Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is a Wide Area Network (WAN) optimisation and application acceleration solution that optimises the delivery of any TCP-based application and video over a wide area network environment.
This allows IT organisations to centralise servers and storage into the data centre for better economies of scale, and to host required local services for better branch availability, while still offering LAN-like performance to employees regardless of location.
Miercom Labs tested the Cisco WAAS products and verified that WAAS offered "superior scalability and stability, and high performance".*
SharePoint Optimisation with WAAS
SharePoint users can benefit from WAN optimisation. The installation of WAAS to can significantly improve the performance for SharePoint users working remotely from the central SharePoint server.
VOIP over the WAN
Many organisations are implementing voice over IP (VOIP) solutions. VOIP relies on bandwidth availability for acceptable quality of service (QOS). Again WAAS can help improve the performance of VOIP at the branch office.
* Read the Miercom Labs test here 