Winner: Cisco -- WebEx Node on Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers

Judges: Nick Hoover, InformationWeek; Brad Shimmin, Current Analysis, Inc.

While cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) continue to gain traction in the enterprise, bandwidth and performance remain ongoing concerns of IT pros. Cisco's WebEx Node on ASR 1000 Series routers is a blade that runs WebEx software like an on-premises extension of Cisco's hosted service, greatly improving performance while decreasing bandwidth requirements.

Without a WebEx Node, all of a company's WebEx sessions connect over the Internet via disparate streams, potentially using up large amounts of bandwidth, especially with WebEx's new video and voice capabilities.

The WebEx Node acts as a point-of-presence at the edge router, meaning that internal meetings are hosted and switched onsite at the closest available node to consolidate required bandwidth. That way, in the case of a company holding a huge meeting, there's only one stream rather than hundreds. Since the WebEx Node is embedded in the ASR, network admins can also continue to maintain controls over network policies via ASR features such as deep packet inspection.

One success story: According to Cisco, a WebEx Node customer needed to have monthly meetings with thousands of employees, but didn't want to purchase all the bandwidth required for once-a-month meetings. Instead, the customer rented microwave links that didn't provide the best user experience. The WebEx Node has saved enough bandwidth that the company has turned on other pieces of WebEx such as video, that the company had been hesitant to bring onboard before. Cisco estimates companies using the WebEx Node can decrease bandwidth use by WebEx by up to 90% and WAN costs by up to 67%.

The 12-core processor, 4 Gbytes of memory, 256 Gbyte hard drive of the WebEx Node can accelerate the performance of up to 500 WebEx sessions via a single blade. When the node reaches capacity, it simply overflows automatically to the Web. Meetings that include both internal and external participants traverse the Web via encrypted SSL traffic.

Look for more from Cisco on this -- the company hopes to partner with third parties to build something similar for other services.

-- Nick Hoover