There are a number of critical business challenges facing the IT infrastructure team today. Workers are more distributed than ever, more rich content needs to be distributed to the user but at the same time, servers are being consolidated at the data center. Compliance requirements further demand that the IT staff verify security controls are being enforced, while senior management is demanding an increase in productivity and a reduction in costs.

As a result of these trends, IT needs to satisfy the often conflicting demands of end users, business leaders and the risk management team. Today's IT organizations need to provide seamless, secure access to applications, a consistent user experience and high-performance and availability for users everywhere all at the same time. These apparently separate drivers converge to make the combination of application performance and network security a natural pairing in today's technology architectures.