XML straining network performance, bandwidth

A recent research report from ZapThink LLC estimates that XML traffic will triple on enterprise networks by 2008, accounting for close to 50% of the messages sent. XML messages are bulky and put a strenuous load on network pipes that could impede a company’s deployment of an SOA, said ZapThink senior analyst Ronald Schmelzer.

“The problem is, if you look at the message on the network, it’s huge. These are significant loads and you have to parse each part, do a decryption check, directory check and query the document itself — every single time a message comes in and out,” Schmelzer said. “It’s just killing some networks. For example, if you want security, some can’t afford to do it. Companies have to double their infrastructure, and dedicate more application servers. At some point, it’s going to kill them because this is 1/100th of what traffic will be.”

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High Performance and Appliance Approaches for XML

Increasingly organizations are seeking to find solutions that can transparently monitor XML traffic on the network and apply business rules or corporate IT policies such as security, routing, performance, management, transformation, and end-point connection provisioning without adversely impacting network performance or burdening their already over-stretched IT departments.

Because XML traffic is content-oriented, rather than protocol-oriented, solutions responsible for securing XML traffic must make decisions based upon the content of the messages, rather than the protocols that underlie those messages. However, XML is a huge bandwidth, processor, and storage hog. XML processing tasks such as XSL transformation, schema validation, XPath-based classification, XML security, and intelligent routing are inherently processing-intensive, placing a significant burden on server infrastructure that may not be optimized to perform these tasks.

As a result, there is a need for approaches that seek to provide the content-level functionality required of today’s XML and Web Services solutions but also provide the high level of performance needed to effectively run these solutions in production. The result of this need is the evolution of XML appliances, specialized chip-based solutions, and optimized software approaches that aim to ensure XML-related functionality without performance degradation. This report follows the evolution of the XML appliance markets, and the emergence of new classes of solutions dealing with processing XML-based content at wire speed.

XML-Acceleration Tools Aim To Speed Web Services-Clogged Networks

“No one argues that XML is the most efficient way of integration,” Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC, said. “There’s always a tradeoff. You’re gaining effective integration at the expense of network efficiency.”

“What’s going to set (Conformative) apart is the nuts and bolts of the technology,” Schmelzer said. “Can they do it better and faster, and can they market it.

“This is definitely becoming a hot market.”

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Service Orientation Market Trends

While Web Services have been getting the attention through 2003, in 2004 the IT computing story will be focused squarely on Service Orientation. Offering an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that provides greater business agility while enabling companies to use heterogeneous resources more efficiently, Service Orientation, based on established Web Services standards, is set to fundamentally change many different IT markets as enterprises transition to Service-Oriented Architectures.

In particular, the markets of application security, security appliances, system management, application integration, data integration, and business process management are six key markets that will become transformed as vendors in those markets Service-enable their products. Furthermore, there is a window of opportunity for new entrants in each of these markets to build Service-oriented offerings. Those windows will soon close, however, as the established, incumbent vendors in each space consolidate their respective markets.

These consolidation trends will continue through the rest of the decade, as large vendors round out their suites of software that support Service Orientation, resulting in a combined market consisting of vendors offering a full-function SOA Implementation Framework. These frameworks will offer enterprises all the functionality they need to build, run, and manage SOAs. The market for SOA Implementation Frameworks is still nascent as of 2004, but will dominate the distributed computing arena by 2010.

Growing XML use fuels accelerators

What the start-ups have in common is that they are all developing hardware to accelerate XML processing. Analysts say addressing the XML factor in software won’t be enough as the usage of XML increases, and hardware devices will have to handle the bulky processing. According to ZapThink, XML is expected to account for about 25% of network traffic in 2006; it accounts for less than 2% today.

Read more at: Network World

Move afoot to speed XML traffic

Lamb’s experience is likely to become the norm. Research firm ZapThink says XML is expected to account for more than 25% of network traffic by 2006, up from just under 2% today. And Forrester says 1 billion clients will be sending and receiving XML messages based on the Simple Object Access Protocol by 2008.

Read more at: NetworkWorld

Conformative Lands $6.5M In Funding

XML is rapidly becoming a standard for data exchange on the World Wide Web. ZapThink, an XML and Web services analysis company, estimates that XML will represent almost 25 percent of network traffic by 2006 compared to less than two percent last year. However, XML processing is five to 10 times more resource-intensive than text processing, and the increased usage of XML and its integration with legacy technologies require data centers to add more server bandwidth in order to maintain acceptable performance and overall quality of service, Conformative explains.

Read more at: eBizQ.net