Kemp Technologies: Elevating Load Balancing To Ensure Optimal Application Experience
Application delivery controller or load balancer has evolved and found renewed relevance among IT leaders, as it has become a crucial component in achieving business resiliency at a time when work environments are becoming increasingly distributed. A load balancer is a device that acts as a reverse proxy and distributes network or application traffic across a number of servers. Load balancers are used to increase the capacity as well as reliability of applications. The global load balancer market size is projected to reach $8.90 billion by 2027. The load balancer market will continue to grow at a higher rate in India as compared to the rest of the world as companies and the government continue to invest in their IT networks whether it is in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid environments. One of the top priorities for any organization is that the applications and networks are always available and secure regardless of the applications being used in an office, while on the road, or working from home. Load balancing and network monitoring are essential to provide a secure environment with no application downtime for the end-user.
Today, clients expect the load balancer to be secure, easy to deploy, and easy to manage regardless of where the load balancer is deployed in their IT environment. Furthermore, they also want to have access to world-class support - 24/7. Companies are asking for consumption models that fit their specific needs and organizations expect to have their applications always-on, secured, performing at an optimal level, and delivering the best experience to their users. The ability to quickly deploy and manage applications gives IT managers the agility they need to ensure business continuity.
Enabling Organizations to Embrace Digital Transformation
This is where Bangalore-based Infoavana Technologies comes into the picture. Infoavana Technologies is a privately held organization, whose core business model coupled with diverse and rich experience, is to provide innovative, business intelligent & business-driven technology-enabled products and solutions in the IT Industry. Infoavana helps enterprises of all sizes to identify solutions that will best help them to modernize their IT functions. Keeping customers at the core of innovation, Infoavana's solutions provide insights across customers' organizations and business processes, thereby assisting them to succeed by accelerating smarter business decisions & outcomes.
When it comes to solutions and services it is important to be committed to the client which means handling a higher degree of responsibility. The key is to stand and gain more by going a little further and choosing the right partners. Infoavana has partnered with some of the most innovative firms to provide the best solutions that enable its client organizations to accelerate their digital transformation. Since Digital transformation is about leveraging the power of technology to modify the way the business model operates, load balancing is a key component that would help in achieving this.
One such company offering the most capable solutions for load balancing is Kemp Technologies. Kemp has redefined load balancing and application delivery by providing the most flexible and cost-effective deployment options, from hardware to virtual, to cloud-native, and per-app options. By providing these options, Kemp enables organizations to embrace digital transformation and quickly adapt to the `new normal'.
Kemp ranks as #1 rated load balancer/ADC and Network Performance Monitoring and Diagnostics categories in multiple customer reviews such as Gartner Peer Insights, Trust Radius, and G2.
"We are a leader in this segment as it is our core, and only business, to help organizations to provide an always-on secure application experience. Our recent acquisition of Flowmon has further strengthened our position in the application experience segment where we have added network monitoring and network detection and response solutions for our customers in addition to the load balancing," affirms Tony Sandberg, Regional VP Asia Pacific, Kemp Technologies (Progress Kemp).
Enabling High Performance & Availability
European online fashion giant ASOS caters to 12 million active customers through an entirely online business. ASOS was moving the substantial infrastructure on which its web store was based to the cloud, which would allow them to provide access to customers more easily around the world. Since this web store was the core of their business, it was vital that they had the load balancing infrastructure to assure constant uptime at even the busiest periods.
ASOS's main requirements for an application delivery solution were load balance across multiple geographic regions, to be fully supported in the Azure marketplace, provide a scriptable interface for deployment and management, and provide flexibility to scale on demand and support continuous delivery.
Therefore, with this in mind, ASOS began to examine the market for a solution and that is when they found that Kemp LoadMaster easily met the requirements with integrated Global Server Load Balancing, full support across all Azure marketplaces, and a RESTful API to enable rapid provisioning and configuration of load balancer instances.
Working closely with Kemp, ASOS designed and deployed a global load balancing solution that has delivered premium performance and availability during peak shopping periods. Online retail has periods when site visitors and transactions are much higher than normal. During one such event, the ASOS store had 167 million site visits and handled upto 33 orders per second via the Kemp and Azure Solution. Furthermore, by using Kemp to globally load balance their Azure microservices-based store, ASOS also eliminated the challenges associated with downtime and traffic spikes owing to busy shopping periods and retail events.
