Juniper Networks Enterprise Solutions Boost Network Performance For Sap® Applications From 77 To Percent

Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR) today announced the results of testing conducted in collaboration with SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) at SAP’s Enterprise Services Community Networking Lab (ENL) in Palo Alto, Calif. The Juniper Networks WX and DX application acceleration platforms provided users up to a 99 percent improvement in network access times for SAP® solution-based transactions and reduced CPU demands on application servers by as much as 50 percent, while the Juniper Networks Secure Access SSL VPN platforms provided secure client-less access to SAP solutions for distributed and mobile users. Juniper Networks’ high-performance network infrastructure provides customers using SAP solutions with a responsive and trusted infrastructure that allows them to create competitive differentiation and improve overall business flexibility.

At SAP’s ENL, the Juniper Networks solutions were tested in a series of real-world business scenarios in use with SAP solutions with transactions requiring interaction between multiple application components and data aggregation from multiple sources. The tested business processes were derived from the SAP Discovery Server offering, which is based on the SAP ERP 2005 application. A range of network conditions were tested with latency, bandwidth and other network quality variances, which can slow the response times for end users.

The Juniper Networks enterprise solutions were tested over simulated fractional T1 and T3 wide-area networks (WANs) with both low and high latency times. For data-intensive transactions over these four WAN simulations, the combination of DX and WX platforms improved user response times an average of 86 percent, peaking at 99 percent for a 5MB transaction of the Knowledge Management component of the SAP NetWeaver® platform over a 768 Kbps link with 300 ms of latency. This transaction time was reduced from over two minutes to less than two seconds, about the same as on a LAN - a 99 percent improvement. More information including a detailed paper and case studies can be found at www.juniper.net/sap.

“These results demonstrate how Juniper Networks’ high-performance, secure network solutions can help customers scale deployments, increase overall information security, and significantly improve the network performance of SAP applications across the extended enterprise,” said Steven Wastie, vice president of enterprise marketing at Juniper Networks. “Customers using SAP solutions are migrating to an enterprise service-oriented architecture to enable business flexibility, and the network is instrumental to overall application availability and performance. Juniper’s no-compromise network infrastructure helps enterprises accelerate time-to-value for an enterprise SOA implementation.”

High-Performance Enterprise Networking Solutions
The DX and WX application acceleration platforms perform at scale and help ensure optimum application response times and high availability for all users, whether they are located at a corporate headquarters, in a branch office or at remote locations. The DX load balancing and application acceleration platform resides in front of SAP application-based servers, providing HTTP compression, SSL encryption off-load, server load balancing and application security. The WX application acceleration platform speeds access times over fixed-capacity WAN links for SAP solution-based transactions. The WX platform uses a combination of compression, TCP and application protocol-specific acceleration, and dynamic bandwidth management to make the most efficient use of available WAN resources while prioritizing SAP solutions over other network traffic. Juniper Networks’ DX and WX platforms also enable enterprises to meet demanding recovery-point objectives by ensuring optimal levels of application availability for users.

For remote users accessing SAP applications over a VPN, the Juniper Networks SSL VPN appliances deliver full compatibility with the SAP WebDynpro user interface as well as technologies such as Adobe Forms and Adobe Flash. To help ensure continuity of operations during disaster or emergency situations, where company-issued computers may not be available, Juniper Networks SSL VPN solutions enable users to utilize any available computer to securely access mission-critical SAP applications over the Internet.

Supporting the Adoption of Enterprise SOA
In order to reduce global operational costs, permit flexible reconfiguration of business processes, and facilitate greater cooperation with partners, businesses are increasingly turning to an enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA). With an enterprise SOA, application components and end users are typically connected via global company intranets or the Internet. The Juniper Networks DX, WX and SSL VPN platforms complement SAP NetWeaver and enterprise SOA-driven business solutions to deliver high-performance, secure and reliable application access for end-users and inter-application data transfers.

“Customers have distributed global businesses and IT operations; they view the network as critical to their success,” said Dr. Joerg Nalik, director, Partner Solution Management, SAP Labs. “The network and the applications work hand in hand to provide overall reliability and performance for all users, regardless of their location. Our lab results clearly show that the Juniper Networks application acceleration and SSL VPN solutions optimize and secure the network for SAP solution-driven business applications across the distributed enterprise, enabling customers to lower costs and drive increased solution satisfaction.”