According to Infonetics Research, the WAN optimization market was worth $1 billion in 2008. Infonetics had Cisco in first place for the year, followed by Blue Coat in second and Riverbed in third.

Everyone wants to do less with more and the simple reality is that it is typically cheaper to roll out a WAN optimization solution rather than trying to increase bandwidth. As 100 GbE come online though, that might change the dynamic for 2012 and beyond.

What vendors like Blue Coat do isn't just WAN acceleration though, it's also smart acceleration with security, so they provide an additional layer of defense for enterprise networks that carriers alone -- don't typically deliver today.