Network & Security Intelligence
"While there are numerous differentiators in the market, Kemp Technologies has the
concept of application delivery controller (ADC) as a term for load balancers since they are doing many other functions today. What is interesting is that in reality, probably 80 percent of projects that look for an ADC, really, only need a core load balancer that supports the server load balancing (SLB) and global server load balancing (GSLB) features. The rest is superfluous and ends up adding to cost and complexity," Frank Yue, Principal Application Experience Architect at Kemp.
Also, vendors are trying to differentiate by branching out to other markets such as DDoS mitigation, but this, in turn, dilutes the value of their load balancing solution, which is all that most customers really need.
"Kemp is the only Application Experience platform that utilizes its load balancer to extract network telemetry data, and with customers' existing routers and switches, export and analyze data to provide actionable network and security intelligence to customers. This means that customers get to understand what is happening on their network, by utilizing their current investment in load balancers and infrastructure components," explains Somaiah Vassanth Kumar, Managing Director, Infoavana Technologies, on how Kemp Technologies offers the best solution in this landscape.
Position in the Indian Market
It has been estimated that the ADC market in India is around $200 million and the market growth was at a slower pace during the pandemic. However, it has picked up pace after the lockdown restrictions were lifted and investments were made from the government and enterprises.
Kemp is well-positioned in the Indian market having solutions for on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments. The flexible licensing offering enables organizations to select the solutions that meet their requirement, enabling them to scale up and down. Kemp is continuing to invest in India as it is a strategic growth market for the company.
Kemp's mission is to provide invisible technology with a visible impact. The company has invested in product development and management by strengthening its R&D resources. Besides, in 2020, Kemp acquired Lithops Technologies, a top developer of application networking and network security solutions and services based in New Delhi, India. The acquisition further enhanced the development of Kemp load balancer and AX products, while accelerating the company's business development efforts across India. This was a step towards increasing their R&D capabilities, investing in the local technology talent and expanding their business.
As with all territories, Kemp's GTM strategy is to extend its world-class product and post-sales support to the SAARC region, through working with strong local channels. Thankfully, the company has partnered with Infoavana, with whom Kemp has worked extensively, to bring Kemp's value proposition to their customers. They have sales and pre-sales teams well-equipped to articulate the value Kemp provides, and this helps customers solve their business concerns.
Having carved a niche for itself in this landscape, early in 2021 Kemp announced that it is taking application experience (AX) to the next level by combining the network performance monitoring and diagnostic (NPMD) capabilities of its Flowmon product line with the LoadMaster load balancer. With the enhanced Network Telemetry statistics and added visualization provided by the Kemp Flowmon Collector, customers can pinpoint the rootcause of emerging issues and easily determine whether they are caused by the application or the network. This includes deep and actionable network insights that detect issues at their early stages before any escalation or outage. Kemp will continue to enhance its portfolio by integrating capabilities, investing in technologies, and developing partnerships to extend the reach of its solutions.
NPMD and NDR technologies in the SAARC market
Geographically, other regions are ahead in adopting NPMD and NDR as essential technologies; however, with the prevalence of advanced persistent threats (further hastened by online activity that was boosted by the pandemic), the demand for more exhaustive and sustainable anomaly detection methods is increasing.
"It might be better to look at the adoption trends by industry, where we see government, finance, communications, and healthcare, taking a closer look at these technologies, as demanded by their business contexts," Tony Sandberg, Regional VP Asia Pacific, Kemp Technologies, (Progress Kemp).
Improve network performance, & early detection of advanced persistent threats
Traditionally, the primary purpose of load balancers is to provide a positive customer experience by managing transactions as they pass through the application. Kemp supercharged its load balancers to also provide insight about data passing through which it helps organizations to quickly perform effective network troubleshooting, performance monitoring, and capacity planning. The Kemp Flowmon network detection and response (NDR) solutions combine machine learning, heuristics, and advanced analytics to improve network performance, alert on network anomalies and provide early detection of advanced persistent threats. All these ensure that the application is highly available, secured, and performing at the expected level. And through these Kemp ensures that applications are always on and network issues are resolved before they become a problem.
