This research also reveals that ADCs are increasingly being deployed as virtual appliances, leveraging ADC functionality from the network through an application layer.
Radware collaborated with Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), a leading IT research, analysis, and strategy firm, to conduct a collaborative research project focused on the current use and future strategies for ADCs. The survey included 243 IT professionals from companies with more than 1,000 employees headquartered in North America.

Some of the key findings of the study:
• Traditionally viewed as hardware devices deployed in large organizations' data centers for load balancing, ADCs are now far more ubiquitous. ADCs are widely used by both large and small businesses, supporting hundreds of web applications for business analytics, CRM, email, and human resources. According to the study, more than half (51%) of the companies surveyed currently have at least 21 ADCs in use. Furthermore, 82% of companies believe the total number of ADCs will either "increase substantially" or "increase somewhat" within their organizations.
• ADCs have become a critical security control for businesses to fine-tune security policies and enforcement across their organizations. Many organizations are using ADCs as an additional layer of defense beyond perimeter security devices (e.g., firewalls, IDS/IPS, or network segmentation). Nearly half (49%) of organizations leverage security capabilities across all ADCs, while 44% leverage security capabilities in ADC-supported applications containing sensitive data. This trend is expected to continue gaining momentum in the coming years: 76% of organizations anticipate increasing their use of ADC security capabilities/functionality in the future.
Organizations are deploying ADCs as virtual appliances at an increasing rate and are benefiting from network ADC functionality through the application layer. While physical ADCs remain the most common, two-thirds of organizations have deployed a combination of physical and virtual ADCs. Organizations also report that ADCs can deliver numerous benefits, including higher availability (49%), improved response times (47%), better application access (44%), and a stronger security posture (36%). The increased deployment of ADCs as virtual appliances will be linked to the adoption of private and hybrid cloud architectures by companies.
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