-Effective SaaS Optimization through Cloud Intelligence
Silver Peak is constantly adding support for new SaaS services, along with new cloud hub and IaaS partnerships that help enterprises extend their Unity fabric. Silver Peak’s Cloud Intelligence can be added to an enterprise deployment with a single, low-cost annual subscription, which includes all supported SaaS applications.
Over time, Unity will optimize every SaaS application. The fabric currently supports more than 30 of the most popular, including:
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Box
- ConstantContact
- Cornerstone OnDemand
- Dropbox
- Eloqua
- GoToAssist
- GoToMeeting
- GoToTraining
- GoToWebinar
- Intuit
- Lithium
- LiveOps
- Marketo
- NetSuite
- Microsoft Office 365
- Parature
- Pardot
- ExactTarget
- Salesforce.com
- ServiceNow
- SuccessFactors
- SugarCRM
- Taleo
- Ultimate Software
- Workday
- ZenDesk
- ZohoOffice
Products, Pricing and Availability
To optimize their networks for SaaS, new customers must purchase a minimum of two Silver Peak software instances and a subscription to Unity Cloud Intelligence. Existing Silver Peak customers simply need to upgrade their Silver Peak software to release 7 and subscribe to Unity Cloud Intelligence. Customers can expand their networks by adding Silver Peak instances in cloud hubs or IaaS providers. The Unity Cloud Intelligence subscription is $5,000 per enterprise, per year with unlimited SaaS application support. Silver Peak software instances are available for as little as $551 per year.
Additional Resources
- Silver Peak Unity Web Page
- Analyst Report: The Next Generation of Wide Area Networking
- Analyst Report: Intelligent WAN Market Analysis
- IDC Report: Rise of the Hybrid WAN
- White Paper: Optimize Every SaaS Applications with an Intelligent WAN
- Infographic: Internet Weather Report
About Silver Peak
Silver Peak software unifies cloud, Internet and WAN on a single fabric, giving IT complete visibility and control over the new network while ensuring performance consistency for every application. Transform your network today at www.silver-peak.com