IRG Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Market for Products and Services that Optimize Internet Usage Will Skyrocket, Says Internet Research Group

Los Altos, Calif., October 24, 2001 – Over the next five years the market for products and services that help manage the cost and effectiveness of Internet access and use will catapult from its present $100 million level to over $2.5 billion, according to a study released today by Internet Research Group (IRG) of Los Altos, California.

The study, titled The Imperative For Business Optimized Networks, bases its growth forecast on executive interviews along with an in-depth look at the enabling technology. "These results tell us that businesses are starting to think of network resources as key assets on a par with human capital or other capital assets," says IRG principal and co-founder Peter Christy. "From here forward, as network management grows from a technical task to a critical business function, these resources will play a seminal role in a company’s future, and an important new market will be created for enabling technologies."

This new category of products and services—serving what IRG calls Business Optimized Networks—has attracted $100 million in venture capital in the first nine months of 2001, according to IRG president and co-founder, John Katsaros. "Our prediction for its growth to the $2.5 billion mark begins with the fact that the Internet has become an essential business tool that connects us to the rest of the developed world through a federation of many autonomous, interconnected networks. And in spite of the current slump, in the next few years, as enterprises and service providers consolidate their network traffic onto Internet-based networks, they will begin to view products and services that optimize these networks as core business assets that must be managed for cost and efficacy."

The 55-page study—which includes an in-depth analysis of the primary vendors in the field— goes on to explain that the functionality of these products begins with tools to simplify and automate the concurrent use of multiple network providers, a process called multi-homing. On top of this foundation, vendors then offer a diverse set of functions and services, all aimed at improving overall network performance. They take into account the specific and different needs of different applications, and the real-time cost and performance implications of sending that traffic over each of the available service providers. The business benefits offered by these products include improved network availability, network performance and service monitoring, performance improvement, and significant cost savings. Katsaros calls these benefits just the beginning in the evolution of an important, new platform.

The Imperative of Business Optimized Networks further details the market opportunity and its potential to impact companies producing products and services in this space. Included in the study are complete profiles on CoreExpress, Digital Island, Internap, Proficient Networks, netVMG, Opnix, RADware, Route Science and Sockeye."

"Internet Research has done a great job looking at this market as a whole and realistically assessing the market opportunities," said Brendan Hannigan, Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Sockeye Networks. "With rapidly emerging and evolving market opportunities like this, the different perspectives of the vendors sometime confuse the marketplace, so we all benefit from an integrated view."

"This exciting new product category bridges technical network management and business priority management for the first time," noted Eric Wolford, Vice-President of Marketing for netVmg. "This report from IRG does an excellent job of bridging the technical and business perspective."

Internet Research Group provides marketing and strategy research reports and consulting services, specializing in areas related to Internet infrastructure. Both Katsaros and Christy have authored multiple publications on the Internet. Information on the company, the principals and on The Imperative of Business Optimized Networks is available through the company’s Website at www.irg-intl.com. An abstract of this report is also available by clicking here.

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Editor’s note: Peter Christy and John Katsaros are always available to provide quotes or references for articles related to Internet acceleration, content delivery and distribution, caching, or Internet traffic management. For further information, contact: