The Cisco® Wide Area Application Engine (WAE) platforms are a portfolio of powerful, scalable network appliances that host Cisco WAN optimization and application acceleration solutions that enable branch-office server consolidation and performance improvements for centralized applications and provide remote users with LAN-like access to applications, storage, and content across the WAN.

The Cisco WAE Appliances provide a unified platform for hosting Cisco application acceleration and WAN optimization solutions, including Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Software and Cisco Application and Content Networking System (ACNS) Software.

Cisco WAAS is a powerful application acceleration and WAN optimization solution that accelerates the performance of any TCP-based application delivered across a WAN. Deployed as Cisco WAE Appliances or as network modules integrated with the branch router, Cisco WAAS solves the following IT challenges:

• Overcoming poor application performance over the WAN.
• Consolidating branch-office IT infrastructure into data centers while helping ensure near-LAN application performance over the WAN.
• Controlling continuous growth in bandwidth requirements.
• Improving data protection, backup, and replication for remote offices and between data centers

By accelerating the performance of any TCP-based application over the WAN, Cisco WAAS offers the following benefits:

• Cost savings through consolidation of branch-office infrastructure in data centers.
• Increased employee productivity by providing near-LAN performance for all enterprise applications.
• Improved data protection and regulatory compliance by eliminating the need for less secure tape-based backup at remote offices.

In addition to the benefits of WAN optimization described above, Cisco WAAS provides the lowest TCO solution, transparently preserves all existing network services, helps ensure reliable voice deployments, and uniquely interoperates with Cisco firewalls to secure accelerated traffic.