Flowmon expands Kemp's mandate of always-on Application Experience by going beyond application transactions and providing network and security insights as data passes through the customer's network. This helps companies gain visibility in understanding the performance of their service delivery beyond the seamless delivery of their applications. This is a unique selling point that puts Kemp further ahead of its competition.
Also, vendors are trying to differentiate by branching out to other markets such as DDoS mitigation, but this, in turn, dilutes the value of their load balancing solution, which is all that most customers really need.
"Kemp is the only Application Experience platform that utilizes its load balancer to extract network telemetry data, and with customers' existing routers and switches, export and analyze data to provide actionable network and security intelligence to customers. This means that customers get to understand what is happening on their network, by utilizing their current investment in load balancers and infrastructure components," explains Somaiah Vassanth Kumar, Managing Director, Infoavana Technologies, on how Kemp Technologies offers the best solution in this landscape.
Position in the Indian Market
It has been estimated that the ADC market in India is around $200 million and the market growth was at a slower pace during the pandemic. However, it has picked up pace after the lockdown restrictions were lifted and investments were made from the government and enterprises.
Kemp is well-positioned in the Indian market having solutions for on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments. The flexible licensing offering enables organizations to select the solutions that meet their requirement, enabling them to scale up and down. Kemp is continuing to invest in India as it is a strategic growth market for the company.
Kemp's mission is to provide invisible technology with a visible impact. The company has invested in product development and management by strengthening its R&D resources. Besides, in 2020, Kemp acquired Lithops Technologies, a top developer of application networking and network security solutions and services based in New Delhi, India. The acquisition further enhanced the development of Kemp load balancer and AX products, while accelerating the company's business development efforts across India. This was a step towards increasing their R&D capabilities, investing in the local technology talent and expanding their business.
The Road ahead
Kemp is the only application experience platform that utilizes its load balancer to extract network telemetry data, and with customers' existing routers and switches, export and analyze data to provide actionable network and security intelligence to customers
As with all territories, Kemp's GTM strategy is to extend its world-class product and post-sales support to the SAARC region, through working with strong local channels. Thankfully, the company has partnered with Infoavana, with whom Kemp has worked extensively, to bring Kemp's value proposition to their customers. They have sales and pre-sales teams well-equipped to articulate the value Kemp provides, and this helps customers solve their business concerns.
Having carved a niche for itself in this landscape, early in 2021 Kemp announced that it is taking application experience (AX) to the next level by combining the network performance monitoring and diagnostic (NPMD) capabilities of its Flowmon product line with the LoadMaster load balancer. With the enhanced Network Telemetry statistics and added visualization provided by the Kemp Flowmon Collector, customers can pinpoint the rootcause of emerging issues and easily determine whether they are caused by the application or the network. This includes deep and actionable network insights that detect issues at their early stages before any escalation or outage. Kemp will continue to enhance its portfolio by integrating capabilities, investing in technologies, and developing partnerships to extend the reach of its solutions.
NPMD and NDR technologies in the SAARC market
Geographically, other regions are ahead in adopting NPMD and NDR as essential technologies; however, with the prevalence of advanced persistent threats (further hastened by online activity that was boosted by the pandemic), the demand for more exhaustive and sustainable anomaly detection methods is increasing.
"It might be better to look at the adoption trends by industry, where we see government, finance, communications, and healthcare, taking a closer look at these technologies, as demanded by their business contexts," Tony Sandberg, Regional VP Asia Pacific, Kemp Technologies, (Progress Kemp).
Improve network performance, & early detection of advanced persistent threats
Traditionally, the primary purpose of load balancers is to provide a positive customer experience by managing transactions as they pass through the application. Kemp supercharged its load balancers to also provide insight about data passing through which it helps organizations to quickly perform effective network troubleshooting, performance monitoring, and capacity planning. The Kemp Flowmon network detection and response (NDR) solutions combine machine learning, heuristics, and advanced analytics to improve network performance, alert on network anomalies and provide early detection of advanced persistent threats. All these ensure that the application is highly available, secured, and performing at the expected level. And through these Kemp ensures that applications are always on and network issues are resolved before they become a problem.
Flowmon expands Kemp's mandate of always-on Application Experience by going beyond application transactions and providing network and security insights as data passes through the customer's network. This helps companies gain visibility in understanding the performance of their service delivery beyond the seamless delivery of their applications. This is a unique selling point that puts Kemp further ahead of its competition.
