Hardware appliances are losing their grip on the Application Delivery Controller (ADC) market, according to a study released by ZK Research. The study, sponsored by Avi Networks, found that 63% of respondents were considering another ADC solution for their next purchase, while nearly 40% said they might choose a cloud-native form factor.
“We are seeing signs of a big shift in the ADC market,” said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. “Customers’ satisfaction with traditional solutions is tepid, while their interest in cloud-native solutions is very strong, signaling the industry is on the precipice of a major shift.”
Respondents in the study cited cost, automation and slow deployment as some of their most common frustrations with their current ADC solution. More than 80% said provisioning a new load balancer takes anywhere from days to months. Users of hardware-based ADCs were more than twice as likely as cloud-native users to report that ADC changes “significantly” slowed application rollouts.
Configuration was another sticking point, with almost 66% of respondents unable to automate changes to their ADC. Meanwhile, more than 33% said they didn’t know how much ADC-related downtime they’d suffered over the past year.
“It’s surprising when you consider the mission-critical importance of cloud and mobile applications,” Kerravala said. “The results suggest many businesses are losing productivity and revenue and haven’t even assessed the problem.”
